Coastal Zone Management Act (1972) – This piece of federal legislation was significant in bringing attention to, and providing resources for, protecting the country’s coastal water resources, including the Great Lakes. It established the National Coastal Zone Management Program that is voluntarily administered by thirty-four states with coastal borders, and overall coordination by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  The states’ individual programs are usually housed within an existing environmental agency (e.g., Louisiana Department of Natural Resources) and work on a variety of issues such as habitat protection and restoration, water quality, land use planning, climate change, and coastal hazards.

[More information available at: http://coastalmanagement.noaa.gov/czm/czm_act.html]

This Act also instituted a National Estuarine Research Reserve System of protected sites and laboratories to support long-term research of coastal ecosystems. The network of research reserves currently includes 28 natural areas in different bio-geographic regions of the U.S. and each is managed by a government agency or university.

Amendments were made to the Coastal Zone Management Act in 1990 that launched the Coastal Nonpoint Source Pollution Control Program (Section 6217). The aim of this program is to reduce polluted runoff entering coastal waters from a wide range of land uses including forestry, urban areas, and marinas. The program is jointly administered by NOAA and EPA, but generally implemented by the state’s Coastal Zone Management Programs.

[See the Coastal Plain Watershed Information Center for more coastal management tools and resources: http://www.cwp.org/component/content/article/39/112-coastal-plain-watershed-information-center.html]