Ocean Zoning Funds Removed From Sandy Relief Bill

A potential plan to effectively zone vast areas of ocean along the nation’s coastlines will not get $150 million in federal funding after the House last week voted to remove the appropriation hidden in a much-larger Hurricane Sandy relief bill.

Last week, the House took up a massive federal funding bill intended to help victims of Hurricane Sandy and discovered some unintended pork had been added to the appropriation including $150 million in federal funding to start implementing the Obama Administration’s plan to zone vast areas of ocean off the nation’s coasts for different uses. However, the House Natural Resources Committee sniffed out the rather obscure addition to the Sandy relief bill and was able to garner the votes to kill the expenditure with an amendment.

In 2010, based on recommendations of the Interagency Task Force on Ocean Policy, President Obama issued an executive order calling for a National Ocean Policy, a proposal that included a somewhat controversial “marine spatial zoning” of the seas off the nation’s coastlines including here in Ocean City and the mid-Atlantic. The president called for the creation of a National Ocean Council, an organization of stakeholders to coordinate the federal regulation of activities along the nation’s coasts including among other things recreational and commercial fishing.
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