March 27, 2002
Fishy Business: Aquaculture Reform Flames out in Maine.
Opinion & analysis by Ron Huber, Penobscot Bay Watch
The state's aquaculture reform bill gets put on ice by backroom political maneuver and corporate intrigue.
As illustrated by a trio of emails from the Maine Legislature's Marine Resources Committee clerk Tiffany Leonard, the Marine Resources Committee met yesterday (Tuesday, March 26th) afternoon and decided not to decide on the state's aquaculture reform bill, effectively blocking it from consideration by the full legislature.
What happened?
Until Tuesday afternoon, reform advocates were told there would be no further meetings on the bill, which in ordinary circumstances would be sent off to the full legislature for vote. Instead, at 2 pm Tuesday, while the committee was actually abruptly meeting to decide the fate of the bill, Leonard sent word out - by email only - that the committee was doing so. This of course, made it impossible for reform advocates from around the state to get to the meeting for a last ditch effort to keep the bill on track.
Instead, as committee clerk Leonard wrote Tuesday evening:
"The final word (on the final day of committee hearings) is that Aquaculture (having never technically left committee) is indefinitely postponed due to lack of agreement, lack of time and lack of in-depth studies on this issue."
Somehow, three years of study, two public hearings and six legislative work sessions weren't enough. (?) Further, since when did legislative bills require absolute consensus to move out of committee? The reform bill was supported by the majority of the Marine Resources committee.
Leonard wrote that the committee iced the bill with the pious intention:
" of creating a bill that will not only be in the best interest of the industry and the workers, but that can be supported by the committee and the Department."
In actuality, political maneuvering by reform opponents kept the aquaculture reform bill from getting a "Legislative Document Number" in the weeks since it received its final vote by the committee. See the bill at www.penbay.org/aqreformbill.htmL (there is also a "minority report" version of the bill) .
Refusing to give the bill an LD# effectively kept it from proceeding along the norrmal legislative process of going to the full legislature for a vote. In effect, after passing the bill, the Marine Resources Committee then pre-emptively blocked it from getting to the full legislature.
This disgraceful abuse of power should not be acceptable in a democracy. By refusing to let aquaculture reform be voted on, the Marine Resource committee leaders are letting the present highly unacceptable version of aquaculture industry (mis)management continue as the status quo.
Certain politicians in Augusta engineered the 'coup' against the reform bill, that resulted in depriving the full legislature from voting on the bill. Chief villains in this industrial passion play, aside from fishpen-enthralled Department of Marine Resources' "Aquaculture Coordinator" Andrew Fisk and assistant commissioner Penn Estabrook and the corporate aquaculture industry lobbyists, are Marine Resources Committee co-chair Senator Lemont, and committee member Deb McNeil, state representative for the town of Rockland.
Lemont never once favored aquaculture reform, instead supporting DMR's proposal to strip coastal towns of their rights to have any substantive say in the aquaculture leasing process whatsoever. Representative McNeil never troubled to ask her constituents their views on the aquaculture reform question. Instead at work session after work session, she would grin at the aquaculture industry lobbyists in the audience and say that it didn't matter what changes were made to the bill because," I'm voting against the bill anyway." Ignoring the fact t hat coastal towns like hers already posess the power to approve or deny mooring applications in their town waters out to three miles from shore, she never budged from a "its all state jurisdiction, not town jursidiction' fiction. McNeil appears to have fallen for the falsehood being bruited about by Coordinator Fisk that MDR reigns supreme over Maine's subtidal waters. (Read the state Harbormaster law, Andy!)
Another rotten apple in the barrel was "independent" senator Jill Goldthwaite representing Bar Harbor and Deer Isle. While not a member of the marine resources committee, Goldthwaite who chairs a powerful appropriations committee is said to have exerted all her political influence to do everything to stopper up the bill and generally fight its passage out of the committee, to the great anger of her local constituents in the wild seafood industry. Lemont's McNeils and Goldthwaite's scorn for their electorate stands out as shining examples of the virtue of Maine's term limits law. See what the people of Maine wanted.
A further flop in the process was the inaction of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust and many of the state's other coastal land trust non-profits. Despite repeated urgings, by the owners of many of the islands and shorefronts that the MCHT and other trusts 'steward', that the trusts should to come out in favor of aquaculture reform, this vast and important sector of Maine's conservation community kept largely silent during the entire fray.
MCHT's paralysis should come as surprise to anyone aware that fishpen enthusiast Andrew Fisk is, alas, apparently an official of that organization.
Coupled with the MCHT's refusal to follow the lead of the Maine coast's National Wildlife Refuges which have barred the cutting of rockweed from their intertidal zones, they and other coastal land trusts have begun to appear as not quite 'trustworthy' when it comes to protecting the immediate waters and intertidal areas of the lands they manage.
As noted above, the final word on the virtual street is that the marine committee has put the bill in a time capsule for re-introduction next year. Deja vu: This present aquaculture reform bill is itself a holdover bill from the PREVIOUS legislative session. What good a third go round will do is problematic, as the multinational fishpen industry will use the next nine months to deepen its grip on the state's political leadership and fill ever more coves with marine feedlots.
The Maine Department of Marine Resources, which has both flubbed groundfish restoration and so badly mishandled its role at the New England regional lobster management table that after July 1st, Maine lobstermen will lose up to 50% of their summer market, seems unruffled by its ineptness.
