THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 24, 1995 TAG: 9505240485
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines
Some fisheries officials have questioned why the spokesman for the state's largest commercial fishing trade group blames declines in fish harvests on water pollution yet supports a group with members who support weakening the Clean Water Act.
JoAnn Burkholder, a member of the state Marine Fisheries Commission and chair of its committee on habitat and water quality issues, on Friday asked why Jerry Schill, executive director of the North Carolina Fisheries Association, would be involved in the Alliance for America when some of its members support weakening the act.
Schill serves as the Southeast regional director of the Alliance for America and as chairman of the group's June Fly-In for Freedom, a national meeting of alliance organizations in Washington, D.C.
The Alliance for America, a national umbrella group of up to 650 local property-rights groups with at least 5 million members nationwide, began monitoring and coordinating the national property-rights movement in the late 1980s, said Harry McIntosh, vice president of administration.
Its mission is ``finally bringing human concerns into the environmental debate,'' to balance environmental issues with economic concerns, McIntosh said Tuesday from New York.
The N.C. Fisheries Association is one of the alliance's member groups, which also include the American Loggers Solidarity in Washington, the Arkansas Forestry Association and the Citizens for Property Rights in Vermont.
The Fisheries Association has focused its past activities primarily on the Endangered Species Act, which, the group has said, requires commercial fishermen to protect endangered sea turtles at great expense to fishermen but does not adequately address habitat loss.
Burkholder's inquiry has led other policy-makers and some commercial fishing interests to question whether Schill's involvement in the Alliance for America is consistent with growing concerns about declines in water quality and loss of valuable fisheries habitat.
``I don't have any problems at all being involved with or participating with these groups,'' Schill said Tuesday. ``They are people that we can readily relate to because they produce things. They are people who work for a living.''
He added that concerns about the group's activities are exaggerated, saying that his and the association's participation in the Alliance for America has been public knowledge for a number of years. Questions are being raised now, he said, only because the alliance has been largely successful in its educational and lobbying efforts.
``The alliance may have a little clout now,'' Schill said from New Bern.
``What started out as a gnat that could be easily swatted away hasgrown into a mosquito that's sucking blood.''
But some fisheries officials said Tuesday that Schill's participation with the alliance could hurt his credibility when he raises questions with the Marine Fisheries Commission or other environmental policy groups over water quality concerns.
In recent months, commercial fishermen have asked repeatedly for more help from the Marine Fisheries Commission in protecting water quality and preserving valuable marine habitat.
In a meeting last week with fisheries director Bruce L. Freeman, one group of Albemarle-area fishermen emphasized the need to improve water quality and fish habitat on the Chowan and Roanoke rivers, traditional centers of the herring industry. And on Tuesday, a fisheries committee on habitat issues, which Burkholder heads, met with representatives of one Franklin, Va., paper manufacturing firm to discuss ways to improve water quality downstream of the plant.
``Commercial fishermen really have focused on this, and they have since my very first meeting,'' said Robert V. Lucas, chairman of the Marine Fisheries Commission. ``And the message is the same: `When are you going to deal with water quality and development issues?'
``I just don't see the goals of the commercial fishermen of North Carolina concerning the protection and enhancement of our natural resources as being consistent with the goals of this organization,'' Lucas said.
Melvin Shepard, an owner of New River Nets in Sneads Ferry and president of the N.C. Coastal Federation, said Schill's involvement with the Alliance for America sends the wrong message to the nation's lawmakers.
``Our major problem is pollution, and yet they want to do something to weaken the Clean Water Act instead of strengthening it.''
William A. Foster, a Hatteras commercial fisherman and vice chairman of the Marine Fisheries Commission, said reaction to Schill's participation in the Fly-In for Freedom will depend largely on the perceptions of those involved.
``It will be perceived to be inconsistent by those who want to perceive it as an inconsistency,'' said Foster, a member and former board member of the N.C. Fisheries Association.
Foster said the group's participation in the Alliance for America grew out of commercial fishermen's growing concerns with an increasing number of regulations that unfairly targeted commercial fishermen in the name of conservation but did not protect fish stocks, grass beds or other natural resources.
Schill and association President James A. Johnson Jr., an owner of Washington Crab Co., said that Schill's participation in and the association's membership in the Alliance for America does not mean Schill or the group agrees with the every other alliance member on every issue.
``You have to look at the alliance as a whole,'' Johnson said Tuesday. ``It's such a divergent group, and it represents all sorts of ideas, sometimes conflicting.
``The alliance is big on individual rights,'' he said. ``You can see where fishermen will be real big on that.'' by CNB