The Marine Resources Program of the Coastal Plains Regional Commission
Authors: McCabe Joseph M. 
Published: October 2008

The Coastal Plains Regional commission, chartered on July 29, 1967, is a multi-state regional action planning commission whose purpose is to foster and induce orderly, accelerated economic growth in the Coastal Plains of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia

The Commission is a Federal-State partnership. It was established pursuant to Title V, Public Wo.rks and Economic Development Act of 1965. The membership of the Commission is composed of a Federal Cochairman, appointed by the President, and the Governors of the respective states, one of whom is State Cochairman.

This paper explains the rational of the regional approach to economic development planning. It describes the Commission's goal and the progress which it has made in its six target areas: Transportation, Agriculture, Tourism, Training, Industrial Development, and Marine Resources. This paper describes in some detail the Marine Resources Program which has been developed by the Commission staff and the Marine Resources Advisory Committee. This paper explores briefly each sub-area in the program: Recreation, Sports fishing, Commercial fishing, Minerals and Chemicals, Transportation, Research and Developm.ent, and Land and Water Use Planning. The balance of this paper focuses on those activities of the Commission which relate to offshore mining.

A Nation of Regions

In 1965, the Joint Economic Committee of the U. S. Congress issued a report, stating: "Although economic expansion benefits most of the Nation by providing m.ore income and jobs,. it passes by some regions of the country. "

In 1966, President Johnson warned "The cities will never solve their problems unless we solve the problems of the towns and smaller areas."

In 1967, the Republican Coordinating Committee's Task Force on Job Opportunities stated: "Our rural areas are being depleted of people?. What becom.es of these people? They move into our great cities ... By creating a kind of urban crush they create a problem in the cities to which they go. By depopulating the countryside, they create a problem in the rural areas from which they come.

That same year, while most Americans were nervously watched looting, shooting, and burning in these great cities, the President's National Advisory Committee on Rural Poverty reminded us that "The heavy migration from rural America to the blighted areas of our major cities clearly shows how bad economic and social conditions are in rural areas?. Rural poverty is so widespread, and so acute, as to be a national disgrace, and its consequences have swept into our cities violently.

"Contrary to popular impression, all the rural poor do not live on farms, nor are all of them Negros. Most live in small towns and villages. Only one in four of these rural families lives on a farm. And of the 14 million rural poor, 11 million are white."

As different interested groups helped Congress focus on the problems of hunger, malnutrition, substandard housing, cronic ill health, functional illiteracy, inadequate training, and hollow lives, Federal programs began to proliferate. Most of them attacked these symptoms of the basic deficiencies in the nation" economic structure.