More than 30 federal lawmakers from California are protesting a formal government review of the state’s management of its coastal development, arguing that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is simply removing local control in order to advance the president’s policy preferences.
“This extraordinary federal review which singles out California is based upon a thinly veiled and non-evidential argument. It is an attempt to curb our state’s federally approved authority to evaluate offshore energy, infrastructure, and commercial activities,” the lawmakers stated in a 21 August letter to NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs. “This unprecedented review threatens to disrupt 48 years of successful coordination between the state of California and the federal government to protect California’s coast.”
In May, the Trump administration launched a formal review of California’s use of the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA), which authorizes the state to review and reject infrastructure and commercial activity along its coastline. California has long used the CZMA to instate local control of coastal development.
According to the government, however, California’s stewardship of coastal development has stymied economic development, especially as it comes to building out space-related infrastructure. A 2025 federal review of the commercial space industry found that of the states with major rocket launch activities, only California’s management under the CZMA raised concerns. Specifically, the federal government took issue with California’s objections to the U.S. Air Force’s desire to build out a spaceport in California.
“America must continue to lead in innovation, space exploration, and economic strength,” U.S. Secretary of Treasury Howard Lutnick said in a release. “Obstructionist policies that delay critical national infrastructure in the name of environmental extremism are unacceptable. NOAA will conduct its reviews consistent with the plain text of the CZMA, ensuring states give proper weight to economic development and the nation’s priorities.”
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the federal CZMA review will focus on whether California’s management has discouraged “compatible economic development, federal priorities related to spaceport infrastructure, offshore oil production, pipeline maintenance, desalination projects, undersea cables, and other key priorities of national importance.”
In their letter, the federal lawmakers reject Lutnick’s claim that California has obstructed spaceport development – or any other economic development.
“The record of California’s regulatory decisions over the past few decades shows the state disapproved of only one desalination project out of several dozen, objected to just two space launch activities out of 135, and disapproved of exactly zero undersea cable and pipeline repair and maintenance projects. In fact, of the 3,700 projects the California Coastal Commission has reviewed under the CZMA since 1978, fully 96 percent of them have been approved by the Commission either outright or with environmentally beneficial modifications that advanced the Act’s twin goals of preservation and development. This reality plainly contradicts Secretary Lutnick’s allegation of obstructionism,” the lawmakers note in their letter.
In both cases where California objected to space launch activities, the federal government ultimately moved forward anyways, making those objections moot.
