The Finale of the ASBPA/CSO Joint Policy Series: A Discussion of Science and Research Policy | Capitol Beach

Derek Brockbank  0:00  
Welcome to the Capitol beach. My name is Derek brockbank. I am the host of the Capitol beach, the podcast where we talk about policy and how federal coastal policy influences coastal management and shorelines across the country. We are here today talking about the fifth segment of the joint beach and inlet management policy put out by American shore and beach preservation Association and coastal states organization. I am joined for a fifth time with my friends and colleagues at ASBPA and CSO. Tony Pratt, the president of American shore and beach preservation Association, and Rachel Keylon, the Federal Affairs Director with coastal states organization. Really excited to be doing this I hope folks had a chance to listen some of the earlier segments and really excited to be wrapping up with our fifth segment today. We'll be talking about coastal science and research and how that's critical to making important management decisions and how the federal government and state governments play a role in driving coastal science and research But first, a quick word from our sponsors.

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Derek Brockbank  1:54  
Okay, well, thank you to our sponsors of American trolling Podcast Network and the Capitol beach. None of these episodes would be available or doable if we didn't have the sponsorship. So please do check them out if you're working on coastal projects, and the sponsors we have today are irrelevant. Please check those out. Rachel, Tony, thank you so much for joining me. Rachel, why don't you kick this off? This is our fifth policy is about research and science. You know, in a real high level. I mean, this one seems kind of obvious. But why is it important that there is federal policy and federal funding for coastal research and science? How does that actually help coastal management?

Rachel Keylon  2:31  
Yeah, so basically, in this section, ASB EPA and CSO are really recognizing that in order for each and inlet management. And really all of our previously discussed policies to be effective, they must be based on the best available science. So the recommended policies under this section are really focusing on ensuring that we have the right science and data that we're maintaining long term data sets and that science and data is readily made available to help inform wise beach and inlet management, it's really necessary that we have the best science to make make our decisions.

Derek Brockbank  3:09  
Yeah, this one is almost seems silly to almost try to explain why is science important? Well, of course, science is important. How are you gonna make decisions based on reality, if you don't have good science, but it's something that we, you know, need to address, and it's something that the federal government needs to be supportive of. So we have a couple bullets in here, this is probably our shortest we sort of lumped together sort of the need to collect data, the need to do modeling and sort of analyze that data. We talked about mapping, and then the ongoing need to further further science by funding research. So those are sort of the four broad topic areas we include in this in this section. But I wanted to follow up with Rachel, there's one that's a bit more detailed. And it sort of focuses on mapping, we talked about the coordinating and implementing efficiencies across federal state and local beach mapping programs. And then we identify how that can work. But can you talk a little bit about why it's so important to sort of coordinate and implement efficiencies across the multiple jurisdictions that sort of federal state local level on mapping and if, if applicable, other other data analysis?

Rachel Keylon  4:16  
Yeah, great. So this policy seems pretty simple. But it's actually a really big deal. There's just so much data out there to inform mapping. But it's really all over the place and in different agencies and on different platforms and on different scales. This can create several issues, including that people really don't know where to get the data for maps. They don't know how to access it, different entities are investing resources to collect the same mapping data. And then also just it's not at the right scale for what coastal management decision makers need. So as BPA and CSO is really making several recommendations in this area to address these issues. First are really recommending that national and regional data portals have a lot of these maps contain up to date data and comprehensive data sets and layers, mapping layers. So I know this sounds like a no brainer, but often they don't. In particular, many of the data portals have maps, but they don't have a method for downloading the raw data. Or they have map. But then there are all in different tools. So they'll have multiple different tools that have different layers, but then you can't put them on top of each other. So you can't see intersections. And then some of them lack critical information for decision making, such as like the exact coordinates of specific features. So there's a whole bunch of things that are kind of missing in that, that we really need to try and address. Second, we are recommending increased coordination to ensure that federal agencies, states and local communities are not duplicating efforts are expanding efforts in areas that are not really needed. Here, we believe it's critical that federal agencies in particular work with states and local communities to identify what data and mapping tools, they need to ensure that the data and tools that they are that the federal government is developing, are at the right scale to address the on the ground coastal management issues. This really taps into our third recommendation, which is for technical support and funding to support states and local communities to help them develop high resolution models based on fine scale data sets to help them inform their coastal management needs. Really national level data and tools frequently are not targeted enough to be used on this state or local scale. And but then the states and local communities even if they have the data might not have the expertise to develop robust coastal models. So federal investments in this area will help ensure that the states and local communities have the tools they need for wise beach, inland and coastal management.

