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Supp. 1359 (CD Cal. 1981). The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed that portion of the District Court judgment that required a consistency determination before the sale. California v. Watt, 683 F. 2d 1253 (1982). We granted certiorari, 461 U. S. 925 (1983), and we now

reverse.

III

Whether the sale of leases on the OCS is an activity "directly affecting" the coastal zone is not self-evident. As

"The Court of Appeals went on to rule that the Federal Government, not the State, makes the final determination as to whether a federal activity is consistent "to the maximum extent practicable" with the state management program. In view of our conclusion that a lease sale is not subject to §307(c)(1)'s consistency review requirements, we need not decide who holds final authority to determine when sufficient consistency has been achieved.

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the Department of Commerce is the federal agency charged with administering CZMA. See 16 U. S. C. § 1463 (1982 ed). Under normal circumstances NOAA's understanding of the meaning of CZMA § 307(c)(1) would be entitled to deference by the courts. But in construing § 307(c)(1) the agency has walked a path of such tortured vacillation and indecision that no help is to be gained in that quarter.

In 1977, NOAA expressly declined to take a position on the applicability of § 307(c)(1) to the leasing process. See 42 Fed. Reg. 43591-43592 (1977). In 1978, NOAA issued regulations purporting to clarify § 307(c)(1), but the agency expressly acknowledged that the applicability of the section to lease sales was "still under consideration." 43 Fed. Reg. 10512 (1978). Interior nevertheless objected to the new verbal formulation of “directly affecting" that NOAA had proposed, and the interdepartmental dispute was submitted to the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). OLC rejected crucial portions of NOAA's regulations as inconsistent with the statutory language, and those portions were withdrawn by NOAA. App. 45-46; 44 Fed. Reg. 37142 (1979). In 1980 NOAA noted its view that OCS sales trigger consistency review requirements in a letter from NOAA to State Coastal Management Program Directors (Apr. 9, 1980). NOAA later renewed its attempt to arrive at a general definition of "directly affecting." Two weeks after the instant litigation commenced, NOAA took the position that lease sales do not directly affect the coastal zone. 46 Fed. Reg. 26660 (1981). But shortly after the

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already noted, OCS leases involve submerged lands outside the coastal zone, and as we shall discuss, an OCS lease authorizes the holder to engage only in preliminary exploration; further administrative approval is required before full exploration or development may begin. Both sides concede that the preliminary exploration itself has no significant effect on the coastal zone. Both also agree that a lease sale is one (not the first, see infra, at 337) in a series of decisions that may culminate in activities directly affecting that zone.

A

We are urged to focus first on the plain language of §307(c)(1). Interior contends that "directly affecting" means "[h]av[ing] a [d]irect, [i]dentifiable [i]mpact on [t]he [c]oastal [z]one." Brief for Federal Petitioners 20. Respondents insist that the phrase means "[i]nitiat[ing] a [s]eries of [e]vents of [cloastal [m]anagement [c]onsequence." Brief for Respondent State of California et al. 10. But CZMA nowhere defines or explains which federal activities should be viewed as "directly affecting" the coastal zone, and the alternative verbal formulations proposed by the parties, both of which are superficially plausible, find no support in the Act itself. We turn therefore to the legislative history. A fairly detailed review is necessary, but that review persuades us that

8

regulation was published in final form, id., at 35253, the House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries exercised a "legislative veto," see 16 U. S. C. § 1463a (1982 ed.), and the agency withdrew its regulation. 47 Fed. Reg. 4231 (1982).

"This formulation finds support in 1980 House and Senate Reports. H. R. Rep. No. 96-1012, p. 34; S. Rep. No. 96-783, p. 11. For reasons explained in n. 15, infra, we do not believe these Committee views, articulated many years after CZMA's passage, are reliable guides to the intent of the full Congress acting in 1972.

As discussed infra, at 331-341, other sections of CZMA, as well as related provisions in the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953, have been significantly amended since 1972. But § 307(c)(1) has not been changed since its enactment. Our decision must therefore turn principally on the language of § 307(c)(1) and the legislative history of the original, 1972 CZMA.

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Congress did not intend OCS lease sales to fall within the ambit of CZMA §307(c)(1).

In the CZMA bills first passed by the House and Senate, §307(c)(1)'s consistency requirements extended only to federal activities “in” the coastal zone. The "directly affecting" standard appeared nowhere in §307(c)(1)'s immediate antecedents. It was the House-Senate Conference Committee that replaced "in the coastal zone" with "directly affecting the coastal zone." Both Chambers then passed the Conference bill without discussing or even mentioning the change.

At first sight, the Conference's adoption of "directly affecting" appears to be a surprising, unexplained, and subsequently unnoticed expansion in the scope of § 307(c)(1), going beyond what was required by either of the versions of §307(c)(1) sent to the Conference. But a much more plausible explanation for the change is available.

