Economic Impact

NEW BEDFORD – May 4, 2011 – An economic assessment team from the U.S. Department of Commerce will arrive today for three days of meetings with city, banking, fishery, business and political leaders.

Mayor Scott W. Lang and others expressed concern the site visit might tend to distract from the basic fact that the city is experiencing hardship because of the rules and policies of the very agency that is now extending a helping hand. And critics say the meetings are at least a year too late and should have happened before catch shares and sector management were imposed on the region's groundfishery, as required by the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

Lang said: "We've been trying to get them to understand that the reason they are coming to town is because of the economic impact on the fishing industry. They're talking about a total evaluation of the economy. That's the greatest thing they could offer with their various offices and resources, in-kind services. We would love it. But in reality we want them to understand that their regulations caused a tremendous amount of economic hardship."

Read the complete story from The South Coast Today.

 

 

 

 

 

May 3, 2011 – Forged in independence, laid low by regulatory constraints, America's original fishing port told its story in many voices from many perspectives Tuesday, appealing to one arm of the U.S. Commerce Department for relief to help survive the harm done by another.

"It's like good cop, bad cop," noted Mike Linquata, president of owner of The Gloucester House, where the event was held.

The narrative woven in discouraged stories — by an anthropologist, a drydock repair railway manager, the ice house owner, a lender of last resort, auction house owner and numerous fishermen, among others — was of a fishing community hanging on in "desperation" above a frayed safety net waiting and hoping to be around long enough to reap the rewards just offshore and around the corner from successfully rebuilt stocks.

The determination to persevere has led to the leveraging of assets right down to family homes virtually around the port in an arc of risk, noted state Rep. Ann Margaret Ferrante, Vito Giacalone, who heads the Gloucester Community Preservation Fund, and Brian Tarr, who heads a federally seeded, $1 million revolving loan fund.

Together, they described a system stressed by unpredictable, radical changes in tack by federal fisheries regulators — even to the abandonment of the currency that determines participation in the fishery — with specially connected groups outside of Gloucester getting extra access and equity.

"The killer is regulatory instability," Giacalone noted.

"Yes, we have a disaster, it's a man-made disaster," said Vito Calomo, a retired fishing captain and advisor to Sen. Scott Brown. Sen. John Kerry also sent his fisheries advisor, Amy Kerrigan, to the meeting.

Here's who was part of the group, assigned by the Department of Commerce to evaulate the economic needs of Gloucester, and — later this week and next — five other New England fishing ports,

Team leader Joshua Barnes serves as the department's Economic Development Administration's disaster recovery and resiliency coordinator. Last year, he spent time in the Gulf of Mexico ports responding to the oil spill's economic impacts, and was awarded the U.S. Coast Guard's Commander's Award for Civilian Service. He holds a degree in urban and rural development from James Madison University.

Dick Clime is a Mainer and administers the Working Waterfront Access Pilot Program after 31 years on the water running an oyster farming business.

Randall Gibson works for the Department of Agriculture in rural development, working on an initiative aimed at creating economic vitality in rural communities — which includes Gloucester, notwithstanding its place in the greater Boston market.

Douglas Gutro is a Quincy native and former City Council president who now is with the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA is engaged with the city of Gloucester in a legal and regulatory dispute over a mandate to spend $60 million or more on an upgrade of the sewer treatment plant for disputed environmental benefits.

Jeanne A. Hulit is New England regional administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, and has worked for the state of Maine and attended Boston University.

Cedric Kam is an economic development specialist at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, who has worked at length in Connecticut in banking and government after graduating from Dartmouth College and serviign in the Army during the Vietnam War era.

Robert Nelson is district director of the Small Business Administration's Massachusetts District Office, specializing in entrepreneurial efforts coming from a banking background in NewsEngland.

Kristen Sarri, acting director of policy and strategic planning for the Commerce Department, advises Secretary Gary Locke on NOAA and green economy issues, budgeting and policy. Previously, Sarri was a senior staffer on the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee and policy advisor for Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

Steven G. Smith, is a retired Navy rear admiral and director of the Office of Disaster Planning for the US Small Business Administration, with a broad network of private and public contacts for community recovery from disasters.

Matthew Suchodolski is with EDA's Philadelphia regional office that includes Massachusetts where he is responsible for dfevelopment and maintenance of formal networks to insure sound financial agreements with municipal, regional and non-profit economic development interests. He also worked in New Hampshire and New Jersey economic development positions.

