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Dam the Salmon

shikha.dalmia@reason.org (Shikha Dalmia) — Wed, 30 May 2007 15:25:00 EDT

The Wall Street Journal

Al Gore has been hectoring Americans to pare back their lifestyles to fight global warming. But if Mr. Gore wants us to rethink our priorities in the face of this mother of all environmental threats, surely he has convinced his fellow greens to rethink theirs, right?

Wrong. If their opposition to the Klamath hydroelectric dams in the Pacific Northwest is any indication, the greens, it appears, are just as unwilling to sacrifice their pet causes as a Texas rancher is to sacrifice his pickup truck. If anything, the radicalization of the environmental movement is the bigger obstacle to addressing global warming than the allegedly gluttonous American way of life.

Once regarded as the symbol of national greatness, hydroelectric dams have now fallen into disrepute for many legitimate reasons. They are enormously expensive undertakings that would never have taken off but for hefty government subsidies. Worse, they typically involve changing the natural course of rivers, causing painful disruptions for towns and tribes.

But tearing down the Klamath dams, the last of which was completed in 1962, will do more harm than good at this stage. These dams provide cheap, renewable energy to 70,000 homes in Oregon and California. Replacing this energy with natural gas -- the cleanest fossil-fuel source -- would still pump 473,000 tons of additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. This is roughly equal to the annual emissions of 102,000 cars.

Given this alternative, one would think that environmentalists would form a human shield around the dams to protect them. Instead, they have been fighting tooth-and-nail to tear them down because the dams stand in the way of migrating salmon. Environmentalists don't even let many states, including California, count hydro as renewable.

They have rejected all attempts by PacifiCorp, the company that owns the dams, to take mitigation steps such as installing $350 million fish ladders to create a salmon pathway. Klamath Riverkeeper, a group that is part of an environmental alliance headed by Robert Kennedy Jr., has sued a fish hatchery that the California Department of Fish and Wildlife runs -- and PacifiCorp is required to fund -- on grounds that it releases too many algae and toxic discharges. The hatchery produces at least 25% of the chinook salmon catch every year. Closing it will cause fish populations to drop further, making the demolition of the dams even more likely.

But the end of the Klamath won't mean the end of the dam saga -- it is the big prize that environmentalists are coveting to take their antidam crusade to the next level. "This would represent the largest and most ambitious dam removal project in the country, if not the world," exults Steve Rothert of American Rivers. The other dams on the hit list include the O'Shaughnessy Dam in Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy Valley that services San Francisco, Elwha River dam in Washington and the Matilija Dam in Southern California.

Large hydro dams supply about 20% of California's power (and 10% of America's). If they are destroyed, California won't just have to find some other way to fulfill its energy needs. It will have to do so while reducing its carbon footprint to meet the ambitious CO2 emission-reduction targets that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has set. Mr. Schwarzenegger has committed the Golden State to cutting greenhouse gas emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 -- a more stringent requirement than even in the Kyoto Protocol.

The effect this might have on California's erratic and overpriced energy supply has businesses running scared. Mike Naumes, owner of Naumes Inc., a fruit packing and processing business, last year moved his juice concentrate plant from Marysville, Calif., to Washington state and cut his energy bill in half. With hydropower under attack, he is considering shrinking his farming operations in the Golden State as well. "We can't pay exorbitant energy prices and stay competitive with overseas businesses," he says.

Bruce Hamilton, Sierra Club's deputy executive director and a longtime proponent of such a mandate, refuses to even acknowledge that there is any conflict in closing hydro dams while fighting global warming. All California needs to do to square these twin objectives, he maintains, is become more energy efficient while embracing alternative fuels. "We don't need to accept a Faustian bargain with hydropower to cut emissions," he says.

This is easier done in the fantasy world of greens than in the real world. If cost-effective technologies to boost energy efficiency actually existed, industry would adopt them automatically, global warming or not.

