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A group of watermen say |
Dispossessed of their livelihood, a group of Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula watermen is mulling legal action against state agencies for failing to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.
Virginia faces a 2010 deadline to improve the quality of waters that once produced a bounty of oysters, crabs and fish and supported a thriving seafood industry. By all measures, the improvement will not occur, leaving the state open to federal intervention.
"What you want is for the government to do its job and get you a clean Bay, so you can harvest your crabs and make a living," White Stone attorney Lee Anne Washington told about 40 members of the Virginia Waterman's Association in Kilmarnock Wednesday night.
"There comes a time when you've got to play hardball with state and local officials," said Kelly V. Place, a commercial fisherman and waterman advocate from Williamsburg.
Those officials, said VWA Vice President Ken Smith, "are now squirming to come up with excuses why they're not enforcing the law."
"The watermen are being blamed for things that are somebody else's fault," said retired scientist Lynton Land of Northumberland County.
Land said it has been known for many years that nitrogen discharges from farms, lawns and sewage-treatment plants are the primary cause of the Bay's decline. The nutrients feed algae that degrade water quality, he said.
In March, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission angered crab fishermen by adopting tighter restrictions to stem crab declines. VMRC will likely impose additional crab limits at its meeting April 22.
"What VMRC has been doing has not been working. Why do they think new regulations are going to work?" said attorney Washington, who has volunteered to help the watermen find avenues of redress, including a possible lawsuit against the state.
"VMRC has regulated us for the past 15 years. Every year we get new regulations. Do you think it's right for VMRC to drive us out of the water?" said VWA President Dale Taylor.
In response, VMRC spokesman John Bull said yesterday, "Crab overfishing has taken place the last seven of 10 years. If we allow this to continue, the crab population is in danger of collapsing. We wish it wasn't like this. But we're fishery regulators. We can't clean up the water."
"The waterman is going to be gone in the next five or six years if we don't do something about it," said Taylor. "If the people of Virginia don't want to help us, they can get their seafood from China or Japan."
LEGISLATORS BACK EFFORT
Elected officials who represent the Northern Neck said they want to help the watermen.
Del. Albert C. Pollard, D-Lancaster, enclosed a $50 check with a letter to the VWA that said:
"We do not need more studies, goals or analysis. No, what we need to clean up the Bay are dollars and political will. Hopefully a lawsuit can pry these two things loose, so please count me as a supporter of your legal efforts."
Rep. Robert J. Wittman, R-Montross, a former shellfish official, also wrote a letter to the VWA, saying: "We have failed to adequately protect and preserve the Bay and as a result its health has declined to the point of being in critical condition."
This "lack of action has been ruinous on local small businesses and their employees within the seafood industry . This is a problem that demands we take serious and decisive action to clean up the Bay," Wittman wrote.
In an telephone interview, state Sen. Richard H. Stuart, R-Montross, said yesterday, "I will fully support the watermen in everything they do and in every way I can."
WATERMEN URGED TO JOIN FORCES WITH FARMERS
"It's almost like the watermen themselves are an indicator species that the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem is out of balance and on a downward spiral," Place said. He blamed many of the Bay's problems on "members of the Big-Business, Over-Development, Pollution Club."
He urged the watermen to join forces with other groups, including farmers, with stakes in cleaner water.
"We can't have a war between the watermen and the farmers," Land said.
"Watermen, of all people, know that that you can't expect one group to carry the burden. No one wins when one side carries the whole burden," Place said.
"The farmers may also be gone sooner than you think," said one unidentified waterman. "Then there will be more waterfront houses, more condominiums, more asphalt and more nitrogen from people's yards running off in the water."
Frank Delano: 804/333-3834
Email: fpdelano@gmail.com
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The governors of Virginia and Maryland will meet next week in Colonial Beach for briefings on the the plummeting population of blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay. Crab populations in the Bay have dropped to historic lows. Govs. Tim Kaine and Martin O'Malley will hear from marine scientists about reasons for the crab decline and from fishery and other regulators on proposed remedies to reverse it, John Bull of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission said yesterday. The meeting will be at 3 p.m. Tuesday at the Potomac River Fisheries Commission on Taylor Street, near the shore that forms the boundary between Maryland and Virginia, Bull said.
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