OAR 660-037-0020
Policy
(1)
The Land Conservation and Development Commission (LCDC) recognizes that since the early 1980s, when comprehensive estuary management plans were acknowledged by LCDC, significant economic changes experienced in coastal communities have affected the demands for shorelands. During this period, most of the shorelands designated for water-dependent development in local estuary plans have remained vacant. As a result of these economic changes, there have been increased pressures to develop the vacant or underdeveloped water-dependent lands for nonwater-dependent uses.(2)
The reasons to protect certain shorelands for water-dependent uses are both economic and environmental. Economically, shoreland sites for water-dependent development are a finite economic resource that usually need protection from prevailing real estate market forces. By its very nature, water-dependent development can occur only in shoreland areas and only in certain shorelands with suitable characteristics relating to water access, land transportation and infrastructure, and surrounding land use compatibility. Once these suitable sites are lost to nonwater-dependent uses, they are very difficult and expensive to recover, if at all. Environmentally, providing “suitable” areas for water-dependent development means less economic and political pressure to accommodate future development in environmentally sensitive areas such as wetlands, marshes, and biologically productive shallow subtidal areas.(3)
As a matter of state policy, it is not desirable to allow these scarce and non-renewable resources of the marine economy to be irretrievably committed to, or otherwise significantly impaired by, nonindustrial or nonwater-dependent types of development which enjoy a far greater range of locational options.
Source:
Rule 660-037-0020 — Policy, https://secure.sos.state.or.us/oard/view.action?ruleNumber=660-037-0020.