As for alternative fuels, they are still far from economically viable. Gilbert Metcalf, an economist at Tufts University, has calculated that wind energy costs 6.64 cents per kWh and biomass 5.95 kWh -- compared to 4.37 cents for clean coal. Robert Bradley Jr., president of the Institute for Energy Research, puts these costs even higher. "Although technological advances have lowered alternative fuel prices in recent years, these fuels still by and large cost twice as much as conventional fossil fuels," he says.

But suppose these differentials disappeared. Would the Sierra Club and its eco-warriors actually embrace the fuels that Mr. Hamilton advocates? Not if their track record is any indication. Indeed, environmental groups have a history of opposing just about every energy source.

Their opposition to nuclear energy is well known. Wind power? Two years ago the Center for Biological Diversity sued California's Altamont Pass Wind Farm for obstructing and shredding migrating birds. ("Cuisinarts of the sky" is what many greens call wind farms.) Solar? Worldwatch Institute's Christopher Flavin has been decidedly lukewarm about solar farms because they involve placing acres of mirrors in pristine desert habitat. The Sierra Club and Wilderness Society once testified before Congress to keep California's Mojave Desert -- one of the prime solar sites in the country -- off limits to all development. Geothermal energy? They are unlikely to get enviro blessings, because some of the best sites are located on protected federal lands.

Greens, it seems, always manage to find a problem for every environmental solution -- and there is deep reason for this.

Since its inception, the American environmental movement has been torn between "conservationists" seeking to protect nature for man -- and "preservationists" seeking to protect nature for its own sake. Although early environmental thinkers such as Aldo Leopold and John Muir were sympathetic to both themes, Leopold was more in the first camp and Muir in the second. Leopold regarded wilderness as a form of land use; he certainly wanted to limit the development of wild areas -- but to "enlarge the range of individual experience." Muir, on the other hand, saw wilderness as sacred territory worthy of protection regardless of human needs.

With the arrival on the scene of Deep Ecologists from Europe in the 1980s, Muir's mystical preservationist side won the moral high ground. The emphasis of Deep Ecology on radical species equality made talk about solving environmental problems for human ends illicit within the American environmental community. Instead, Arne Naess, the revered founder of Deep Ecology, explicitly identified human beings as the big environmental problem. "The flourishing of nonhuman life requires a decrease in human population," his eight-point platform to save Mother Earth serenely declared.

This ideological turn, notes Ramachandra Guha, a left-leaning Indian commentator and incisive critic of Deep Ecology, has made American environmentalism irrelevant at best and dangerous at worst for the Third World, where addressing environmental issues such as soil erosion, water pollution and deforestation still remains squarely about serving human needs. By turning wilderness preservation into a moral absolute -- as opposed to simply another form of land use -- Deep Ecology has justified wresting crucial resources out of the hands of India's agrarian and tribal populations. "Specious nonsense about equal rights of all species cannot hide the plain fact that green imperialists . . . are dangerous," Mr. Guha has written.

Besides hurting the Third World, such radicalism had made the environmental movement incapable of responding to its own self-proclaimed challenges. Since nature can't speak for itself, the admonition to protect nature for nature's sake offers not a guide to action, but an invitation to inaction. That's because a non-anthropocentric view that treats nature as non-hierarchical collapses into incoherence when it becomes necessary to calculate trade-offs or set priorities between competing environmental goals.

Thus, even in the face of a supposedly calamitous threat like global warming, environmentalists can't bring themselves to embrace any sacrifice -- of salmons or birds or desert or protected wilderness. Its strategy comes down to pure obstructionism -- on full display in the Klamath dam controversy.

Yet, if environmentalists themselves are unwilling to give up anything for global warming, how can they expect sacrifices from others? If Al Gore wants to do something, he should first move out of his 6,000 square-foot Nashville mansion and then make a movie titled: "Damn the salmon."

