Coastal Protection Group Turns 25!!

Washington, DC: Coast Alliance Celebrates 25 Years of Work to Protect Our Nation's Coasts

(PRWEB) January 31, 2004 --Twenty-five years ago today, the "Coast Alliance" :http://www.coastalliance.org was founded in response to growing concerns about the deterioration of coastal resources in the United States. The Alliance was initially comprised of representatives of environmental groups; fishing interests, educators, and concerned coastal community leaders and citizens. Its formation was strongly encouraged by national and regional conservation organizations to highlight and give greater public focus to coastal problems.

As one of its first efforts, the Alliance successfully appealed to President Jimmy Carter to declare 1980 *The Year of the Coast*. This resulted in a major public awareness campaign generating mass media, policy discussions, and public events all along the nation's coasts. This momentum eventually led to enactment of reforms strengthening the nation's Coastal Zone Management program, the premiere federal program governing use of our coastal resources, and establishment of the Coastal Barrier Resources System, a free-market inspired classification of private barrier island beaches and wetlands that helps protect them from development.

Over the past two decades, Coast Alliance has established a vital grassroots network of local, regional, and national coastal activists as well as educators, scientists and coastal residents committed to coastal protection and restoration. The organization has served as a crucial link between local communities and national coastal policy. Time and again, Coast Alliance has united coastal activists through conferences and workshops and given voice to the protection of coastal resources in state and national arenas.

Key activities included protecting our sensitive coastlines from unwise offshore oil and gas drilling; defending and improving the Coastal Zone Management Act & the Coastal Barrier Resources System; playing a lead role in reforming the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP); leading the charge against open ocean dumping of dredged materials; and improving controls on disposal of contaminated sediments, said the organization's "Chairman, Dery Bennett" :mailto:tdillingham@littoralsociety.org, who is also one of the group's original founders.

Over the years, Coast Alliance has published quarterly newsletters on coastal protection, sediments and dredging, and published numerous major reports, such as Coast Alert, And Two if By Sea, Mission Possible, Muddy Waters, and others.

Despite much success over the last quarter of a century, problematic trends on the coast are on the rise. Exploding population growth in coastal communities is crowding out wildlife, out of control land consumption is paving over our coastal areas, and polluted runoff continues to close shellfish beds, cause beach closures, and deplete coastal waters of oxygen. Even so, Coast Alliance leaders believe we are slowly but surely making the changes necessary to keep our coastal areas vital. Director Dawn Hamilton declared "I have faith that over the next several years, people will see what's at stake and work together to restore our coasts to full productivity.

The "Pew Oceans Commission":http://www.pewoceans.org report recently presented us with a very good case for changing the way we humans interact with our beaches, shores, bays, estuaries, coastal wetlands and tidal areas. A report from the "United States Oceans Commission" :http://www.oceancommission.gov is due out soon, and that panel will also provide us with important information about what we must do. We have an unprecedented opportunity right now to make the right choice for our coasts and oceans. I hope each one of you will take it."

Coast Alliance encourages everyone to get involved in the future of our nation's coasts by urging "President Bush" :http://www.whitehouse.gov and "Congress" :http://www.senate.gov to address the issues presented by these two commissions. Our coasts are too important to leave to chance.

"Coast Alliance" :http://www.coastalliance.org is a national non-profit founded in 1979 that links coastal constituencies to build a strong voice united to protect and restore the coasts through research, communication, and citizen action.

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Contact: Dawn Hamilton 202-546-9554