How Can Federal Agencies Invest in Your Coast?

Healthy coasts are a wise investment. Coastlines protect communities from storms and sea level rise, provide habitat and ecological benefits, support coastal economies, provide recreation to local residents and draw tourists from around the world. This means healthy coastlines bring multiple returns on the investment made by the federal government, state and local project sponsors and private investors.

So what can federal agencies do now to sensibly invest in healthy coastlines?

1. Expand the range of benefits for coastal projects’ economic impacts. Required by law to show $1 of benefit for every federal $1 spent on projects, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers actually is forced to show $2.5:$1 to justify federal participation in projects – and that is limited to protective value only (which shuts out projects with less dense upland development behind the beach and doesn’t include ecosystem and habitat benefits). There have been multiple studies that document the economic benefits to city, state and federal governments; however, the Corps is prohibited from including these benefits in calculating the benefit to cost ratio. The Corps should be allowed to expand the benefits analysis to include economic and ecological values.
2. Expedite the Corps review and approval process. Recent (in the last decade) efforts by the Corps to expedite feasibility studies for projects have helped a once-laborious process, but there are still problems that often leave local sponsors (cities and counties, say) having to sign off on studies before knowing all the real costs. Time for more tweaking to speed things up.
3. Improve regulatory and permitting timeframes and integration. As anyone who works there knows, coastal restoration comes with many regulations to protect species, habitat and conditions. In order to comply with all the rules within the framework of a major public works project such as beach restoration, timing is crucial – which means coordination and cooperation between regulatory agencies is similarly essential. If a project manager can’t get approval to protect an upland habitat within the window designed to protect waterborne creatures, projects won’t get done — or species and habitat won’t get properly protected. Neither of those outcomes is acceptable, and so regulatory folks should be able to work together and have the funding and resources necessary to do their work in a timely fashion, so projects, people and nature can all benefit.
4. Use, don’t lose, any sand we have along the coast. If more federal agencies (some of them already do) recognized what a valuable resource we have in nearshore sand, they could better support Regional Sediment Management (a systems approach to managing sand) and Beneficial Use of Dredged Materials (using dredged materials from navigation projects to restore adjacent beaches and wetlands rather than dumping it offshore and losing it to the coastal systems forever). Supporting (and funding) both approaches in any coastal project with federal involvement would help keep this valuable resources protecting our coasts. Additionally, we need to clarify the RSM language to not penalize operating & management budgets if a slightly more expensive beneficial use of dredged material is selected as the best (but not necessarily the lowest cost) option.
5. Support regional efforts to promote coastal protection. This can range from finishing the work identified by the post-Sandy study of the Northeast coast to expanding such studies to other coastal areas around the country. It can mean protecting existing funding sources for coastal work from elimination (as is threatened along the Gulf Coast), to ensuring prospective funding sources are kept working for the coast (as is the need with the RESTORE funds from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill) to supporting new and necessary projects in coastal areas where federal involvement is historically weak (such as Texas, California and sections of New England and the Northwest).

Federal agencies don’t always set their own directions, so some of these suggestions may take Congressional action to fully implement. But if agency leaders pursue the changes they can make and request the ones they can’t, we can realize some real progress in investing in our nation’s coasts.

NOTE: These recommendations are drawn from the 2016 Legislative and Federal Agency Agenda developed by the American Shore & Beach Preservation Association (ASBPA), a 501(c)3 nonprofit founded in 1926 that advocates for healthy coastlines by promoting the integration of science, policies and actions that maintain, protect and enhance the coasts of America.