New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg has introduced a bill aimed at protecting the nation's coastal areas from over-development.
The legislation�co-authored by South Carolina Democrat Ernest Hollings �..would help states buy coastal land to keep it out of the hands of developers.
NHPR Washington Correspondent Judith Smelser reports.
The bill would authorize $60 million dollars a year for the next four years for a grant-making program to help coastal states, communities, and even conservation organizations buy land that's threatened by development. Senator Gregg is the Chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that would actually dole out the money each year if the measure were to pass. Over the years, he's used that position to secure conservation funding for New Hampshire's Great Bay, but he felt it was important to create a program aimed at nationwide coastal protection.
GREGG 1:57 (26)
Most of the federal dollars are focused on uniquely federal properties - you know, national parks, national forests - and I thought it was important that there be a sum of money that people who have a piece of area that needs to be environmentally protected but has not got a unique federal role could come to the federal and say, listen we could pull this off if we could just get a little federal support to help us along.
Senator Gregg feels the legislation is especially important now, with with more and more people moving to costal areas and sparking increased development. That's a major concern of environmentalists as well, and indeed, they do give the bill high marks. Ellen Athis with the Ocean Conservancy strongly supports the measure - but she does wish it included a few more specifics about exactly what would be done with the land once it's purchased.
ATHIS 1:29 (20s)
In a perfect world we would love for this bill to set out clear environmental priorities for the lands that are selected and do also state somewhere that the lands that are selected should not be developed in any way.
Senator Gregg says that kind of provision was left out of the bill because the program was specifically designed to empower communities, not to encourage federal micro-management.
GREGG 10:49 (25)
If you come up with a plan that protects the ecosystem and has some sort of a unique development aspect to it - I can't anticipate what that would be but there may be something out there that accomplishes that - we don't want to shut the door to that. This is not an attempt to have the heavy hand of the federal government come in and tell you exactly what to do. Just the opposite. This is an attempt to have the community that's responsible and sees this land as critical make the decision as to how you best protect it.
The bill already has a great deal of support in the Senate - 25 of the 50 Senators have signed on as co-sponsors. Most of them are Democrats, but there's a smattering of Republicans too. And not surprisingly, all 25 co-sponsors represent coastal states.
So the bill looks fairly likely to pass. But not everyone is happy about that. Private property advocate Frank Vitello thinks the government already owns too much land and that conservation is best left to private landowners.
VITELLO 10:18 (15)
If we want to conserve land and if the folks in this area really legitimately want to conserve land, then they can do things as a community and as landowners to conserve that land. I don't think they need outside conservation groups that are based here in VA moving up into NH to tell them how to manage their land.
But supporters of the bill say it encourages partnerships between conservation gruops, state governments, and local governments to ensure that community wishes are respected. Alan Front is with the Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit group which purchases land for conservation.
FRONT 10:39 (12/24)
Buying up the world isn't an opportunity, it's not a possibility. The funds just simply aren't there. And so where those funds tend to go when there's government funding is to the place where there's genuine consensus. 10:51 Where, rather than looking at monolithic government land aquisition as a concern, what we're looking at are individual places where there is unanimity of spirit that protection is necessary and purchase is required.
Front's organization is likely to benefit if the bill is passed, as a probable recipient of some of the program's funds. The measure could come up for consideration sometime this fall.
For NHPR News, this is Judith Smelser in Washington.