Catching the Aquaculture Wave

info@reason.org (Michael De Alessi) — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 00:00:00 EST

Executive Summary

The island chain of Hawaii is poised on the leading edge of the development of the legal and technical frameworks necessary for open-ocean cage fishfarming. One offshore farm is up and running, and another has all the permits and licenses and is just waiting for the final rounds of financing. As these operations and other potential operators mature and grow, and with the right legal and regulatory reforms, Hawaii has the potential to lead the nation in quality offshore oceanic fish cultivation. This could be a tremendous boon to both Hawaii’s economy and its general entrepreneurial climate.

Yet many obstacles remain. Despite studies that show no measurable impact to the environment of the aquaculture already in operation, misplaced fears based on other situations and technologies coupled with a stifling, extended bureaucratic process that allows individuals to contest the permit process with or without reasonable cause hampers Hawaii’s chance to develop offshore fishfarming and expand its shrunken economy. This report explores case studies of fishfarming in Hawaii and how the state could reap economic benefits while guarding local waters against environmental impact. With a streamlining of its bureaucracy, Hawaii could soon lead the nation in offshore oceanic fish cultivation, spelling success for its citizens as well as take pressure off of wild stocks of depleted fish populations. It would also powerfully demonstrate how human ingenuity, properly channeled through free enterprise, could sustainably feed people and maintain, or even enhance, a healthy environment.

New Zealand the Leader in Healthy Fishing

info@reason.org (Michael De Alessi) — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 00:00:00 EDT

Santa Barbara News Press

It is heartening to see attention given to both the decline of our ocean fisheries and wildlife and to possible solutions. Fishermen, however, are not hellbent to "beat out good science," they're simply trying to make a living under a truly perverse regulatory system, one that encourages overfishing and habitat destruction.

Marine reserves offer great promise, but they are incomplete without changing the nature of fisheries management.

In New Zealand, the creation of harvest rights to fish so self-interest lines up with conservation and the future health of fisheries resulted in something anathema to most fisheries in the United States: fishermen agreeing to catch less than they were allotted by the government.

From communal village tenure over coral reefs in the South Pacific to the offshore fisheries of New Zealand, owners of fishing rights or territories press for and enforce their own conservation measures, including marine reserves and multi-species management.

Marine reserves can only be as effective as the respect given to their boundaries, and as long as we manage fisheries to encourage rapacious behavior, fughettaboutit.

Michael De Alessi is director of natural resource policy at Reason Foundation

Resolving Overfishing

info@reason.org (Michael De Alessi) — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 15:21:00 EDT

Fraser Forum

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Letter to US Commission on Ocean Policy

info@reason.org (Michael De Alessi) — Sat, 01 May 2004 15:23:00 EDT

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Oceans Need Innovation, Not Bureaucracy

info@reason.org (Michael De Alessi) — Mon, 26 Apr 2004 00:00:00 EDT

Knight Ridder Tribune News

Depending on whose science you subscribe to, our oceans are either: on the verge of trouble, in trouble, or on their deathbed. And you can pick your poison: habitat destruction, overfishing, and pollution are just a few of the problems we face.

The 16-member U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy just released a nearly 500-hundred page preliminary report, 2 1/2 years in the making, which is supposed to nurse our oceans back to health. Unfortunately, apart from making a timely acknowledgement of the environmental, commercial and recreational importance of the oceans, the report leaves much to be desired.

Instead of applying a comprehensive framework to oceans policy, the commission focuses on creating more administrative offices such as the National Ocean Council and Presidential Council of Advisers on Ocean Policy. Think Department of Homeland Security for our oceans. We're on orange alert, or is it yellow today? As most taxpayers, especially fresh off tax day will attest, bureaucracy does not equal "coordination," no matter how high it reaches or how small the minutiae it addresses.

In addition to layers and layers of added bureaucracy, the report recommends increasing federal research dollars and security for shipping and oil and gas activities (hardly surprising proposals considering the commission consists primarily of academics, federal agency representatives, and the oil and gas industry — all groups that would benefit).

