Scuba Diving club,
Southern California
Environmentalists
Weigh Buying Ocean Land
By
JIM WASSERMAN, Associated Press Writer
SACRAMENTO,
Calif. - Environmentalists who successfully tapped taxpayer money to buy
thousands of acres of California coastline to stop development are now
targeting the Pacific Ocean, with a plan to curb human activity by buying
boats, fishing permits and possibly underwater land.
The idea is provoking a renewed struggle
between some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful environmental groups
and California fishermen who fear they gradually will be booted off the ocean
they prowl for recreation and profit.
California voters could be pulled into the
fight this November.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (news
- web
sites) has taken no position on proposals that ask voters to steer state
bond money to environmentalists' ocean wish lists — and also create a
Cabinet-level Ocean Protection Council within state government.
The proposals, sponsored by the New
York-based Natural Resources Defense Council and Washington, D.C.-based Oceans
Conservancy, would represent the state's first major response to a Pew Oceans
Commission report released last summer detailing the growing threat to the
world's oceans from population growth and overfishing. They also represent a
possible funding hike for ocean projects in a coastal state beset by cutbacks.
"The oceans are a public trust that
bring billions for economic benefits, yet we keep the Department of Fish and
Game on a starvation diet," said Karen Garrison, co-director of the NRDC's
Ocean Initiative.
The 18-member Pew commission, a $5.5
million project of Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts, recommends both a
Cabinet-level ocean council and placing more areas of the ocean off limits to
human and commercial activity.
"If we're going to reverse the trends
that are happening right now with coastal development, water pollution,
overexploitation of fishing and climate change, we need a lot more tools than
we have now," said Chuck Cook, director of the California Coastal Marine
Program for the Arlington, Va.-based Nature Conservancy.
Cook and others are seeking bond money to
buy fishing boats and licenses that range from $150 to $150,000 each, and more
for ocean mapping, remote vehicles with video cameras and scuba diving research
time.
Other possibilities include leasing
underwater land containing prime fish habitat and pilot projects to put more
large ocean areas off limits to fishing and other human activity. In theory,
the money could even buy oil leases within the state's three-mile offshore
waters.
The target is money available under
Proposition 50, the $3.44 billion bond measure that California voters passed in
November 2002 to protect the state's coastlines and wetlands and restore its
estuaries, bays and coastal waters. Supporters, including groups that financed
and put Proposition 50 on the ballot two years ago, want now to expand the bond
measure's mission.
To enact the proposals, the Senate and
Assembly would have to approve a new use for the bond money by June 25, a
legislative deadline that is flexible. California voters then would have to do
the same in November.
If approved, a new Ocean Protection
Council of legislators and key agency directors would help decide where to spend
an amount of money that is so far unspecified.
Authored by one of the Legislature's most
powerful members, Sen. John Burton, D-San Francisco, the bills cleared the
Senate's key Natural Resources and Wildlife Committee on March 23, and are
scheduled before the Senate Appropriations Committee on April 19.
Opponents, including a wide variety of
fishing groups and oil companies, still hope tight legislative deadlines will
sink the bills, at least this year.
Recreational fishermen are especially
hostile, believing the environmental agenda is to "lock up" more of
the ocean and push them out of the state's regulatory process.
"It's like we don't have any
representation," said Ron Aliotti, a Monterey fisherman and owner of the
34-foot fishing boat, the Silver Streak. "They want to keep it all
pristine, just like God made it."
Randy Fry, government affairs director for
the 6,000-member Pacifica-based Coastside Fishing Club, said fishermen believe
"corporate environmental groups" are maneuvering around California's
Department of Fish and Game and the fishing industry to impose restrictive
"ocean zoning" and new no-fishing zones in state-controlled waters.
"Their No. 1 agenda is a network of
marine reserves along the coast," said Fry, a contention Cook denies.
Fry was also critical of plans to buy
fishing boats with Proposition 50 money, describing similar federal buyouts in
recent years as "a welfare system for the commercial fishermen." He
said several who took buyouts are back in business.
But Aliotti's cousin Rob in Monterey, who
owns the 46-foot Alecia Dawn, expressed frustration with dwindling catches and
increased regulations, saying, "Total it all up, write me a check and I'm
through. I'll go buy me something on shore."
On the Net:
SB1318 and SB1319: http://www.legislature.ca.gov
Pew Oceans Commission report: http://www.pewoceans.org
National Commission on Ocean Policy: http://www.oceancommission.gov
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Posted April 4, 2004