As the above suggests, the agency is now lead by persons with zero commercial fishing experience, and seems to be acting more and more as though it wants to outright abandon Maine's inshore wild fisheries with its anarchistic and cantankerous fishermen, for the more comfy embrace of the multinationals..
Moreover, the global aquaculture industry has far much more lucrative revolving door possibilities than the lobster and groundfish industries. Maine "State Aquaculture Coordinator" Andrew Fisk not only played a key role in the quashing of the reform bill, but ineptly led to the Cobscook Bay aquaculture meltdown that Maine taxpayers must now expensively bail out, Expect Fisk to be rewarded for his lack of coordination by vanishing into the corporate ranks, following the trail blazed by his predecessor in DMR's aquaculture division, Sebastian Belle.
The last minute flameout by the Marine Resources Committee leaves reformers with little choice but litigation to try to tame the lease-hungry, rapidily expanding absentee-owned multinational aquaculture industry into a more eco-friendly, community-friendly form. Aside from litigation, the direction that reform efforts should head is to help coastal towns enact ordinances that will let them carry out yes-or-no decisions on aquaculture lease applications, regardless of the state's desire to turn their town waters into a morass of absentee-owned marine feedlots. Several towns have already taken this bold step. Their efforts need to be analyzed and made into a 'model ordinance' for all coastal towns to consider adopting.
Moral of this sordid story? The political impotence of the Maine legislature in the face of big money means that ultimate control over the uses and biological quality of inshore Maine waters needs to rest firmly with the actual affected civic communities of interest - the residents of the coastal towns themselves. Otherwise more and more of Maine's public waters and marine publis lands will disappear into the amorphous transnational murk now so beloved by Maine DMR's brass .
Local communities being able to say "NO" are the best and most natural balance to the marine public land-grabbing aquaculture feedlot corporations, and against the tendency of state marine bureaucrats to consider themselves corporate servants instead of the public servants they actually are.
- Ron Huber
Penobscot Bay Watch
EMAIL# 1 FROM THE MARINE RESOURCES COMMITTEE CLERK
From: "Leonard, Tiffany" --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The weekend is upon us and there is still no word from the powers that be as
to where Aquaculture stands.
We currently have no schedule for next week for the Marine Resources
Committee.
I know I may have mentioned to some of you who stopped by the committee room
that we were hoping to meet
next week on Aquaculture, well that hope is dead...for now. But who knows
what Monday morning will bring!
I promise to keep all of you updated...when I get updated! But as it
stands, I have no solid information, just
contradictory rumours.
Have a great weekend! And hopefully you'll hear from me next week.
Tiffany Leonard
------------------------------------------
Email # 2
From: "Leonard, Tiffany" --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorry to get this to everyone so late, but I was just now able to confirm
that the Marine Resources Committee will be recalling aquaculture to review
in committee today...actually right now. It still has no LD #, it never
actually became a bill, it just stayed as a proposed bill. I'm sorry that I
wasn't able to get word to everyone sooner, but it was very last minute.
Today is the last day for committee's to meet, so today we will have an
answer as to what is actually happening to this proposed aquaculture bill.
I will send out an email when we have final word.
Tiffany Leonard
========================
Email# 3
From: "Leonard, Tiffany" That's it, it's Done!
The final word (on the final day of committee hearings) is that Aquaculture
(having never technically left committee) is indefinitely postponed due to
lack of agreement, lack of time and lack of in-depth studies on this issue.
However....
This Proposed Bill is Not Going Away!!
The committee has reserved it's right to revisit it this summer, do some
studies and maybe bring it back in the 121st Legislature (in January).
Senate Chair Lemont, Representative McNeil, the Department of Marine
Resources and The Maine Aquaculture Association all expressed their opinions
as having supported the minority report, while Representative Volenik (in
representing his constituents) expressed his support of the majority report.
The majority of the members of the Marine Resources Committee agreed that
this proposed bill needs more work, with the intention of creating a bill
that will not only be in the best interest of the industry and the workers,
but that can be supported by the committee and the Department.
The Joint Standing Committee on Marine Resources wishes to thank everyone
for all of their input and concern with this issue, and they are sorry that
they could not have come up with definitive legislation that could be
supported by all.
So until the 121st....I hope you all have a wonderful and prosperous next 9
months and hopefully I will be coming back here in January as Marine's
Clerk!
If anyone does have any questions, I believe that I will still be here for
the next 2 weeks...hopefully. There has been no notice of the Clerks final
day. If you do not get an answer here (or a return phone call from a
message left on voice mail) after next week, I would ask that you call the
Legislative Information Office (287-1692) and they might be able to help you
or redirect your call.
Tiffany Leonard
-----end of email-------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri Mar 22 13:38:37 2002
To: Alfred Zacharias
Committee Clerk
Joint Standing Committee on Marine Resources
100 State House Station
Augusta, Maine 04333
(207) 287-1337
Date: Tue Mar 26 14:02:53 2002
To: (same email list)
Subject: Aquaculture
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue Mar 26 17:12:20 2002
To: (same email list as above)
Subject: Aquaculture - The Final Word
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Committee Clerk
Joint Standing Committee on Marine Resources
100 State House Station
Augusta, Maine 04333
(207) 287-1337