At all levels, the heart of the problem is what is referred to in environmental circles as the "tragedy of the commons" — resources are depleted or damaged because they are free for the taking, whether fish, clean water or habitat.

The commission still doesn't seem to realize that more regulation and more government agencies won't beat man's ingenuity and the tragedy of commons. Consider Alaska: the state thought its halibut stock was being overfished, so it slashed the halibut fishing season from almost 10 months to just 72 hours. The result? There was no significant decrease in the number of halibut caught because fishermen and companies packed 10 months worth of fishing into three days.

The key to rehabilitating and sustaining our oceans is stewardship and property rights. The Alaskan halibut fishery is now a success story, not because of new regulations, but because it is one of the few fisheries in the United States managed on a property rights model. Fishermen have Individual Fishing Quotas, which allocate the right to catch a specific percentage of the scientifically determined total allowable catch. The quotas give fishermen both the incentive and the means to care more about the health of our seas. Fishermen in New Zealand using this system have actually voluntarily reduced their catch levels because they know the long-term health of the oceans is in their best interests.

Traditional societies in the Pacific Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands used these concepts to protect marine resources. Native Americans often had complex arrangements within and between tribes to allow salmon to move up and downstream in order to maintain the spawning runs and ensure a future supply of fish. Native Hawaiians recognized triangular strips of property running from mountaintop out to sea and respected the boundaries. According to a Hawaii Sea Grant study, this system was set up "to sustain the pattern of Hawaiian life," and included strict limits on harvests of "species, types, sizes and portions of fish."

In the eyes of the commission, property rights are valuable tools for solving specific problems, but not as an overall framework for oceans policy. This is a mistake. Of course there is more to managing ocean resources than fishing, but the fishery dynamic applies to every facet of oceans management. After all, most Americans are far more concerned with the price and quality the fish at their local supermarket or the health of their favorite fishing holes than they are about deep-sea topography or federal agency hierarchies.

The health of our oceans deserves bold, forward-thinking policies that have proven highly successful across the world, not another government agency promising more research.

Michael De Alessi is director of natural resource policy at Reason Foundation

Overcoming Three Hurdles to IFQs in US Fisheries

Thu, 01 Apr 2004 00:00:00 EST

Introduction

For decades, U.S. federal ﬁsheries policy has relied on direct regulations to pre-vent overﬁshing. Such an approach has not eliminated overﬁshing, nor has it prevented the enormous waste and hazards of ﬁshing under a destructive race for ﬁsh. The good news is that there is a better way to manage our ocean ﬁsheries. Individual ﬁshing quotas (IFQs), also called individual trans-ferable quotas (ITQs), have proven effective in restoring health and sanity in a host of ﬁsheries around the globe.

In spite of these successes, there are a number of obstacles to IFQ implemen-tation. To begin to address these, PERC, Reason Foundation, and Environmental Defense held a luncheon brieﬁng on Capi-tol Hill on November 12, 2003, for federal policy makers and their staffs. The brieﬁng, titled “Overcoming Hurdles to Implement-ing Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) in U.S. Fisheries,” was well-attended and opening remarks were made by Congress-man Wayne Gilchrist (R-MD), who plans to introduce legislation re-authorizing the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Management Act. Mr.Gilchrist assured everyone in atten-dance that ﬁshery management legislation needs to be “as reasonable, as pragmatic as possible,” and needless to say, more effec-tive than in the past.

The following discussion, based on the November 12 brieﬁng, describes the prob-lems in U.S. ﬁsheries, the potential role of IFQs, and the three most contentious issues surrounding their implementation. These are the questions of whether a two-tiered system that includes both IFQs and individual processor quotas (IPQs) is needed, what restrictions, if any, to place on IFQs, and whether or not to place a sunset provision on IFQs.

Support for the brieﬁng and this booklet is provided by the Alex C. Walker Educational & Charitable Foundation, the Bradley Fund for the Environment, and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. It is produced by Dianna Rienhart and is available in hard copy from PERC, Reason Foundation, or Environmental Defense or online at www.ifqsforﬁsheries.org.

