Excerpt
RESOURCE planning is a major feature of Oregon's coastal zone management program. Estuarine mitigation has become an important phase in the planning and management of the state's coastal wetlands. The preservation and conservation of important estuarine habitat is balanced-with water-related development through a coordinated program of local comprehensive planning, land use regulation, and waterway alteration laws. As a part of this program, mitigation banking is used to maintain the integrity of estuarine ecosystems by restoring or enhancing substitute habitat where planned development would otherwise result in the loss of resource lands.
Oregon's coastal zone management program is integrated into state law under the Oregon Land Use Planning Act, which became law in 1973 [Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS) Chapter 197]. This act established the Land Conservation and Development Commission and empowered the commission to adopt statewide comprehensive planning goals and guidelines (14). The program has been nationally recognized for its bold conservation ideals and its goaloriented pursuit of local comprehensive planning set in a framework of state-legislated criteria.
Establishing the coastal goals has proved easier than implementing them, but the planning and coordination process remains a viable approach to making rational land …
Footnotes
Philip L. Jackson, an associate professor of geography, Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, 97331-5506, was formerly a land resource management specialist with the OSU Extension Service and has supervised mitigation field studies for the Oregon Division of State Lands.
- Copyright 1991 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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