AR-News: (U.S. - Ca.) purchasing the Pacific

[Mary Finelli]

SEAS THE DAY
Enviros Push California to Buy Ocean Areas and Fishing Boats
Daily Grist, April 6, 2004


Environmental groups, buoyed by their success in channeling government money 
to buy large swaths of California coast to protect it from development, have 
set their sights on the Pacific Ocean. They hope to secure funding to buy 
boats, fishing permits, and even plots of ocean floor off the California 
coast in an effort to mitigate the destructive effects on the ocean of 
overpopulation, pollution, and overfishing.  What the groups -- including 
the Natural Resources Defense Council and Oceans Conservancy -- are after is 
money set aside by the state's Proposition 50, a $3.44 billion bond measure 
passed in 2002 to protect California's coastlines and wetlands.  The groups 
hope to expand the measure's bailiwick to include tracts of ocean off the 
coast.  To succeed, their proposal to expand the bond measure's scope would 
have to pass the Senate and Assembly by June and be approved by California 
voters in November. The measure is opposed by oil companies and commercial 
and recreational fishers.  Ron Aliotti, owner of a 34-foot fishing boat, 
said angrily, "They want to keep it all pristine, just like God made it."

straight to the source: The Mercury News, Associated Press, Jim Wasserman, 
04 Apr 2004
http://www.gristmagazine.com/cgi-bin/forward.pl?forward_id=2264

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