Alternate Framework for the US Commission on Ocean Policy

info@reason.org (Michael De Alessi) — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 00:00:00 EST

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California's Fishy Fish Laws

info@reason.org (Michael De Alessi) — Mon, 29 Mar 2004 00:00:00 EST

Tech Central Station

California's coastline is one of its greatest natural assets. Below the surface however, a number of serious environmental problems loom, principally over-fishing and the loss of productive marine habitat.

California's answer to these problems was supposed to come in the form of 1999's Marine Life Protection Act, which would create a system of marine reserves where fishing would be prohibited. But the massive deficit means the state does not have the funds needed to make the marine reserves a reality — at least not now.

While environmental groups lambasted California's recent decision to suspend the reserves program, this fiscal crisis actually gives the state an opportunity to move towards a more effective long-term solution that stresses the cooperation of traditional foes — fisherman, both commercial and recreational, and environmental advocates.

California's Marine Life legislation takes an unimaginative, typically unsuccessful approach to protecting marine resources; it assumes that fishing and fishermen are the problem, and attempts to either bar them from large areas or to change their behavior through command and control regulations and restrictions instead of cooperative efforts. In other parts of the world, however, where the rights to harvest fish are more secure, it is the fishermen themselves who press for conservation measures and who often even create their own marine reserves.

Marine reserves certainly offer great promise as one piece of California's marine management puzzle. Numerous studies have shown that at least within the boundaries of marine reserves, marine life is more plentiful and diverse.

Jim Bohnsack, one of the leading marine reserve scientists at the National Marine Fisheries Service, has described reserves as "civilizing the oceans" by "putting fences in the oceans." And he's definitely on to something — good fences do make good neighbors. But the picture is incomplete and California's solution misdirected as long as it remains unclear who has the right to fish, and where.

The greatest threat to the oceans is what is referred to as the "the tragedy of the commons," when the race goes to the swift fisherman, all commercial fishermen have little choice but to deplete the seas because any fish they leave behind will simply be caught be someone else, rather than left to grow and reproduce for another year.

Marine reserves don't solve this key part of the crisis; they simply force fishermen to relocate. And the problem is frequently compounded by state or federal regulations that attempt to restrict fishing, but fail to address the reasons fish are over-harvested in the first place.

Other states and countries have successfully tackled this dilemma by creating tradable fishing rights. These tradable rights establish who has the right to catch fish, and how much they can catch (normally a percentage of an annual, scientifically determined, total catch).

In New Zealand , rights to fish are the equivalent of certifiable property rights. Their system has spawned the growth of innovative quota-owning management groups that invest heavily in fisheries science and enhancement. The management groups also tend to fish conservatively, leaving fish to repopulate the seas, because they recognize healthy oceans are a valuable asset.

The cooperative effort in New Zealand is in stark contrast to environmental efforts here.

In California, one species of rockfish, the bocaccio, may be a candidate for endangered species listing. When officials in California began a state-wide closure of the bocaccio fishery, fishermen were outraged. In a Los Angeles Times article about the fishery closures last summer, one Central California fisherman declared that "There's plenty of fish out there — The problem is, there's even more regulators." When the system of fishing rights was created in New Zealand, on the other hand, fishermen immediately criticized the government for actually setting some catch limits too high.

Marine reserves are only as effective as the respect given to their boundaries. The more financial hardships commercial fishermen endure, however, the more likely they are to skirt regulations, including restrictions on where they can and can't fish. The current system encourages cheating by making it difficult for fishermen to make a living. Healthy fisheries would also mean lower enforcement costs for the state, as fishermen will become more self-enforcing as they become more profitable.

Once the boundaries of marine reserves and fishing areas are well established, ocean advocates of all stripes are far more likely to act like good neighbors instead of fighting over the scraps. And seafood lovers around the state might finally see an increase in the supply of such delectable local fish as snapper, rockfish, Petrale sole, starry flounder, and sand dabs.

