(In part 4 of this series on the Marine Life Protection Act, we look into how the MLPA Initiative fits into the fast evolving history of environmental privatization and how the successes and failures of that movement might impact the Mendocino Coast)
The Marine Life Protection Act Initiative (MLPAI), which arrived in Fort Bragg this summer to begin the process of closing areas to fishing, represents new milestones in privatization of environmental protection.
While the MLPA was a law passed by the California Legislature in 1999, the MLPAI is a private group, operating on a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the state. The state signed the MOU after twice failing to implement act itself.
The Santa Barbara Independent newspaper recently called the lending of legal authority to private parties under the MOU “unprecedented” and “controversial” in the history of the state.
The initiative also defines an ocean park differently than a land-based park. On land, the state would have to go through escrow and county and state planning processes to acquire a new park. But with the MLPAI, the Schwarzenegger administration has apparently asserted a new power over the ocean for the executive branch and its private partners.
Could that lead to future ocean grabs for other purposes?
Judith Vidaver, the Mendocino Coast”s Ocean Protection Coalition chair, said the MLPA Initiative was a blatant power grab for the executive branch by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“Fish and Game has been gutted by the governor. The MLPA memo of understanding put the future of our ocean in the hands of private mega-money foundations,” she said, “with zero [meaningful] opportunity for public input.”
The North Coast region, where the MLPAI is now being implemented, extends from just north of Point Arena to the Oregon border. The North Coast is by far the poorest, most rural region, the last major region to face the closures, and the most dependent on the ocean.
Some locals are baffled how a private process can come from urban California with no input required from any local governments or Indian tribes and with no economic compensation even suggested for lost jobs. (Local input is being sought but is not officially needed, MLPAI organizers have made clear.)
The Resources Legacy Foundation Fund (RLFF), a powerful organization that eschews publicity, is the funding force behind the MLPAI, along with many other state environmental projects, ranging from huge park ballot bond initiatives to the controversial Cargill acquisitions in the Bay Area.
The RLFF pays the bills but has no direct role in creating the policy, which is done by the MLPAI through local and statewide committees. Members of Schwarzenegger”s cabinet appoint panels of scientists and local stakeholders who hash out the boundaries of the protected areas.
Many ocean activists like the sound of the new underwater parks but have yet to weigh in, suspicious of the motives of big money backers of the MLPAI..
Are fears founded?
Is privatized ocean park creation really to be feared?
A look at how private parties have acquired such powers is needed to answer that question.
President Teddy Roosevelt”s fist raised high at Yellowstone was the image of the early land conservation movement. At that time, many plutocrats scowled at the very idea of parks and big business saw environmental preservation as needless government meddling.
In the 100 years since, the environmental movement grew up, encouraged and sometimes demanded government save sensitive and spectacular lands from development. In recent decades, industry leaders and well-connected government insiders have joined government in conserving land.
An updated image would feature too many groups and individuals for any single photo frame. Handshake compromises would replace that jubilant fist. President Ronald Reagan”s administration launched widespread privatization of the process of environmental protection, while enacting cutbacks to environmental agency budgets.
Perhaps most importantly, the privatization movement created and has blossomed land trusts such as the Mendocino Land Trust from coast to coast, empowering communities with a much easier way to preserve the lands they wish. Big national public-private partnerships also set aside threatened lands, but often allowed development of other sensitive lands in exchange.
“There have been some big successes and some very big failures,” said John Hansen, founder of Integrity in Natural Resources in Santa Rosa.
“At the end of all the compromises it”s often hard to tell if the wildlife and the public have won or lost. But there is often a relationship between the deals made and campaign contributions.
There is no question privatization has achieved dramatic results. But critics question the cost, both in dollars and environmental compromises. Local environmental groups are often split with national groups, who participate in the back room compromises, sometimes sacrificing one area to do something more spectacular elsewhere.
“There was a day when efforts were led by grassroots people. They were the Greenpeace volunteers in skiffs. You would see a lot of long hair, sandals, boots and jeans. These were people who we all knew had ethics and passion for the environment and the cause,” said Hansen.
“But now the guy in the expensive suit and the fancy French shoes that are not made to get dirty is leading the charge. He has the money and gets results, but he doesn”t have the credibility with the public,” said Hansen.
In the early 1990s this reporter, with Hansen”s help, dug into dozens of Central Valley land acquisitions by public-private partnerships, involving colorful Las Vegas casino owners, Reagan pals and moneyed celebrities. The extensive paper trail we followed included one prominent private conservation group insider who invested $20,000, then made $1.2 million when he resold to the federal government in a deal he helped broker.
Another deal featured moneymen arranging land deals to enhance habitat for tasty ducks. Duck hunting was allowed, which scared away the skittish sandhill cranes the government had purchased the property to save.
An Interior Department Inspector General report of that time showed tax payers were getting limited benefits. Government spent a lot more in many cases by involving all the third parties.
