Gov. Backs Coastal Protection

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday unveiled a plan to protect coastal waters from pollution and preserve disappearing sea life, making California the first state to begin following recommendations of two national ocean commissions.

The plan, prepared by the governor’s top environmental advisors, recommends that the governor ask President Bush to get behind an array of reforms to curtail polluted runoff, overfishing, coastal development and other threats.

“We need to protect water quality so we can continue to safely swim in coastal waters and to ensure that fish are safe to eat,” states the 52-page plan, called Protecting Our Ocean, California’s Action Strategy.

“We need to manage the ocean ... to support all forms of marine life for their intrinsic value and to ensure that economic activities such as commercial and recreational fishing are sustainable now and long into the future.”

The plan also urges state officials to move forward quickly to implement a law, enacted by the Legislature this year, to establish a Cabinet-level Ocean Protection Council to coordinate ocean cleanups, work to increase the abundance and diversity of fish and support ocean-dependent industries.

The Legislature provided $10 million for the new three-member council that will include Cal-EPA Secretary Terry Tamminen, Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman and the rotating chairman of the State Lands Commission, a position now held by state Controller Steve Westly.

The Schwarzenegger administration also has reinstituted plans to develop a network of marine reserves that will be off-limits to fishing to help depleted populations rebound.

The administration has earmarked $21 million for the development of an ocean currents monitoring system that could help track oil spills. It plans to calculate the economic benefits tied to the ocean and figure out how to maximize them.

“In my administration we reject the notion that we have to choose between protecting the environment and protecting jobs,” Schwarzenegger said. “We will do both.”

Unveiling his latest plan at Point Lobos State Park near Carmel, the governor said he finds lucrative offshore oil development an unacceptable environmental risk. He said he has been nudging the Bush administration to buy back 36 undeveloped offshore oil leases off the coast of Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

Schwarzenegger was flanked by Tamminen and Chrisman, as well as by actor-director and state park Commissioner Clint Eastwood and former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, who was chairman of the private, nonprofit Pew Oceans Commission.

During the last two years, the Pew Oceans Commission and the presidential-appointed U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy have issued gloomy reports on assorted ills plaguing the oceans. So far, the Bush administration has taken no action on the recommendations of either report.

Warner Chabot, vice president of the Ocean Conservancy, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental group, said Schwarzenegger’s plan has few specifics but a strong potential to restore fisheries and curtail pollution over the long haul.

Chabot said, “In the last year, this [California] Legislature and the governor have done more for the ocean than the federal government or all of the other states combined.”

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Times staff writer Joe Mathews contributed to this report.