Michael De Alessi is director of natural resource policy at Reason Foundation

Processor Quotas Threaten Individual Fishing Quotas

info@reason.org (Michael De Alessi) info@reason.org (Donald R. Leal) — Tue, 30 Dec 2003 00:00:00 EST

Anchorage Daily News

In politics, good and bad policies too often get rolled into one. Such is the case with Alaska crab fisheries. Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens is backing individual fishing quotas for crabbers — a good policy — but forcing them to sell most of their catch to a small group of established processors — a bad policy.

This will hurt not only Alaska and West Coast crabbers who ply the waters of Alaska but other fishermen as well. All along the West Coast, fishermen who go after bottom fish such as Dover sole and sablefish are in desperate need of IFQs to bring back their fisheries — but not at the daunting price of a very limited market to sell their fish. Yet this is what the powerful senator is offering crabbers — and it could set a chilling precedent.

Stevens has offered his deal to crabbers as a rider to the omnibus appropriations bill that Congress must approve by Jan. 31. It comes when Alaska's crab fisheries and many other fisheries are in dire straits. Traditional approaches to managing U.S. fisheries — shortened seasons, restrictions on vessels and gear, and closed areas — have not stopped the buildup of excess capacity and overfishing in at least a third of commercially fished stocks in U.S. waters. And they often result in a dangerous race for fish, as Alaska crabbers can attest.

IFQs stop the race for fish by assigning individual fishermen specific shares of the total allowable catch set each season by managers. With IFQs each fisherman knows his or her allotted catch, so there is no need to race other fishermen for a share. In addition, managers can extend seasons beyond the four- to six-day openings common in Alaska crab fisheries since they know that the overall catch is capped by limits on individual catches.

An illustration of the effectiveness of IFQs is Alaska's halibut fishery. In the early 1990s, halibut fishermen were limited to fishing during just three 24-hour fishing openings a year. Not only did profits fall and most of the catch have to be frozen, but halibut fishermen had to fish in bad weather, resulting in loss of life. When IFQs were adopted in 1995, fishery managers extended the season to 245 days. Fishing became more profitable and safer.

Indeed, studies of fisheries in New Zealand, Iceland, Australia and Canada show that those with IFQs register higher profits, better stock management, less bycatch, improved safety and greater cooperation with government officials than traditional regulatory regimes.

Unfortunately, only four federal fisheries in the United States use IFQs today. The last time the Magnuson-Stevens Act (the nation's over-arching fishery legislation) was reauthorized, a temporary moratorium was imposed on new IFQs. The moratorium has expired, but politics have prevented more IFQs.

This situation is especially unfortunate for Alaska crab fishermen, who participate in one of the world's most dangerous fisheries. Short seasons increase the danger by limiting options for fishermen in deciding when to fish. But IFQs will allow managers to extend seasons so crab fishermen can fish during safer weather.

For Stevens, there is another issue — how to compensate processors who invested in plant capacity to meet the needs of short fishing seasons. If IFQs are implemented and seasons extended, some processors will have lots of excess capacity (like extra freezer space) and less control over prices because fishermen will be able to choose when to fish. The rider would allow crab fishermen to have IFQs, but they will have to deliver 90 percent of their catch to a handful of processors.

This rider has drawn protests. The Justice Department argues that it is anti-competitive and would not stand up to antitrust law. And Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, have criticized Stevens for attaching a precedent-setting policy issue to an appropriations bill.

Surely, better options — like a stranded capital buyout program or simply including processors in the allocation of IFQs — exist for compensating processors who were steered by flawed government policy to invest in redundant capacity. Let's save IFQs.

