THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 16, 1995 TAG: 9501130006
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
Gov. George F. Allen's administration seems to view the environment and business as boxers engaged in a bout that business must not be allowed to lose. The combatants may fight to a draw, but the environment must never be allowed to KO Allen's oft-stated goal of generating 120,000 jobs for Virginians during his four-year term.
The issuance of new environmental regulations has slowed to a trickle, and the governor means to find and destroy any state environmental rules more stringent than the federal government requires. His environmental-protection policy appears to be, ``We'll do the least allowed.''
Having business not lose is a terrific idea for many reasons, notably jobs and tax revenue.
But must the environment - and environmentalists - be viewed with such suspicion? Better that business and the environment find common ground and dance, not box.
The most obvious example of the environment and business waltzing profitably is tourism.
In Virginia, tourism is the third-largest nonagricultural, nongovernmental employer. Because of tourism, 160,200 Virginians had jobs in 1993. Only health services, with 184,800 employees, and business services, with 180,300 employees, ranked higher.
Tourism is almost too good to be true. People from out of state come bearing money, and they leave it here.
In 1993, travelers in Virginia spent $9 billion - not the ``m'' word but the ``b'' word. Of that amount, about $1 billion was in-state travel, and a large chunk was business travel. Still, the biggest part had to do with tourism.
Dexter Koehl, spokesman for Travel Industry Association of America, a trade organization, said, ``The environment is our product. When you are traveling for tourism you are traveling to a destination that has some appeal to you. How that destination appears environmentally is very important.''
The quickest way to gain 120,000 jobs in Virginia would be to make Virginia the dumping ground for whatever everyone else wants to be rid of. As recently reported by reporter David M. Poole, the state Air Pollution Control Board, stocked with Allen appointees, gave preliminary approval for medical-waste incinerators in Hopewell and Bland County.
``They're pro-business,'' complained Bland County resident Harlan Cox, who'd organized opposition to the incinerators. ``They don't care a whole lot about the environment.''
Meanwhile, bright entrepreneurs like Tom Reynolds of Hampton are finding environmentally safe ways to turn profits. What started as research on ``Conscientious Capitalism'' for an honors project at Thomas Nelson Community College in 1991 has grown into a business, Jefferson's Farm Inc., raising naturally colored cotton organically. ``We think,'' Reynolds wrote recently, ``that the best way to preserve the environment is to produce a profitable product in an environmentally sensitive manner.''
Granted, there will not be 120,000 new jobs growing colored cotton organically, but a degradation of the environment would cost jobs, sooner or later. If we preserve Virginia's natural bounty, jobs will come. by CNB