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Back off ... he's a scientist
By BILL ADAIR, Times Staff Writer
Inside, Bennett is on the phone with an executive from the company that makes Old Bay seafood seasoning. The company would like Bennett's beach-loving environmental group, the American Littoral Society, to take part in a joint promotion in several markets, including the Tampa Bay area. Bennett, who has spent a lifetime raising a fuss about threats to the nation's beaches, wants to make sure the spice company doesn't have an environmental skeleton in its closet. He asks, "You're not under indictment for some environmental crime, are you? You're not flushing cayenne pepper into the water supply, are you?" The woman assures him the company has a clean record. Bennett seems satisfied. The $1,000 from Old Bay will be helpful for the Littoral Society's latest campaign -- warning about dangerous chemicals in the pressure-treated wood used in docks. Bennett, a lanky 71-year-old, has spent three decades crusading for better beaches. As a college student, he wrote a research paper about sand. As a Navy diver, he saw how military exercises could damage underwater ecosystems.
They are giant feet -- size 15 -- that know their way around the Jersey shore. He removes his shoes in May and doesn't wear them again until November. "Why wear shoes when you don't have to?" he asks. "I don't have to. It's one of the perks of being the boss." The bumper stickers on the back of his battered white pickup are a testament to his eclectic goals. There's one that urges people not to throw cigarette butts on the beach. There's one that lambasts Wal-Mart for destroying small towns. Another one says "INVEST IN AMERICA -- BUY A CONGRESSMAN." His office, in a dilapidated building on the Sandy Hook National Seashore, is equally odd. The walls are covered with fishing lures, and photographs of Elvis and former President Nixon. ("It's funny. A lot of good environmental legislation was passed under Nixon," Bennett says. "He's not my favorite, but he's up there.") In the corner is a giant pair of orange Converse tennis shoes which Bennett, of course, rarely wears. Bennett loves the legends of the sea. One of his favorite beach towns is nearby Sea Bright, N.J., because of its checkered history. "Sea Bright was a town full of bandits and rum-runners and pirates," he says. Yet he has criticized Sea Bright officials for restricting access to their two-mile-long beach, which was renourished as part of a $210-million project about six years ago. His foes in the contentious world of sand portray him as an extremist who opposes all renourishment programs and wants to eliminate beachfront development. "He wants to remove the infrastructure, remove the homes," says Harry deButts, the head of public works in Avalon, N.J., a beachfront town that has been nourishing its beaches for 15 years. "That's not realistic." Bennett says he is not opposed to all nourishment. "I think there are places where it makes sense. There are places where you've built so much infrastructure, you have to nourish." But he has been a loud critic of federal beach programs, arguing that they benefit rich beach dwellers who then keep outsiders away. "Everybody's moving to the coast, everybody wants a piece of the action. But once they get there, they don't want anyone else." TOMORROW: PRESIDENT BUSH VS. THE SANDMEN
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