Derek Brockbank  6:57  
Thanks, Rachel. So we talked a lot about throughout this policy, thread all the policies we put forward, we make recommendations about what the federal government can do, how it can work with the states. Where do you think this is being done? Well, I mean, I think about the digital coast. And certainly, there's improvements that can be made. But it seems like the digital coast is a good step towards bringing all these geospatial data and mapping tools together, starting to work together to create a usable public interface. What do you what's your thought on digital coast? Are there others that you think are doing well, in terms of making mapping accessible?

Rachel Keylon  7:36  
Yeah, so digital coast is really great. There's definitely lots of very good data sets and mapping tools in there, there is a little bit of a challenge with some of it being a little disjointed, but most of it is very, very good. We also have another good federal level tool is the marine cadastre, which I know is definitely fed into with the digital coast partnership. So you know that one has a lot of layers, lots of data that is able to be downloaded, both of them are really great. But there, there is always room for improvement. And we definitely would like to see some improvement in some of these areas. And, and some of them don't have all of the state level data and stuff as well. So we'd like to see a little bit more level, local, state federal level integration on data.

Derek Brockbank  8:28  
I'll also make a little plug for the US coastal research program here, even though they don't focus on mapping, it's really more about original coastal research. It is similarly geared towards trying to bring together the the research community with the coastal management community bring together federal researchers, with local coastal managers to make sure that the research the original research that's being done by academia, the Army Corps, etc, is answering the questions that local coastal managers really need. So I think we're looking at the same kind of thing, whether it's mapping whether it's research, whether it's data acquisition, making sure that the the research data mapping that's being done is usable and presentable and at the level and scale needed by people who are making coastal decisions. So good plug for us coastal research program now. Okay, I'm gonna turn to Tony for the next one. And this is, you know, we sort of went a little bit into the weeds on the the mapping side, taking it back a bit. We also call for the need to use robust data on physical coastal conditions to improve localized lakes sea level, elevation modeling, coastal flooding and storm surge modeling. Other modeling needs to inform beach and inlet management decision making. So this sort of builds on some of the other things we've been talking about. But Tony, you worked in the state of Delaware on coastal management for, you know, decades and have been involved with ASB EPA also for a long, long time, which brings together the you know, the modelers that the engineers, the technical folks with the coastal managers, can you talk about the value that I mean robust data and localized models play for a coastal manager who is trying to make the best decisions for their coastline.

Tony Pratt  10:07  
Yeah, happy to do that Derek um, make, you'll make some great points as to the value of all the research is going on and how its assessed accessible. And that really segues into where frontline managers like my staff and me over the years depended upon updated, most accurate data, we could we could get to look at vulnerabilities to look at at any number of data points. It's just that coastal vulnerability, oftentimes its values and decision making that's wrapped around values of vulnerability versus uses and expectations. In order for us to carry out our work at the frontline manager, position. credibility is extremely important, you know, we're going to stand before a public audience, whether they're elected officials or the people who live in these affected communities, the credibility, we have to believe what we see we have to provide providing the best of science based data and information we possibly can. And at the end of the day, what we're looking at is, is taking it forward for community involvement, Community Investment, and investment at all levels of government and also commit investment by private sector into resolving the problems and taking the challenges head on data is what sells this, at the end of the day, we are looking at constantly have the local county, state or federal funding to implement any number of the programs we talked about here today, over the last few sessions, talking about how we implement any of these corrective actions, whether it's moving away from the coast, whether it's nourishing beaches and rebuilding dunes, studying how we can re stand a future storms and anything requires an investment. And we're competing at every level at the local, the state, the county, the federal level. For other programs just as important. It could be transportation programs, it could be educational programs. So we need to stand in line with well based decisions, well based solutions to the challenges we have that are based on the data we can collect. And there's a tremendous investment within the private sector insurance companies and hotel motel chains, any number of elements that are looking at how vulnerable they are. And the data informs that as well. So it's critically important to everything else we've talked about in the series of presentations.

