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This article challenges the assertion that increased federal leverage would successfully coalesce land and water planning throughout the country. Federalism will have the opposite effect, exacerbating tensions between competing management authorities and increasing the number of disparate policies to which local governments must adhere, as examples illustrate. Alternatively, we argue for enforcement of existing tools and creation of an institutional framework loosely modeled on federal–state–local partnership in transportation metropolitan planning organizations. While land use and water planning merit closer coordination, a more flexible institutional arrangement is preferable to expanded federal authority under the Clean Water Act.

With population growth in Southeastern coastal areas, and impending threats of both gradual and punctuated hazards from climate change, this article examines the effectiveness of one of the most stringent and celebrated state coastal management laws; namely, South Carolina's Beachfront Management Act of 1988 (BMA). The BMA's efficacy is gauged using a comprehensive mixed methodology, including: mandate assessment; plan quality evaluation; external conditions for plan creation and implementation; and post-regulatory conformance-based plan implementation assessment in two barrier island communities, the Towns of Hilton Head Island and Pawleys Island. This unique synthesis of policy analysis approaches reveals that a substantial volume of development has circumvented the BMA's policies, particularly the setback lines based on a forty-year erosion record, and the retreat objective. It exposes a classic challenge of minimal state implementation, prompted by timidity from the specter of Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, and a need for improved institutional coordination.

Context With underrepresentation of habitats in publicly protected areas, attention has focused on the function of alternative land conservation mechanisms. Private conservation easements (CEs) have proliferated in the United States, yet assessing landscape-level function is confounded by varying extent, resolution, and temporal scale. Objectives We developed and tested an assessment tool to evaluate interacting spatial, social, and environmental attributes of easements relative to the degree of human modification (HM). We hypothesized that on both private and public conservation properties HM would be lower than on non-conserved parcels, and that for fine-scale features (most CEs), the level of HM would be driven by the variables used to create the coarser scale HM measure. Methods Variation in HM between private, public, and non-conserved was tested via pairwise parcel sampling. Composition was evaluated using multiple geographic bounds and edge characteristics. We assessed both environmental and social predictors using multinomial logistic regression. Results Privately conserved lands did not differ significantly from non-conserved lands. Publicly conserved lands had lower HM than both privately conserved and non-conserved lands. Edge contrast was similar between private and matched non-conserved patches. The level of HM was not driven by distance to roads, or by elevation in this mixed-use setting.