be accepted as compliance with similar or parallel requirements of these regulations." (Emphasis supplied.)

It is impossible to divine from these regulations, which expressly contemplate coincident compliance with state law as well as with federal law, an intention to pre-empt all state regulation of unpatented mining claims in national forests. Neither Granite Rock nor the United States contends that these Forest Service regulations are inconsistent with their authorizing statutes.

Given these Forest Service regulations, it is unsurprising that the Forest Service team that prepared the Environmental Assessment of Granite Rock's plan of operation, as well as the Forest Service officer that approved the plan of operation, expected compliance with state as well as federal law. The Los Padres National Forest Environmental Assessment of the Granite Rock plan stated that "Granite Rock is responsible for obtaining any necessary permits which may be required by the California Coastal Commission." App. 46. The Decision Notice and Finding of No Significant Impact issued by the Acting District Ranger accepted Granite Rock's plan of operation with modifications, stating:

"The claimant, in exercising his rights granted by the Mining Law of 1872, shall comply with the regulations of the Departments of Agriculture and Interior. The claimant is further responsible for obtaining any necessary permits required by State and/or county laws, regulations and/or ordinance." Id., at 54.

B

The second argument proposed by Granite Rock is that federal land management statutes demonstrate a legislative intent to limit States to a purely advisory role in federal land management decisions, and that the Coastal Commission permit requirement is therefore pre-empted as an impermissible state land use regulation.

In 1976 two pieces of legislation were passed that called for the development of federal land use management plans affecting unpatented mining claims in national forests. Under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA), 90 Stat. 2744, 43 U. S. C. §1701 et seq. (1982 ed. and Supp. III), the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management is responsible for managing the mineral resources on federal forest lands; under the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), 90 Stat. 2949, 16 U. S. C. §§ 1600-1614 (1982 ed. and Supp. III), the Forest Service under the Secretary of Agriculture is responsible for the management of the surface impacts of mining on federal forest lands. Granite Rock, as well as the Solicitor General, point to aspects of these statutes indicating a legislative intent to limit States to an advisory role in federal land management decisions. For example, the NFMA directs the Secretary of Agriculture to "develop, maintain, and, as appropriate, revise land and resource management plans for units of the National Forest System, coordinated with the land and resource management planning processes of State and local governments and other Federal agencies," 16 U. S. C. § 1604(a). The FLPMA directs that land use plans developed by the Secretary of the Interior "shall be consistent with State and local plans to the maximum extent [the Secretary] finds consistent with Federal law," and calls for the Secretary, "to the extent he finds practical," to keep apprised of state land use plans, and to "assist in resolving, to the extent practical, inconsistencies between Federal and non-Federal Government plans." 43 U. S. C. § 1712(c)(9).

For purposes of this discussion and without deciding this issue, we may assume that the combination of the NFMA and the FLPMA pre-empts the extension of state land use plans onto unpatented mining claims in national forest lands. The Coastal Commission' asserts that it will use permit con

'Although the California Coastal Act requires local governments to adopt Local Coastal Programs, which include a land use plan and zoning

ditions to impose environmental regulation. See Cal. Pub. Res. Code Ann. §30233 (West 1986) (quality of coastal waters); § 30253(2) (erosion); § 30253(3) (air pollution); § 30240(b) (impact on environmentally sensitive habitat areas).

