THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 3, 1994 TAG: 9407010022
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 48 lines
Gov. George Allen's new chief of the Department of Environmental Quality, Peter Schmidt, says it is possible to ``strike a balance between a healthy economy and a healthy environment.'' He's got a tough job ahead. His challenge will be to make sure the DEQ takes into account the human impact of environmental regulation, a factor most environmental bureaucracies tend to downgrade or ignore altogether.
Pressure groups such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Southern Environmental Law Center have wasted no time in letting it be known they would prefer Schmidt to leave the job of regulatory decisions to the DEQ's ``professionals.'' That is to say, environmental activists would rather the results of last year's election not impinge their anti-growth agendas.
But elections do count, and one of the campaign issues Governor Allen commendably has followed through on with appointments is an idea considered rather unfashionable among greens: People are part of the environment, too. And one of the things people need is a growing economy in order to survive.
The best way to arrive at the balance between environmental and economic concerns that Mr. Schmidt cites is the vigorous deployment and enforcement of private-property rights. While the Bay Foundation, for instance, can offer only scorched-economy regulatory regimes, such as closing fisheries and locking up land, as ways to ``save the Bay,'' property rights offer a more just solution. If watermen could lease or purchase their fisheries, for instance, then they would have grounds to take legal action against polluters.
Property rights also have the virtue of signaling the costs of environmental regulation - a ``human-impact statement'' of sorts. If landowners have to be compensated for locking up so-called wetlands, then regulators must be much more careful about what they call a wetland.
Mere mention of the phrase ``property rights'' is enough to send blood-pressures skyward at the average environmental confab. So if Schmidt, who has a good track record in private industry of finding market solutions to environmental problems, ever has any doubt as to whether he's on the right track, he need look no further than his ``In'' box. If there's a stack of angry mail bearing green groups' letterheads, it is likely he'll have been doing something right. by CNB