Offshore Federalism: Evolving Federal-State Relations in Offshore Oil and Gas Development

While this Comment was in proofs, the Supreme Court's opinion in Secretary of the Interior v. California, 52 U.S. L. W 4063 (1984), was announced, reversing the Ninth Circuit decision discussed in the Comment.Relying on a debatable interpretation of the Coastal Zone Management Act's original legislative history and the 1978 amendments to the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, and explicity declining to consider later expressions of Congress' intent, Justice O'Connor, writing for afive vote majority, held that Outer Continental Shelf oil lease sales do not directly affect adjoining states' coastal zones.Thus, the Secretary of the Interior need not determine whether the sales are consistent with federally approved state coastal management plans.The opinion went on to imply that no federal activity landward or seaward of the coastal zone may ever directly affect it, a much narrower interpretation of "directly affecting" than even the Interior Department had sought.Justice Stevens, joined by Justices Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun, vocierously dissented The dissent's reading of the legislative history is similar to the analysis developed in the Comment.The bulk of the Comment discusses the standard of consistency that federal activities directly affecting a state's coastal zone must meet, that of "consisten [cy] to the maximum extent practicable" with state coastal plans.The author proposes a definition of the standard that difers from the rather loose definition proposed in dicta by the Ninth Circuit.Since the Supreme Court held that OCS lease sales do not directly affect the coastal zone and hence did not reach the Ninth Circuit's consistency dicta,