Timothy J. Theberge, a workforce development specialist with the Department of Labor, is a native of Methuen, and fuctions as an expert in the Trad Act, and dislocated workers programs

Mickie Valente heads a Florida based consulting company that focuses on economic development and post disaster redevelopment planning, and has experience with Cedar Rapids, Iowa, following the 2008 floods and ibn Louisiana and Alabama post Deepwater Horizon.

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Federal officials have agreed to reduce a large section of ocean off Massachusetts being considered for wind energy projects by more than half.

"We have heard significant concerns from the people of Massachusetts and we have acted on those concerns," U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement Director Michael Bromwich said in a statement on the decision released Monday.

The decision cuts a 3,000-square-mile area south of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket that was being considered for offshore wind energy projects to roughly 1,300 square miles.

The majority of the remaining area available to be leased begins southwest of the Vineyard and extends to a location south of Nantucket. The area begins about 14 miles off the coast of the Vineyard and 24 miles south of Nantucket.

Read the complete story from The South Coast Today.

 

 

 

 

 

Championed by NOAA adminstrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco, catch shares and sector management cut the capacity of the fishing fleet dramatically. People lost their jobs. Small boats with small fishing histories and small allocations tied up or sold out. Bigger players got even bigger: The top 10 percent of the fleet now holds the lion's share of the business.

No one is asking that the fleet go back to the old "days-at-sea" method of restricting catch. That was messy, unpredictable and, in many cases, inefficient. Sectors, which let fishermen decide how to limit their catch to stay within their allowances, are complex and expensive, and the industry still hasn't found its sea legs.

Fishing quota is being leased and traded throughout the groundfish fleet, which creates an additional expense that crews must absorb. Some boats are fishing for nothing more than to be out there, because with so little quota they can't catch enough fish to pay for their expenses.

But there has been a grudging acknowledgement that sectors can work if costs are controlled and allocations are sufficient to make it pay to go fishing.

Read the complete story from The South Coast Today.

 

 

 

 

 

Capt. Jeff Murray of the scalloper F/V Endurance said Friday, "We were averaging 4,000 pounds per day." That added up to a grand total of 62,000 pounds of scallops during 16 days at sea, dock to dock. It's a record, he said.

That catch brought a landing price of $615,000. Murray, who lives in Rochester and started fishing alongside his dad at age 10, said the six members of his crew will see an average of about $39,000 each.

But this won't happen very often; he said the Endurance was allocated 32 days this year in open-bottom areas and four days in closed areas. He'll captain other boats to keep working.

Read the complete story from The South Coast Today.

 

 

 

 

 

Two days of fact-finding by teams from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Assistance Administration kick off on Monday, with Gloucester officials and private business people due to meet with the visitors.

The intense series of seminar meetings was ordered by Commerce Secretary Gary Locke under pressure from U.S. Sen. John Kerry after Locke largely declined to accept the findings in a state-commissioned study showing how a new fisheries regulatory format has brought economic harm to Gloucester and other fishing communities.

Mayor Carolyn Kirk on Friday issued the agenda for the suite of meetings, about half of which are open to the public. The closed meetings, the mayor said, are to allow for business and government to exchange proprietary information and discuss programs that are not ready for announcement.

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

NEW BEDFORD — Mayor Scott W. Lang reacted angrily to Thursday's decision by the New England Fishery Management Council to keep sharp restrictions on haddock bycatch by midwater trawlers catching herring and mackerel.

The council, he said, continues to ignore the harm its decisions are causing to fishing communities and is setting limits that have no scientific justification. "Haddock is not a choke species," Lang said.

Ultra-low bycatch requirements are being blamed for the shutdown of NORPEL in New Bedford, where 120 employees caught and processed pelagic fish. Georges Bank haddock is in abundant supply and is severely underfished, so much so that boats seeking other species can't avoid them.

In a letter he presented in person to the council at its meeting in Mystic, Conn., Lang wrote, "There was no scientific basis for reducing the 2.0 percent cap proposed by the Science Center's groundfish biologist down to only 0.2 percent. This number was completely arbitrary and has caused significant harm to the individuals who work in the herring industry."

Read the complete story from The South Coast Today.

 

 

 

 

 

Campaign To Educate Corporate Giant On Anti-Fishing “Greenwashing” 

Recreational fishermen are being urged to Stay Away From Safeway! According to a recent press release from Safeway, the corporate grocery giant is openly endorsing California’s Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) initiative under which large areas of state waters are being closed – possibly forever – to public fishing access. 

The Recreational Fishing Alliance’s (RFA) California chapters are asking anglers on every coast to help send the message to Safeway that we have a right to fish!