While the CCA gives land use as well as environmental regulatory authority to the Coastal Commission, the state statute also gives the Coastal Commission the ability to limit the requirements it will place on the permit. The CCA declares that the Coastal Commission will "provide maximum state involvement in federal activities allowable under federal law or regulations . . . .' Cal. Pub. Res. Code Ann. §30004 (West 1986). Since the state statute does not detail exactly what state standards will and will not apply in connection with various federal activities, the statute must be understood to allow the Coastal Commission to limit the regulations it will impose in those circumstances. In the present case, the Coastal Commission has consistently maintained that it does not seek to prohibit mining of the unpatented claim on national forest land. See 768 F. 2d, at 1080 ("The Coastal Commission also argues that the Mining Act does not preempt state environmental regulation of federal land unless the regulation prohibits mining altogether. . .") (emphasis supplied); 590 F. Supp., at 1373 ("The [Coastal Commission] seeks not to prohibit or 'veto,' but to regulate [Granite Rock's] mining activity in accordance with the detailed requirements of the CCA. . . . There is no reason to find that the [Coastal Commission] will apply the CCA's regulations so as to deprive [Granite Rock] of its rights under the Mining Act"); Defendants' Memorandum of Points ordinance, see Cal. Pub. Res. Code Ann. §§ 30500, 30512, 30513 (West 1986), no Local Coastal Program permit requirement is involved in this case. The permit at issue in this litigation is issued by the Coastal Commission directly. §§ 30600(a), (c); Tr. of Oral Arg. 52 (“We're dealing with the second type of permitting, which is by the Coastal Commission itself, not a local government. . . . [T]he Coastal Commission issues permits based upon compliance with the environmental criteria in the Coastal Act itself").

...

and Authorities in Opposition to Plaintiff's Motion for Summary Judgment in No. C-83-5137 (ND Cal.), pp. 41-42. ("Despite Granite Rock's characterization of Coastal Act regulation as a 'veto' or ban of mining, Granite Rock has not applied for any coastal permit, and the State. . . has not indicated that it would in fact ban such activity. ... [T]he question presented is merely whether the state can regulate uses rather than prohibit them. Put another way, the state is not seeking to determine basic uses of federal land: rather it is seeking to regulate a given mining use so that it is carried out in a more environmentally sensitive and resource-protective fashion").

The line between environmental regulation and land use planning will not always be bright; for example, one may hypothesize a state environmental regulation so severe that a particular land use would become commercially impracticable. However, the core activity described by each phrase is undoubtedly different. Land use planning in essence chooses particular uses for the land; environmental regulation, at its core, does not mandate particular uses of the land but requires only that, however the land is used, damage to the environment is kept within prescribed limits. Congress has indicated its understanding of land use planning and environmental regulation as distinct activities. As noted above, 43 U. S. C. §1712(c)(9) requires that the Secretary of the Interior's land use plans be consistent with state plans only "to the extent he finds practical." The immediately preceding subsection, however, requires that the Secretary's land use plans "provide for compliance with applicable pollution control laws, including State and Federal air, water, noise, or other pollution standards or implementation plans." § 1712(c)(8). Congress has also illustrated its understanding of land use planning and environmental regulation as distinct activities by delegating the authority to regulate these activities to different agencies. The stated purpose of part 228, subpart A of the Forest Service regulations, 36 CFR § 228.1

(1986), is to "set forth rules and procedures" through which mining on unpatented claims in national forests "shall be conducted so as to minimize adverse environmental impacts on National Forest System surface resources." The next sentence of the subsection, however, declares that "[i]t is not the purpose of these regulations to provide for the management of mineral resources; the responsibility for managing such resources is in the Secretary of the Interior." Congress clearly envisioned that although environmental regulation and land use planning may hypothetically overlap in some instances, these two types of activity would in most cases be capable of differentiation. Considering the legislative understanding of environmental regulation and land use planning as distinct activities, it would be anomalous to maintain that Congress intended any state environmental regulation of unpatented mining claims in national forests to be per se pre-empted as an impermissible exercise of state land use planning. Congress' treatment of environmental regulation and land use planning as generally distinguishable calls for this Court to treat them as distinct, until an actual overlap between the two is demonstrated in a particular case.

Granite Rock suggests that the Coastal Commission's true purpose in enforcing a permit requirement is to prohibit Granite Rock's mining entirely. By choosing to seek injunctive and declaratory relief against the permit requirement before discovering what conditions the Coastal Commission would have placed on the permit, Granite Rock has lost the possibility of making this argument in this litigation. Granite Rock's case must stand or fall on the question whether any possible set of conditions attached to the Coastal Commission's permit requirement would be pre-empted. As noted in the previous section, the Forest Service regulations do not indicate a federal intent to pre-empt all state environmental regulation of unpatented mining claims in national forests. Whether or not state land use planning over unpatented mining claims in national forests is pre-empted, the Coastal Com