Ocean Planning Public Meetings Before Conclusion of 4-Year Effort

The Northeast Regional Planning Body (NRPB) is expected to release the draft of a Regional Ocean Plan for New England around the end of May 2016. The public will be able to review the plan online at http://neoceanplanning.org/about/northeast-rpb/

There will also be a series of public meetings in New England, at least one in each state and possibly two in Maine and Massachusetts, said NRPB’s John Weber. The date for the release of the draft plan and the dates and locations of the public meetings have not been set, but the public meetings may be held in early June.

The development of a National Ocean Policy was in initiated by President Obama with a 2010 Executive Order. The unfunded order has been funded by The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a private corporate foundation.

The public will have an opportunity to ask questions as well as make and submit comment at the public hearings on the draft plan. The public comment period will extend into July during which the public will also be able to make comment via U.S. Mail and electronically.

Revisions to the draft plan will be worked on by a group of nine federal agencies, the New England Fisheries Management Council, and two representatives from each New England state who have been a part of the NRPB since 2012.

Some in attendance at the last NRPB meeting in January 2016, thought the ecosystem based management priorities that had been developed over the previous year were given inadequate attention at that last formal NRPB meeting, an Ecosystem Based Management Working Group. Rather than systems based management approaches, some said the conversation was around the fact that the White House was passing on making the vast area surrounding Cashes Ledge in the Gulf of Maine a Marine Protected Area. This conversation being largely driven by the Environmental Non Governmental Organizations which had promoted the Cashes Ledge MPA. The White House was but leaving open the possibility that seamounts, a scattered group of a dozen underwater mountains southeast of Georges Bank, three of which are within the 200 mile limit, as possible protected sites.

John Weber said the interest in ecosystem based management expressed by attendees at several NRPB meetings “is clearly important to many of the people who participated in the process.” The public comment period would, he said be an opportunity to make those ecosystem management concerns a part of the final draft that will be sent to Washington for concurrence.