Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 23, 2002
ST. PETERSBURG -- The nation's laws and policies on the oceans are so overlapped and entangled that a new federal agency might be needed to bring some order to the mess, according to William D. Ruckelshaus, a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
"Over and over we keep hearing the same message," said Ruckelshaus, now a member of the new U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, which met here Friday. "Lack of coordination among the agencies is killing people."
The commission's 16 members, appointed by President Bush, have a year to come up with a new national plan for dealing with almost every issue that affects the nation's oceans.
The panel heard Friday from government officials and scientists, divers and boaters, think tankers and teenagers in a daylong meeting at the Florida Marine Research Institute. In coming months, seven more meetings are planned in other U.S. coastal regions. Then a report with recommendations is due the president and Congress.
In an interview, Ruckelshaus, who heads the commission's working group on governance, said a recommendation for a new federal agency "is clearly on the table." A new agency might be combined with one that already exists, he said, but he emphasized that no such decision has been made.
"All I need to do is look like I recommended something like that at this early juncture, and there it goes," he said.
Retired Adm. James D. Watkins, former chief of naval operations and chairman of the commission, agreed, calling current laws, regulations and policies "byzantine." Some kind of "new structure at the federal level" probably will be required, he said.
Given the commission's broad mandate to rethink the nation's relationship with its oceans and shorelines, Watkins acknowledged the group could get bogged down in talk.
"There is a risk," he said, "that the new policy a year from now will be a one-day media event. I've seen that happen too often in government, and it's not going to happen here."
Among those the commission heard from Friday were:
John C. Ogden, director of the Florida Institute of Oceanography, who challenged the panel to think boldly. "Public concern is a fact," he said. "People care." The commission should recommend the creation of a 20-year ocean use plan, Ogden said, which would govern activities out to 200 miles from shore, in much the same way communities limit land use. "We must use the oceans, not use them up."
Heather Rothrock, 18, a senior at Boca Ciega High School, who spent a summer in the Dry Tortugas as an intern with the Ocean Conservancy. "I love the ocean," she said, winning applause as she described her first dive into the underwater world. "It scares me to think of the future if better laws are not passed."