THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 11, 1995 TAG: 9505110468
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
The president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation blasted the state's secretary of natural resources, Becky Norton Dunlop, on Wednesday for comments that environmentalists are ``fear-mongers'' whose time and cause have passed.
William C. Baker, in a speech before the Garden Club of Virginia, said Dunlop should retract her statements, which he labeled offensive and counterproductive.
``I've been working on the Bay for 20 years and I've never heard any state official issue such a statement . . . or use such language,'' Baker said of comments Dunlop made in a newspaper interview last month about the 25th anniversary of Earth Day.
Dunlop had said environmentalists have won significant gains since the first Earth Day in 1970 and that they should now ``hold a victory parade and just go home.''
She referred to environmentalists as ``fear-mongers,'' saying they rely on misleading and exaggerated reports to bolster their agenda.
Dunlop, a political conservative who served in the Reagan administration, has been at odds with environmentalists since her surprise appointment last summer by Gov. George F. Allen.
As the highest environmental official in Virginia, she oversees several departments in charge of wildlife management, pollution control, environmental cleanup, and biological study of air, water and soil.
A spokeswoman for Dunlop responded Wednesday that the secretary was preparing a letter explaining that her comments were not meant to include the Bay foundation and its 85,000 members and officers in three states.
Rather, Dunlop meant to criticize ``radical environmental groups'' that have ``very narrow views and no consideration'' of such factors as jobs and economic impacts in their drive for ecological protection, said spokeswoman Julie Overy.
Asked what groups fit that definition, Overy mentioned just one: Greenpeace, the international environmental organization.
``Nobody meant to imply the Chesapeake Bay Foundation was to be lumped into that group,'' Overy said. ``Maybe the secretary wasn't careful enough to separate them out.''
As for Dunlop's feeling about state environmental groups, Overy said the James River Association offered a good example. ``They're doing some things we're supportive of and things we're not supportive of,'' she said.
In his speech in Norfolk, Baker also said he had urged an economic-environmental summit to discuss cooperative strategies when he spoke this year at an environmental conference at Virginia Military Institute.
He said the idea was welcomed by Peter Schmidt, director of the state Department of Environmental Quality, who also was at the conference. But since then, he has not heard from the Allen administration.
Overy said Wednesday that the administration still is eyeing a summit and wants to work with environmentalists on solutions satisfying business and environmental needs.
``One thing my boss put on my desk today, as a matter of fact, was to get moving on the summit idea,'' Overy said.
KEYWORDS: CHESAPEAKE BAY FOUNDATION EARTH DAY by CNB