The language in the biological opinion that the National Marine Fisheries Service issued that sets terms on the Hawai`i longline fishery couldn’t be clearer. If the fishery is to continue to operate, observers must be on board enough boats in the fleet to provide meaningful, scientifically useful information on the fleet’s interactions with endangered and threatened sea turtles. If that doesn’t happen, then NMFS has no choice but to shut down the fishery.
We’re not faulting the administrators of the Southwest Region of NMFS, in whose jurisdiction Hawai`i falls, for scaling back the observer program from a meager 3 percent coverage to a shameful 1 percent or less. The National Marine Fisheries Service was given no money at all by Congress to operate the observer program this year. That it has continued to this point – two thirds through the 2000 fiscal year – is a tribute to the ability of folks in the Southwest Region to scrounge funds from other programs.
Where does the problem lie? In past year, Congress has earmarked special line items in the NMFS budget for the Hawai`i observer program. That didn’t happen this year. Perhaps anticipating otherwise, NMFS did not include the observer program in its base budget.
Five years ago, NMFS proposed that Hawai`i fishers pick up the costs of this program. The ensuing uproar ensured that the proposal died a quick death. But with no other source of funds for the program, the longline fishery is now in a far more vulnerable position than it would have been had it worked with NMFS to devise an equitable way to have the people who benefit from the observers’ presence – the fishers, that is – pay for that benefit instead of charging it onto the taxpayers.
How is the fishery vulnerable? Given the black-and-white language of the biological opinion, the fishery will be in clear violation of the legal terms under which it must operate. Should anyone take NMFS to court over this issue – an eventuality that would seem almost inevitable — the law would almost certainly be on the challenger’s side.
But surely no court would close the fishery, would it? That was essentially the position taken by government lawyers when federal district Judge David Ezra closed off much of the northern Pacific Ocean to longliners last November.
The federal courts have made it clear that NMFS, the fishers, and the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council are not above the law. No one – least of all the agency and its constituents – should be stunned if the fishery is closed until observers are back on board the boats.
The observers are a vital element in the longline fishery and their presence must be restored, not just to the status quo ante of 14 men and women, but to a level at least twice that. To make this happen, environmentalists, fishers, and agency people should – as the two disparate voices of Jim Cook and Eric Gilman suggest – come together and make common cause to figure out a way to make the observer program work for everyone.
Antenna-Mania
Like mushrooms after a Hilo rain, tall, 150-foot to 200-foot “monopoles” are sprouting all over the state. Small wonder. Go to any one of a number of websites relating to wireless communications (cell phones, that would be), and you’ll find enticements for landowners to offer their properties as sites for monopoles that support the relays that make cell phone systems work. As the phones become more and more popular, and as people take them into ever more remote spots, the expectation of seamless service has resulted in the proliferation of antennas not just in the urban areas, but in Hawai`i’s mountain ridges, agricultural lands, and rural communities.
This pleases the cell phone companies. It pleases the people who are paying off their mortgages by leasing a tiny corner of their land as a tower site. It even pleases the cell phone users – until they look up and see the antennas rising, virtually overnight, just across the fence line from their homes. These are the people who enjoy few of the antennas’ benefits and who must endure all of their downside: reduced property values (with no lease rent to offset the injury), possible harm from radio-frequency emissions (though the government says this is okay), and the intangible loss that accompanies blighted views.
That the Hawai`i and Maui county planners elected for years not to put these towers through the public notice requirements that accompany special permits in the Agricultural District or Special Management Area speaks volumes about where their sympathies lie. It took nothing short of a decision by the state Supreme Court to get Hawai`i County to mend its ways and require new applicants for towers to apply for special permits. Maui County is hardly better; the county interim zoning that applies to so much of the rural areas there is no match for the aggressive cell phone companies.
As the consultants Kreines & Kreines point out on their web site [url=http://www.planwireless.com,]www.planwireless.com,[/url] alternatives to these towers exist and are available at reasonable cost. County planners should explore these alternatives before regarding towers as the inevitable cost of cell phone service. Meanwhile, users of cell phones in Hawai`i would do well to use the services only of those providers who show some sensitivity to the wishes of the communities in which their facilities are sited.
Volume 10, Number 12 June 2000
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