Donald R. Leal is a senior associate of the Property and Environment Research Center

Michael De Alessi is director of natural resource policy at Reason Foundation

One Fish, Two Fish, You Fish, I Fish

info@reason.org (Michael De Alessi) — Tue, 01 Jul 2003 15:52:00 EDT

Fraser Forum

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Arrogant and Corrupt

info@reason.org (Michael De Alessi) — Sat, 05 Apr 2003 00:00:00 EST

Long Beach Press Telegram

In the 30 years since its creation, the California Coastal Commission has played an important role in protecting the coast, limiting offshore oil and gas exploration, enforcing public access to ocean beaches, and restricting coastal development. But in the process it has been contentious, arbitrary, arrogant, corrupt, and often ignored property rights.

The California Appeals Court recently declared the commission unconstitutional due to its exposure to political influence. As a cosmetic fix to the court's decision, Gov. Gray Davis signed a hurried bill creating four-year fixed terms for legislative appointees to the commission.

That isn't a solution. Lawsuits will continue and more importantly, the commission is still in desperate need of a complete overhaul.

A 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling against the Coastal Commission described its demands for land in exchange for permits as an out-and-out plan of extortion. In 1992, former Commissioner Mark Nathanson was convicted for soliciting bribes in exchange for coastal building permits. And just last October, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Gov. Davis' re-election campaign received $8.3 million from donors with business before the Coastal Commission, most of whom got their permits approved shortly thereafter.

The latest case against the commission arises over a marine environmentalist group's plan to create kelp beds on the sandy ocean bottom using durable, recycled materials. Rodolphe Streichenberger, a French researcher, developed the plan with the help of the late Wheeler North, a CalTech marine biologist who specialized in replenishing depleted kelp forests.

Kelp forests are havens of biodiversity, great for countless species and a huge benefit to the overall health of our oceans. They are also in serious decline, according to the California Department of Fish and Game, especially in Southern California.

Recognizing the vast environmental benefits of kelp forests, Newport Beach officials approved the Marine Forest reef project and the site was leased from the Department of Fish and Game. Despite Newport's enthusiasm, the Coastal Commission deemed the reef unpermitted development, and refused to issue a retroactive permit. Detractors claimed it was simply an excuse for ocean dumping but the marine life is there for all to see (although by mandate there is now no maintenance of the reef), and a simple dumping plan would hardly merit the designs of a Cal-Tech biologist.

As with everything it does, the commission's problem with the Marine Forest project has more to do with jurisdiction and procedure than environmental effects. There are scientific, ecological questions that need to be asked, such as how reefs affect species composition, how durable the reefs are, and how they affect water quality, but these questions need to be asked in a less politically charged environment.

Peter Douglas, the Coastal Commission's most prominent employee, recently wrote, "The coast is never finally saved. It is always being saved."

He is right, but only because conservation and politics remain inextricably intertwined. The Nature Conservancy learned this long ago, which is why it originally turned to private conservation and respect for property rights to improve environmental quality.

Other states such as Alabama have experimented with privately built artificial reefs, and as a result, Alabama has seen a dramatic increase in offshore productivity. The Coastal Commission, on the other hand, has squashed any private innovators that have come its way.

The first target of the newly created commission in the early 1970s was the Sea Ranch, a visionary private development in northern Sonoma complete with its own set of even by today's standards onerous building restrictions aimed at environmental sensitivity. By the time the commission was through with them, however, they could no longer afford those covenants and their vision was compromised.

If Gov. Davis and the Legislature are serious about improving the Coastal Commission, all appointments should be made by the governor and be subject to review by the Legislature. Performance measures, such as coastal acreage developed and marine pollutants reduced, should be adopted so that the commission's mission is clear, and its predilection for granting favors to the well-connected limited.

Above all, entrepreneurs should be encouraged rather than discouraged from finding innovative solutions to environmental problems. With a restructured Coastal Commission, the state would reap the numerous benefits of a patchwork of biodiversity kelp forests and other environmentally sensitive developments that would actually improve the current condition of our coast.

Michael De Alessi is director of natural resource policy at Reason Foundation