In the years since, privatization has gotten much bigger and features more novel ways of “acquiring” real estate such as the conservation easement, which normally gives no public access and allows landowners to continue many activities, such as farming, hunting or sustainable logging.
Hansen is most famous for his decade-worth of work on exposing problems with Cargill Inc.”s” gift and sale of more than 20,000 acres of salt-fouled lands to state and federal agencies. Cargill got more than $300 million in tax write-offs and land sales for salt encrusted lands that could cost as much as a billion dollars to cleanup, according to published accounts.
Like the MLPAI, the Resources Legacy Foundation Fund was the quiet funding force behind moving Cargill lands into public ownership. Hansen feels the land should have been cleaned up first, as is being done at the former Georgia-Pacific mill site in Fort Bragg.
“This was a rushed deal in which appraisals appear to have been cooked but the deal went through at those prices. Even though we went back and readdressed the appraisal and the values, the money was spent and polluted land that should have been cleaned up was dumped on the public,” Hansen said. Cargill is participating in mitigation.
Local involvement
Because MLPAI real estate is in the ocean, it seems to lack opportunities for insiders to cash in or get rid of polluted property. MLPAI is simply a plan to partially or totally close roughly 20 percent of the ocean offshore to fishing, seaweed gathering or abalone diving.
Hansen said locals should be vigilant. He suggested it would be worth investigating what the governor might be giving up in return for big money support for the MLPAI and how speculators might benefit from community changes wrought by closed areas.
Much of the local worry about the MLPAI is that it will knock off smaller, sustainable fishers, creating greater opportunities for poaching and other uses of the ocean locals won”t see. Empty miles of ocean shoreline exist locally, a situation that does not exist in the rest of the state.
“Fisherfolk are the watchdogs of the sea. They know the ocean best and are the first ones to notice when things go wrong. We need them out there,” Vidaver said.
MLPAI Executive Director Ken Wiseman said that rich experience is exactly why locals need to participate in the initiative. He said only local ocean users can really provide information as to where the greatest fishing spots are and where the economic impacts would be.
The 20 percent closure figure was the final outcome in the large North Central Coast Region but Wiseman said that could vary widely. Even highly critical fishermen involved in other areas say the MLPAI did back off on closing certain prime fishing grounds.
In one instance, fishermen who had been foes of what went on in the Central Coast were brought to the San Diego area by the MLPAI as advocates for joining the process..
“We had a couple Bodega guys come down to San Diego and say cooperate with these guys, it will help you, they need this economic information,” Wiseman said.
Wiseman emphasized he has never had any pressure for a specific result from any foundation person.
Streamlined process
One reason the MLPAI has worked where past efforts have failed is that the process has been honed down for maximum speed and effectiveness.
The process comes with as corporate style marketing and public relations as well as science teams organized more for quick action than deliberation.
While the Legislature passed the MLPA amid discussion of solving many issues afflicting the ocean, the MLPAI has taken aim at creating areas that ban fishing alone, not delving into rockier political shores presented by other ocean issues.
“If these foundations really wanted to protect our marine resources, they”d be weighing in on the plans to develop wave power plants up and down the coast and plans to drill for oil and gas,” Vidaver said.
“If they really cared, they would be doing something about the endless stream of pollutants flowing into the ocean every day — an issue that was supposed to be addressed by the MLPA.”
Privatization”s hand is clear in the simplicity of the process.
Science teams in other regions have created “cookie cutter” guidelines that figure to direct the local process. Under those guidelines, the MLPAI will be asking locals to identify 6- to 12.5 mile-long stretches of shoreline and at least nine square miles of sea, where seaweed harvesting, abalone diving and fishing can be banned or greatly restricted. A range of 31 to 62 miles separates these protected areas.
With the private MLPAI creating size and shape guidelines before ever coming to the Mendocino Coast, locals have limited choices.
“To me it appears that the people in charge of the MLPA process are willing to listen and act on the public”s concerns when it works within the system,” said Daniel Burke, a recreational fisherman from Dana Point who has participated in the entire process in his area.
“However pleas that don”t work within the system are met with complete rejection. It”s like they are building a railroad. We can tell them to veer off the planned course slightly and they will oblige at times, but any delay or dramatic change to the plan is met with complete rejection,” he said.
Flexibility and funding
Wiseman said there is more flexibility in the standards than critics have been saying and invites the public to participate and find out for themselves..
Numerous tax advantages, community benefits and alternative management techniques are documented in the book about privatization, “Land-saving Action,” by Russell L. Brenneman and Sarah M. Bates. The Cato Institute has long touted such successes and advocates for turning all park management over to foundations and corporations.
Proponents of preservation privatization say such organizations have the fund-raising and scientific support that the shrinking public sector can no longer afford.
But that brings locals to another key point — the public sector has less and less money to enforce the law on more and more new property the private sector creates.
