THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 22, 1995 TAG: 9504220341
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
Once again, the drive for greater environmental protection has come to a fork in the road, says Joseph H. Maroon, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Virginia.
Maroon calls it ``the second real challenge,'' the first coming 25 years ago today, when some 20 million Americans inaugurated Earth Day and helped elevate the environment from a quiet hobby among naturalists to an urgent political issue.
This time, though, environmentalists are on the defensive. Republican reformers and anti-government sentiments are instead the forces for change.
Maroon wonders which path this conservative wave will take environmentalism:
Toward meaningful reform of admittedly flawed environmental programs?
Or to a lowering of standards for such basics as clean air and clean water?
``Right now, I'd say it doesn't look good for us,'' Maroon said in a recent interview from his Richmond office. ``In this political mood, it certainly makes cleaning up the Bay more difficult.''
In many ways, Maroon is symbolic of where the modern environmental movement has come in the 25 years since Earth Day 1970. Where hippies and part-time activists dominated the call for greater sensitivity toward Mother Earth, Maroon is a pragmatic, low-key administrator. He wears a suit and tie and coaches Little League baseball.
The environmental movement has indeed gone professional. In part because it had to - to fight the power that wealthy corporations and boardroom lawyers command over politics and policy-making.
But this trend has distanced environmental organizations from its roots. Citizen action is now measured in donations, not demonstrations.
Maroon does not like being called an environmentalist, saying the label connotes radical thought and extremism. He declines to publicly criticize high government officials, knowing he will need their favor tomorrow.
``I've always just considered myself someone who felt deeply about the need to be good stewards of our natural resources,'' Maroon said. ``Unfortunately, I still think there's too many people out there who don't have that feeling - or at least don't practice what they preach.''
He believes great strides have been made in the past 25 years. But that hardly means that government, business and environmentalists should start retreating on protection programs, as conservatives espouse.
Maroon ticks off a litany of problems that continue to plague the Bay - toxics, the dramatic decline in fisheries, wetlands destruction and, above all, the myriad of pollutants accompanying future growth and development in the region.
Ironically, this same growth and development is what Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources Becky Norton Dunlop, a Republican appointee, says will help save the Bay. Her reasoning: more development means more money, which in turn means more funds for environmental protection.
``Let's just say we hope she changes her mind,'' Maroon says diplomatically.
Unlike Dunlop, who entered the environmental world through politics, Maroon has always had the eco-bug.
During the first Earth Day in 1970, Maroon was an active member in his high school ecology club in southwest Virginia. He studied water resources at Virginia Tech and wrote a report on fisheries management as a staffer in state government.
But he says he never got caught up in the rhetoric and emotion of the movement - not when demonstrators were shouting slogans about Mother Earth in the 1970s, and not now by Republican reformers mincing sound bites about environmental foolishness.
``I've never been the radical,'' he said. ``To me, the environment is something for everyone, homemakers and executives, the ordinary Joes.'' MEMO: Related stories on pages B1 and B2.
by CNB