Things have been hopping at the coast. As temperatures rise, so does interest in our beaches, waterways and fishes. This month I’ll give you a rundown on several related coastal issues.
Perhaps of broadest import is the “Report Card for the Coast” put out by the North Carolina Beach Inlet and Waterway Association. (I’m a member of this organization but was not involved in the voting.) Overall the coast received a “C” for barely average. The report was broken into Beaches—C; Inlets—C; Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway—D; Public Access to Beaches—A; and Public Access to Coastal Waters—D. I’m not quite sure how the AIWW got by with a D; D- maybe or F+ is more likely. We continue to lobby in Washington with the help of our delegation, but we continue to come up short. It reminds me of that line from an old country song, “Since the phone still ain’t ringing, I suppose it still ain’t you.” There is an ongoing economic impact study, which would prove the value of our waterways, but there isn’t the money to finish it. The Feds asked for the figures, so we’ll give them what we have, but I’m personally not very optimistic. If we can get them to accept some portion of the cost—50 percent, 40 percent, or something—it would make the job of planning for the future much easier.
The other “D” has to do with the decreasing amount of public access to coastal waters. If you live down here, you continue to see this unintended consequence of the coastal land boom. As the price of real estate escalates, the temptation to sell marinas, boat ramps and piers escalates as well. People who are running family-owned businesses that may have been started by their grandfathers can lose some of their sentimental attachment when someone waves $10 million or $20 million under their noses. And then what happens to the family-owned marina? It becomes condos with private boat slips. Commercial fishermen are even having trouble finding places to moor their boats as docks are turned into sales lots for boat merchants. Talk about a vanishing way of life. Unless something is done soon, Joe Six-Pack will have no place to launch his jon boat, and families coming to the coast may as well leave their boats in Raleigh. If they are lucky enough to find a ramp to launch their boat, there’ll be no place to park their boat trailer.
Apparently there is talk about cooperation between the Department of Transportation and the Wildlife Commission on using land adjacent to existing bridges which already belongs to the State. This sounds like a promising start, but we better get moving or next year this grade, too, will be an “F.”
The report card concluded by saying, “surely we can do better,” while noting that “a dependable, dedicated funding source for both state and federal shares of coastal maintenance is critical to the future of the coast.”
Fishing Declines
According to figures gathered on catch numbers, the fishing industry saw a reduction of 21 percent from 2004 and a drop of 24 percent if compared to the four-year average. With rising fuel costs, more and more fishermen are finding they just can’t make a living.
Last month, however, fishing representatives appeared before the Marine Fisheries Commission with an approach seemingly rooted more in rage than in logic. Both fishermen and commissioners were quite unhappy with some of the restrictions recently posed by regional groups, such as the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the National Marine Fisheries Service. These groups set catch limits on fish that cross state boundaries and are, therefore, considered a regional or national resource. It is an involved and complex story, but some of those affected had a simple answer—withdraw from participation with these groups and stop furnishing them data. Emotionally satisfying, perhaps, but not likely to help the situation. This is especially true since North Carolina would have to abide by the regulations adopted by these groups while losing their seat at the table.
I am really sympathetic with the plight of the commercial fishermen, and after admitting that this is a complex issue about which I don’t know nearly enough, let me make a couple of suggestions:
A) Don’t withdraw from these regional organizations.
B) We have good representatives on these boards and commissions—work with them to try to better represent North Carolina’s unique issues.
C) More research is clearly needed if we are to understand what’s behind the declining numbers—over-fishing, pollution, degradation of nursery areas, etc. Much of this research is best if coordinated regionally; hence, we need more emphasis on cooperative endeavors, not less.
D) But assuming that not enough is gong to be done to save our industry completely, let’s have some serious study done on alternative enterprises for fishermen and their families. This was the approach taken for farmers displaced by the decline in the tobacco industry—so why not for fishermen?
Clean Water and Keeping Bill Holman
Finally, there have been some disturbing things happening at the Clean Water Management Trust Fund (CWMTF). This is one of the best conservation concepts the General Assembly has created. Each year a significant amount of money is set aside to study and protect our vital water resources. With development and storm water run-off posing escalating threats to our waterways, the CWMTF has become increasingly important. Reacting to this, the General Assembly, in the 2005 session, significantly increased the funding. It sometimes can happen that increased funding is a mixed blessing. More funding means more grant requests, and sometimes those requests come in before the additional staff is on board to process them. More money also translates into more pressure, and sometimes more dissension on how those funds are to be allocated.
Suffice it to say that harmony has not been complete at the CWMTF. In an action that seems about as wise as North Carolina withdrawing from the regional fisheries organizations, the Board decided to put the Executive Director, Bill Holman, on three-months’ leave. Holman is one of the wisest, most experienced environmental experts we have in this state. Moreover, I have interacted with him on many occasions and can testify to his balance, his decency and his integrity. But even if all these things weren’t true, how in the world does it make sense to remove the executive director of a group suffering from growing pains? I can’t judge the overall case, but I do know this—the environmental health of this state will be the loser if we lose Holman’s counsel.