Oregon Coastal Management Program (OCMP) provides the public the opportunity to comment on federal actions, federal permits/licenses, and during planning efforts for ocean, estuarine, and shoreland resources.
The program also conducts outreach to stakeholders via a wide variety of low-traffic listservs. If you would like to stay informed via email notifications, please click on the listserv of interest to sign up:
Comment opportunities below are organized by category. There may be opportunities to comment on related topics/processes that are managed by other state agencies. To comment on these opportunities, please visit the relevant web pages of our
state program partners.
2026-2030 Program Enhancement Assessment and Strategy
The OCMP is currently developing its 2026-2030 Program Enhancement Assessment and Strategy. The program received updated guidance from its federal funders – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Monday, February 10, 2025. As a result, OCMP needs to revise the draft developed between October 2024 and January 2025. Therefore, the public comment period is now postponed so that the OCMP can update the document using the new guidance from NOAA. An updated timeline for when the draft will be republished and re-opened for public comment will be posted once it is finalized. Apologies for any confusion.
More information about the Program Enhancement Assessment and Strategy, including a link to the OCMP’s 2021-2025 Assessment and Strategy, can be found below.
What is the OCMP Five-Year Assessment and Strategy?
Every five years, states and U.S. territories with coastal zone management programs are encouraged to assess certain topic areas and identify priority needs and improvement opportunities. States and territories, including Oregon, work with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Office for Coastal Management to develop multi-year improvement strategies that focus on one or more of nine program enhancement priorities established by NOAA. The OCMP has selected to focus on wetlands, coastal hazards, and ocean resources in this 2026-2030 planning horizon.
Program Enhancement priorities as identified in the Assessment and Strategy supplement the overall goals of the OCMP, which are broader and more comprehensive. Federal law and regulation strictly define Program Enhancement activities. Therefore, the strategies contained in the document should not be considered the sole priorities of the OCMP, but rather the priorities that fit within the constraints of NOAA's Program Enhancement requirements and the OCMP's organizational capacity to implement them.
2021-2025 Strategy
The OCMP is currently working under the 2021-2025 Program
Enhancement Assessment and Strategy, which runs through June 30,
2026.
Enhancement projects
The OCMP pursues a number of projects designed to address information gaps and enhance coastal zone management practices across the Oregon coast. When a state or territory has an approved Enhancement Strategy, they become eligible for competitive and non-competitive federal grants. This funding is critical for augmenting a state's coastal zone management activities. The OCMP has utilized these funds in several ways throughout the years, including to fund updates to Oregon's Territorial Sea Plan, to support local comprehensive planning updates to address coastal hazards, and to update and serve new datasets describing the ecological, biological, and physical components of Oregon's estuaries, beaches and dunes, and ocean.