The explanation lies in the two different definitions of the "coastal zone." The bill the Senate sent to the Conference defined the coastal zone to exclude "lands the use of which is by law subject solely to the discretion of or which is held in trust by the Federal Government, its officers or agents."

'S. 3507, 92d Cong., 2d Sess., § 304(a) (1972), reprinted at 118 Cong. Rec. 14188 (1972). The Senate's definition is now codified (with subsequent minor amendments) in 16 U. S. C. § 1453(1) (1982 ed.).

There was language in an earlier Senate Report (not the final CZMA Senate Report) urging that federal activities determined to have a “functional interrelationship" with the coastal zone "should" be administered consistently with approved state management programs. S. Rep. No. 92-526, pp. 20, 30 (1971). Nine years later a House Report reiterated the "functional interrelationship" standard. H. R. Rep. No. 96-1012, p. 34 (1980). But the Senate Report's language was purely precatory. It used "should," rather than the "shall" that actually appears in § 307(c)(1), and more importantly, was written in connection with a Senate bill that would have entirely exempted activities on all federal lands from § 307(c)(1)'s mandate. It is fanciful to suggest that an early Senate Report should be read as endorsing an expansive interpretation of § 307(c)(1)'s "directly affecting" language when the Senate bill that the Report accompanied did not include the relevant phrase and indisputably did not reach OCS lease sales.

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This exclusion would reach federal parks, military installations, Indian reservations, and other federal lands that would lie within the coastal zone but for the fact of federal ownership. Under the Senate bill, activities on these lands would thus have been entirely exempt from compliance with state management plans. By contrast, the House bill's definition of "coastal zone" included lands under federal jurisdiction; thus federal activities on those lands were to be fully subject to $307(c)(1)'s consistency requirement. Under both bills, however, submerged lands on the OCS were entirely excluded from the coastal zone, and federal agency activities in those areas thus were exempt from §307(c)(1)'s consistency requirement.

Against this background, the Conference Committee's change in § 307(c)(1) has all the markings of a simple compromise. The Conference accepted the Senate's narrower definition of the "coastal zone," but then expanded § 307(c)(1) to cover activities on federal lands not "in" but nevertheless "directly affecting" the zone. By all appearances, the intent was to reach at least some activities conducted in those federal enclaves excluded from the Senate's definition of the "coastal zone."

Though cryptic, the Conference Report's reference to the change in §307(c)(1) fully supports this explanation. "The Conferees . . . adopted the Senate language . . . which made it clear that Federal lands are not included within a state's coastal zone. As to the use of such lands which would affect a state's coastal zone, the provisions of section 307(c) would apply." H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 92–1544, p. 12 (1972) (emphasis added). In the entire Conference Report, this is the only mention of the definition of the coastal zone chosen by the Conference, and the only hint of an explanation for the change in § 307(c)(1). The "directly affecting" language was not deemed worthy of note by any Member of Congress in the subsequent floor debates. 10 The implication seems clear:

10 On the other hand, in comments on the floor made before the House acted on the post-Conference bill, Congressman Mosher stated: "The final

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"directly affecting" was used to strike a balance between two definitions of the "coastal zone." The legislative history thus strongly suggests that OCS leasing, covered by neither the House nor the Senate version of § 307(c)(1), was also intended to be outside the coverage of the Conference's compromise. Nonetheless, the literal language of § 307(c)(1), read without reference to its history, is sufficiently imprecise to leave open the possibility that some types of federal activities conducted on the OCS could fall within §307(c)(1)'s ambit. We need not, however, decide whether any OCS activities other than oil and gas leasing might be covered by $307(c)(1), because further investigation reveals that in any event Congress expressly intended to remove the control of OCS resources from CZMA's scope.

B

If §307(c)(1) and its history standing alone are less than crystalline, the history of other sections of the original CZMA bills impels a narrow reading of that clause. Every time it faced the issue in the CZMA debates, Congress deliberately and systematically insisted that no part of CZMA was to reach beyond the 3-mile territorial limit.

There are, first, repeated statements in the House and Senate floor debates that CZMA is concerned only with activities on land or in the territorial sea, not on the OCS, and that the allocation of state and federal jurisdiction over the coastal zone and the OCS was not to be changed in any way." But

version in no way affects the jurisdictional responsibilities of... the Department of the Interior in regard to the administration of Federal lands, since the conferees have specifically eliminated those land areas from the definition of coastal zone." 118 Cong. Rec. 35548 (1972).

11

See, e. g., id., at 14180 ("This bill covers the territorial seas; it does not cover the Outer Continental Shelf") (remark of Sen. Stevens); id., at 14184 (facilities in the "contiguous zone" "would be outside the jurisdiction of the neighboring States") (remark of Sen. Boggs); ibid. ("this bill attempts to deal with the Territorial Sea, not the Outer Continental Shelf”) (remark of Sen. Moss); id., at 14185 ("we wanted to make certain that Federal

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