THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 22, 1995 TAG: 9504220302
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
On this greenest of days, one might expect the top environmental official in Virginia to be out planting trees or cleaning up a beach or talking to school kids about pollution.
But not Secretary of Natural Resources Becky Norton Dunlop.
The political conservative, who has waged a war of ideals with state environmental groups since her surprise appointment in 1993 by Gov. George Allen, will not be in Virginia today.
Instead, Dunlop is expected to spend the 25th anniversary of Earth Day at a political conference in Idaho, where she will deliver a speech on the need to shrink the federal government.
Perhaps more than anyone in Virginia, Dunlop personifies a popular mood in the state and country that environmentalism, whose activist roots are traced to the first Earth Day in 1970, has gone too far and needs to be clipped.
Indeed, Dunlop believes that environmental organizations that grew from this initial celebration 25 years ago have served their purpose and should simply fade away.
``They ought to claim victory and go home,'' Dunlop said in a recent interview. ``They should have a victory parade and just go home.''
Dunlop believes environmentalists rightfully alerted government and industry to the need for greater protection of air, water, land and other natural resources.
But now, she says, all the rules and regulations these groups helped bring about have evolved into bureaucratic monsters that do more harm than good.
``It's to the point that this excessive federal regulation is injurious'' to economic opportunity, Dunlop said. ``I mean, I can't find two people who can agree on what these regulations even say.''
Never one to mince words, Dunlop went on to say that environmentalists now must create controversies and publish misleading reports to keep the public believing that more work remains to be done.
In this vein, Dunlop called today's environmental activists ``fear mongers.''
As for the future, the secretary said she would not oppose doing away with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and handing its scientific and regulatory duties to state governments.
``When Nixon created the EPA, states didn't have environmental departments,'' she said. ``Now look at us. States, cities, and even towns have their own environmental departments. We're tanned, rested and ready to take the lead role.''
She believes plants and animals are more resilient to human intrusion than most environmentalists say when they urge greater protections. ``Locking up and protecting'' such natural resources, Dunlop says, is an overzealous, outdated control strategy.
Asked what Earth Day means to her, Dunlop drew a blank. She instead spoke of family camping trips as a young girl in Ohio and of picking up trash along the road near her childhood home.
``I never thought of Earth Day as just one day,'' Dunlop said. ``To us, it's always been about being a good steward, about respect.''
To that end, she advocates more educational programs encouraging people to keep their communities clean.
Dunlop, 43, is part of the Vietnam generation that pushed the environment onto the political agenda in the 1970s. On the first Earth Day, she was a student at Miami of Ohio University, where she said she ``didn't really even think about'' environmentalism.
She got into the environmental field through politics, working for the American Conservative Union before stints in the Reagan administration and later as a policy analyst for the conservative group Citizens for a Sound Economy.
``I've seen enough of the federal government and Washington to know it doesn't work,'' she said. MEMO: Related story on page B2. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
Becky Norton Dunlop, Va. secretary of natural resources, calls
activists ``fear mongers.''
Joe Maroon of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation wonders what's ahead:
reform or sliding standards
Color photo by TAMARA VONINSKI, Staff
Andrea Gengler, teacher of the year at Princess Anne Middle School,
takes student Jennifer Parker, 14, through the rain forest in the
lobby of the Kingston Elementary School Friday. The rain forest was
made by students at Kingston Elementary in celebration of Earth
Day.
Color graphic by Adriana Libreros, Staff
Earth Day - U.S. Chronology
Earth Day - Virginia Chronology
For complete information see microfilm
by CNB