THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 1, 1995 TAG: 9504010238
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: JACKSONVILLE LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
At a historic meeting of three panels that set environmental policy, Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. stood on the banks of the New River Friday and tried to generate support for a $10.6 million spending package for coastal and water quality programs.
Hunt asked the crowd of about 100 environmental decision-makers to help him promote the spending package to the General Assembly, where the Republican majority has targeted several environmental programs for cuts or elimination.
``This is not going to be easy,'' Hunt said in a 30-minute speech at the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base in Jacksonville. ``It's going to take backbone, intestinal fortitude and . . . guts.''
``But for too long you have taken the expedient path . . . the path of least resistance and that now has to change,'' he said.
Hunt's coastal package includes about $5.7 million in new spending items related to coastal and water quality issues and about $4.9 million for construction projects.
Rather than relying on new environmental regulations and new regulatory programs, Hunt's budget focuses on providing technical help to local governments, farmers and the like to comply with existing rules.
The big winners in Hunt's budget package are programs aimed at preventing nonpoint source pollution - runoff from farms, towns and timber operations - and aimed at boosting enforcement of fisheries rules.
Nonpoint pollution programs are slated to receive more than $1.7 million through Division of Soil and Water, Division of Forest Resources and Division of Environmental Management programs. The Division of Marine Fisheries will receive $2.1 million for new fisheries law enforcement officers, equipment and a new marine patrol boat.
Hunt also called for the Legislature to do more to protect wetlands by establishing a wetlands mitigation bank that receives money from those who are allowed to fill wetlands provided they offset the damage.
And Hunt called for an end to the squabbles between commercial and recreational fishermen.
``We can't continue to bicker and whine about fisheries,'' Hunt said. ``If we don't, we're all going down.''
The coastal budget requests are part of Hunt's $10.1 billion package of general fund spending items for 1995-96 and another $10.1 billion general fund budget request for 1995-97 that also includes $434 million in tax cuts over the next two years.
Under Hunt's budget proposal, the Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources is slated to lose 99 staff members, but is scheduled to gain 31 staff members through new programs.
``There is a real possibility that the progress we've made over the last decades will be rolled back,'' he said. ``I am hearing things daily that disturb me deeply.''
But even as Hunt promoted the new spending proposals, DEHNR's budget is coming under scrutiny by state lawmakers who have been asked to find abut $15 million in cuts in existing natural and economic resource programs before moving on to new program and construction requests.
The Joint Appropriations Subcommittee on Natural and Economic Resources has already identified the entire Division of Marine Fisheries budget - including the agency's $1 million fisheries grant program and a crab research laboratory - and the entire Office of Environmental Education for possible elimination. by CNB