Nader Calls on Senator Ted Stevens to Abandon Special Interest Legislation 11/11/2003
From: Ralph Nader, 202-387-8034 WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 -- In a letter to Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Consumer Advocate Ralph Nader wrote: There are serious problems with your proposal that is designated as Title IX of the CJS Appropriations Bill, problems that I would have assumed that you would have recognized and avoided. Since these problems still have not been addressed, even after very broad coalitions of fishermen, conservationists, scientists and your fellow members of Congress pointed them out, I must assume that your busy schedule has not allowed you to fully consider them. In summary fashion then, these are the problems with Title IX that can only be addressed by removing the entire title and allowing the processes that you so frequently endorse to be followed in the North Pacific as they are in the rest of the United States: 1. The limitation on funding for implementation of the Essential Fish Habitat requirements is a denial of the public process that is currently underway in the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. 2. That same limitation denies even the possibility for the very scientific research that you insist is necessary for the Council to do its work fairly and appropriately. 3. That same limitation virtually guarantees the continued destruction of deep sea coral gardens that the head of Fisheries for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration has determined to be Habitat Areas of Particular Concern warranting special protection. 4. The provision that creates a cabal of processors which are granted exclusive rights to receive and process North Pacific crab resources was found to be anti-competitive by the Justice Department and to be potentially in violation of Anti-trust laws. 5. That provision for "Processor Quotas" or PQs would create the very kind of combination in restraint of free trade that the National Research Council, in the report "Sharing the Fish", said was unnecessary even if an IFQ system for fishermen were to be established. 6. The inclusion of a section of the rider favoring a corporation that your son lobbies for and on whose board of directors your son sits presents an unfortunate but undeniable perception of a very raw and disturbing conflict of interest. 7. The provision to institutionalize a destructive bottom trawling fishery for Aleutian Rockfish at the very time that the National Research Council findings on the damaging impacts of trawling on habitat are being considered by the councils and the courts is counterproductive and unnecessarily violates reasonable conservation principles. 8. The provision that opens thousands of acres of ocean floor, that have been closed to fishing for the past several years in order to protect endangered Steller sea lions, flies in the face of the caution that you have so frequently praised as a conservative approach to fisheries management in the North Pacific. This rider, if not stopped by a counter move would allow the destruction of thousands of square miles of deep sea coral habitat and open stellar sea lion refuges to exploitation by a small cartel of industrial fishing companies. Interested citizens can find more information at: http://www.oceana.org |