Derek Brockbank  12:45  
Yeah, I think that's a great point of bringing, bringing together not just the sort of public interest, the public decisions that are being made around this, but private decisions, you mentioned hotel chains, right? They're going to be thinking about where they invest. I mean, a hotel is gonna be building on the coast for maybe 30 years, your home might be built for 50 years. I'd also add in the military. I mean, you look at some of the work that's being done, the Coast Guard would need and the research that's being done by the Navy, you know, some of the core tenants of coastal engineering came out of came out of military needs, too. So really bringing in public, private, military, industrial, there's just so many different facets of the coast, something you hear all the time on ESPN, there's all these different needs, and all of them are based on having good coastal research and data. Well, I wanted to thank the listeners who have made it through all five segments. You guys are policy experts. Now we offer you a honorary Well, I don't think we can offer you an honorary PhD but you know, close enough. You're now experts. Hopefully this also piqued your curiosity to read the ASB pa CSO joint policy on beach and inlet management. If you're just tuning in this final episode, we hope you go back and listen to some of the other policies that we've talked about sediment management, permitting funding development. I think they're all really good conversations. And since this is our final episode, I do want to take my moderators prerogative to ask our panelists, Rachel and Tony, about their favorite coastal spot. We all work really, really hard on the coast and work especially working on policy, you spend a lot of time behind a computer in a boardroom or a conference room. So where do you get out and get rejuvenated? What's your favorite coastline? Tony, I'll start with you. I'm also going to share I hope it's okay with our listeners, that you are a photographer and frankly, some of the most beautiful coastal photos I've ever seen or some of the ones that you've taken. And I know you've taken photographs across the nation, you're from Delaware, but you've had a chance to visit some of the most beautiful beaches, at least in the US, if not the world. So where's your favorite? Where's your favorite coastal spot?

Tony Pratt  14:44  
Well, I'll take up that. That shameless plug you just provided me an opportunity. So Tony pratt.com look me up. You'll see my web my by my photography and also I'm on on Facebook and others, but so You know, I live here in Delaware. I'm from Massachusetts Originally, I have a lot of favorite beaches all over the country. I'm going to name two I'm going to take the liberty name to number one is Fenwick Island State Park in Delaware, which is right north of Ocean City, Maryland and the town of Fenwick. It's beautiful, clean water. It's warm days in the summer, and that's where I kicked back with it with a book and a nap and a lunch and love that, I will say was that I had the chance to go to Oregon last summer, not this past summer, two summers ago, and loved the Oregon coast tremendously. So I'm going to name a very specific beach there. It's called otter point State Park. I'm not going to tell you exactly where it is. Because I don't remember what was closest to us. But otter point State Park, it's a bit of a hike down from the parking area down a very steep cliff front. Spectacular, beautiful, lovely area. The West Coast experience and the East Coast experience my favorites.

Derek Brockbank  15:58  
Lovely. Thank you so much, Tony. Rachel, how about you? Where's your Where's your favorite coastal spot? Where do you go to get rejuvenated and ready to keep fighting the fight in the halls of Congress and the administration? Yeah, so

Rachel Keylon  16:09  
I am on the East Coast currently. So when I like to get out from here, I definitely like to hit the Delaware beaches as well. So Bethany Rehoboth Dewey beach, but really, I actually am from Seattle, and I lived in on the Puget Sound and social is a beach that's there that just has the most amazing sunsets looking out over the Olympic Peninsula. It you see the sailboats out, it's just gorgeous, and I miss being there all the time. You can do bonfires on the beach, etc. So that that would be my favorite West Coast spot.

Derek Brockbank  16:49  
Fantastic to two plugs for Delaware and the Pacific Northwest. We've had folks say all over the country, but certainly those in DC I know get to Delaware a lot because it's nearby and and the Pacific Northwest is incomparable. So thank you, Tony. Thank you, Rachel. And thank you to all our listeners. I hope you learned something. I hope you found this fascinating and look forward to bring you more capital beaches in the future. Thanks all.

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