A national alliance of fishing groups, including the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, and advocates for the nation's farmers, ranchers, builders and miners have urged Congress to negate President Obama's National Ocean Policy, rolled out in 2010 via executive order.
Fishing interests warn that the policy entails a kind of ocean zoning that threatens fishing industry jobs, while the land-based alliance expressed concern about executive overreach that might lead to decisions based on uncertain values and priorities, squelching business along inland waterways.
The White House has denied the policy is akin to ocean zoning, and, in two heated hearings by the House Natural Resources Committee this fall, Congressman Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, has scoffed at the worries.
"Opposing ocean planning is like opposing air traffic control," Markey argued at the second hearing on Nov. 7. He described the opposition as engaging in "scare tactics."
But the Republican majority, led by the committee chairman, Congressman Doc Hastings of Washington, agreed with the ocean zoning characterization in sparring with Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, who was representing the president.
Read the complete story by Richard Gaines in The Gloucester Times