Full document / COSOC-W-86-002 - the National Sea Grant Library

Legislation similar to the 1978 Virginia bill, but more restrictive -
the Chesapeake Bay Critical Area Act - was enacted in Maryland in
1984.* While it was a highly controversial proposal the legislation
passed with a significant majority in both houses. The protection of
shoreline areas through this bill was successfully sold as a
necessary element of the Bay Restoration effort. A vote against the
bill was viewed as a vote against the Bay.
Timing, surely, had much to do with the failure of tho Virginia bill
in 1978 and the success of the Maryland bill in 1984. Information
developed through the Chesapeake Bay Program in tha interim more
clearly established the relationships between land use and water
quality, and 1984 was a time of enhanced public awareness of tha need
for action to restore the Bay's health. But boyond that, the actual
documentation of development patterns and problems in Maryland was
much more highly developed. Seven years of fodoral Coastal Zona
Management funding to Maryland had also resulted in more complete
inventories of shoreline land uses, assessment of local land use
activities, and information on the impacts of individual dovolopment
projects.
Resource managers in Haryland have a tendency to belittle tho land
use information base that is available through the Maryland Automated
Ccographic Information (MAGI) system, but in fact, that land use
information base in much better than that of many other states in the
Chesapeake Bay region. It was possible in Maryland to produce maps,
which, at least on a gross scale, showed how coastal land was being
devoured for residential and commercial use, and to aquate areas of
high growth to areas of reduced water quality. This was possible
because of a geographic information system, tho existence of state
required county water and sewerage plans and numorous resource
inventories conducted by the coastal zone management program.
It was also possible in Maryland to point to land use control
activities which did not work to preserve tho Bay: a series of
"cooperative* programs such as the state land use plan, the authority
of the Department of State Planning to intervene in, but not overrule
local decisions, and the "network" approach to coastal zone
management could all bo demonstrated to have boon ineffective at
controlling the impacts of growth.
Virginia does not have a department of state planning, or any other
agency which is charged with keeping track of growth and development.
It would be impossible, at this point, to map the tidal shoreline of
Virginia, showing how much of that land had baon converted from one
use to another over the lest ten years. Tho impacts of growth,
while obvious in Fairfax and Virginia Beach, cannot be documented on
a statewide basis. Further, since many counties have only recently
adopted zoning, and only recently has a "networked* Coastal Zone
Management Program been established, there is no record of failure of
those other approaches within the state.
A final example is in the realm not of environmental protection but
fisheries management. Striped bass have declined drastically since
tho mid-1970's. An interstate plan to restore tho population has
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