The SfaW We're In ' ■ Frontier Mentality Offshore a la Watt

by David Moore Knowing what petrochemicals can do to our water and air supplies, and having seen what loose oil can do to places like the North Sea off the shores of Scotland and Denmark, I can easily relate to Gov. Kean's effort to legally restrain Interior Secretary James Watt from helter-skelter disposal of offshore drilling sites to the east of New Jersey. Gov. Kean took to the courts only after Watt snubbed his . efforts to inject a little reason into the recent attempt at auctioning off 155 of the three-mile-square prospecting sites. Of 155 being auctioned for the second time (there were no takers last December), the deletion of only seven was sought by Kean. Sixteen others need careful environmental scrutiny and possible drilling restrictions, Kean's suit argued. Nothing came of the suit, inasmuch as nobody bid on the 23 sites in contention, so the judge said the whole thing was "moot.” But another hearing has been scheduled because New Jersey wants to establilsh the legal point

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(From Page 34) are manifested in home rule battles with outside agencies which usually do no better than the local bureaucrat's and appointees who are too close to the beach to see the eroding sands. ANYONE WHO lives by the shore knows the folly of allowing building on the dunes or behind fragile manmade barricades — yet more building than ever goes on in these precarious zones. Anyone who has been reading the paper the past decade knows the dangers besetting our peninsula and marine environments — yet we permit lethal chemicals to enter^our food and recreation chains, still dump bad water without purification thru stormwater drains onto beaches and into backbays, and now, with little outcry, are letting the county MUA shortchange us and renege on the longstanding promise to clean up our waters by telling them it’s okay to pump insufficiently treated' wastewater off our ocean beaches thru circuitous, multi-million dollar 1 pipelines. WE ALL KNOW the frustrations and inconveniences caused by inadequate parking in the summer — yet politicians clamor for more tourism, and developers build more buildings on land that should be left for parking. We pack ’em in so that businessmen who desert us after Labor Day can make a bundle (and still collect Unemployment) while we are forced to travel some distance for needed goods and services. We abide the congestion, noise, unruliess like meek sheep herded into a belief that vWiatever the merchant desires is sacrosanct, and the hell with peace and quiet for us residents who — afterall, we tell ourselves — have those wonderful Golden Days of autumn to look forward to (never mentioning the bleakness of the winter to follow). AND ALL the time we talk of extending the tourist season, of making the resort the perfect place for year-round living for people we entice from the horrible cities. We make housing illusively affordable thru Farmers Home, and then wonder why we have so much juvenile delinquency and crime that we did not have before. We never used to lock our doors is the saying of people living in an area that's becoming overcrowded despite the deceptive large lot-size regulations which are rendered useless by rubber stamp variances from appointed officials

Who all the while reminisce how they used to hunt and fish in areas now populated or polluted. What’s more, they consider such degradation inevitable because they do not realize that "progress” is a deter- i mination that lies within' their province. They don’t even consider happiness, because their advice is that cannot be legislated and. therefore, regulated. And too, they allow themselves to be intimidated or boondoggled into believing that submission is unimportant. It’s only our future! IT IS PERHAPS best illustrated on the planning and zoning boards in the 16 municipalities of the Jersey Cape how its native stock and longtime residents are giving away the Pilgrim heritage and allowing this beautiful peninsula to be destroyed lot by lot, variance' by variance. An educational system that fails. A political system that's honest if not exemplary. Planners and other local regulators who practice home rule parochialism to the detriment of future. How can that be? asks the proverbial visitor from another planet landing in the midst of this beautiful shore. The answer is that it is, indeed, illusory. We believe it ourselves; we .even have dn expression for it: I've got sand in my shoes. . . THIS IS THE dreamland where *the sons and daughters of parents without epough wealth to be sent away to private school are brought up thinking that adulthood means somewhere beyond 12th grade when you work three or four months (unless you have a political job) and that getting ahead means beihgindustrious in the surnmerum^. It’s as if the need to'tontinue learning ends witm graduation from high school or community college or earning credits for a tyigher step on the negotiated pay scale. It’s a mentality that lacks or shuns the ability not onl$T to perceive knowledge, but to protect heritage and beauty as well. IT IS IRONIC that Cape May County is without a college of its own. If there ever was a place that could benefit by academia it is -here. And vice versa. Here is the idyllic, reflective setting in which to educate. Here is_Jhe^tabor force in need of work. Here are the people who need education. I leave you with this thought (and please do not consider it facetiously): After the next big storm, build a university. (But not on the beachfront.)

that a state can act to win environmentally based restrictions on lease.sales. It’s thought that Watt will only try to keep on taking bids until some co/npany or other agrees to buy drilling rights. . Aside from the quick and dirty goal of rising a small amount of extra money to help balance the Reagan budget, little sense emerges from Watt's having thrown' the whole country’s Outer Continental Shelf open to bidding. This state's argument is that the marine fisheries are a renewable and essential resource which shouldn't receive Watt's there's no tomorrow treatment. What we are up against is a lust for fast bucks versus those who hope there really IS a tomorrow! The best marine fisheries knowledge pinpointed the seven disputed tracts as breeding grounds or favored habitat of the tilefish, a king-sized dweller of the deep outer shelf bottoms, plus lobsters, red crab and other economically important species. The tilefish burrow^ into banks of submerged canyons during part of its life cycle,' and the fear is that drilling would cause avalanches or introduce quantities of drilling muds to the detriment of the tilefish. Also, tilefishing is accomplished with lines stretching out for three miles or more, raising all kinds of snagging probleins wilh the extensive anchor lines of drill rigs. « Watt’s game in throwing the whole national offshore shelf into the bidding mill, as opppsed to a controlled

release system, seems to b^ that "the market will select lease tracts instead of thfe government'' In spite of the Interior Secretary's grandstanding, the oil companies and the Interior Department have worked hand in hand for ycaris. In past practice, the sites that had the most promise and fewest environmental problems were selected to be explored first, so the likelihood of lease bidding on tracts previously offered was really remote. Which brings up another point with which Watt seems to have troubld 1 : That oil, those lands out there bepqath the seas, belong to all of us and not to the oil companies, and certainly not to Watt! TTie frontier mentality which smites all of us once in awhile seems to have taken deep root in this administration's Interior Department. The vision of unlimited bounty dies hard. We're going to need oil for all kinds of things besides heating homes and running cars, and the object definitely should not be to extract it all as rapidly as possible. That approach leaves only a nebulous technology to get us through coming centuries, and somehow I'm not that much of a gambler when it comes to the human future. Watt seems to equate any offshore drilling with the bland Gulf Coast environment, and that's hardly true in the turbulent northern Atlantic, or the Pacific and Alaskarrwaters as well. Not enough environmental overview is being exercised in this mad scamble, and we will probably all come to regret this superficial approach David Moore is executive director of the N J. Conserva- . tion Foundation. (201) 539-7540.

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