“Apparently Safeway has gotten some bad advice from the people in the ocean protection racket, a community to which the California-based mega-corporation is now donating profits,” said Jim Martin, West Coast Regional Director of the RFA. “Safeway says it is supporting groups that make a difference like the Food Marketing Institute’s Sustainable Seafood Working Group, the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions and the World Wildlife Fund’s Aquaculture Dialogues, but it’s little more than corporate greenwashing.”

In an official statement, Safeway said “An important part of being a responsible seafood business is to not only limit the impacts of where we are fishing, but to set aside areas where we are not. Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s) are important to ensure the biodiversity and productivity of our oceans. In California, Safeway is a proponent of the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative (MLPA), which balances the use and conservation of living marine resources through a statewide network of MPA’s.”

Martin said groups under the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions umbrella includes Ocean Conservancy, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, are all organizations that have been most dedicated to closing our fishing access to the oceans, bays and estuaries of California through the MLPA Initiative. RFA believes strongly that once these groups have achieved their goals in California, they will be working overtime in every other coastal state to create a network of no-take zones that bar “injury,” “harm” and “harassment” of fish stocks in large areas of the nation’s marine waters.

“Safeway would apparently rather have the public buy farm-raised fish and seafood caught by foreign countries outside of U.S. waters, countries with less stringent controls on fishing effort than we enjoy in California, instead of being able to catch a few fish for the table our families as recreational or subsistence fishermen,” Martin said.

“California anglers have been outraged to learn that the money they spend at a Safeway grocery store might end up in the hands of anti-fishing groups like the NRDC and the Ocean Conservancy.”

Martin and other West Coast RFA activists have been busily pushing back on the blanket marine reserve efforts now being conducted by Safeway’s beneficiaries, arguing that this is not about whether science-based area closures should or should not be a part of the nation’s fishery management system, but rather a large corporation throwing its support behind ex-Governor Schwarzenegger’s highly-charged MLPA Initiative.

“The MLPA proponents keep telling business leaders and media outlets that MPA’s work and that they successfully rebuild fisheries, but the science doesn’t actually support that,” Martin said. “These marine protected areas have to be distinguished from science-based area closures, restrictions along spawning grounds for example, but the MLPA Initiative didn’t take any of those concerns into consideration. Even the hand-picked and privatelyfunded advisory team for the MLPA agreed that fishery management controls were the deciding factor in fisheries sustainability,” he added.

Martin added that much of the scientific discussion regarding the MLPA Initiative was lost in the debate and rhetoric, perhaps by design. “The MLPA Initiative is currently under judicial review in two court cases, on issues ranging from allegations of an illegal arrest of a participant in public meetings, to secret meetings in violation of California’s open meeting law, the Bagley-Keene Act,” Martin said, explaining how California’s anglers are most angry about how the MLPA Initiative has gone through by way of privately-funded “public” stakeholder meetings resulting in the promulgation of regulations that affect everyone’s lives.

“It’s not just about fishing, but many human activities have been banned under the MLPA Initiative in California, like kayaking, sailing and other non-fishing activities,” Martin said. “As fishermen we’re angry about being labeled the problem when big corporations like Safeway and Hewlett-Packard refuse to join us in calling for less water diversions to agribusiness and less heavy metals from the semiconductor industry in San Francisco Bay,” Martin added, calling recreational fishermen “the original conservationists” as evidenced by their frequent calls for stronger fishery management and habitat conservation.

“The nation’s anglers need to understand what has happened in California under the guise of marine life protection through this MLPA Initiative, and we need to stand up together to get this message out to corporate entities starting with Safeway who are financially supporting our demise in the recreational fishing industry,” said RFA Executive Director Jim Donofrio. “Proponents of the no-take zones including NRDC, Pew Charitable Trusts, Ocean Conservancy and Oceana have been making extraordinary claims for marine protected areas, but the analysis shows that these claims are mostly bogus.”

Donofrio said RFA plans to send a letter to Steven A. Burd, the Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer of Safeway, officially informing the supermarket giant of RFA’s intention to support a nationwide boycott of the chain. “It is our hope that Mr. Burd will stop and recognize that our rights to open access of a public resource are being taken away by preservationist smoke and mirror rhetoric, and that by financially supporting the anti-fishing groups Safeway is actually supporting these attacks on our recreational fishing community.”

RFA is urging all its members, recreational anglers, divers and anyone who cares about sustainable fisheries to “Stay Away From Safeway” until the company reverses its position on the MLPA Initiative and ceases funding towards anti-fishing advocates like NRDC and the Ocean Conservancy. “If you want sustainable  fisheries, you need both fish and fishermen; you can’t have one without the other and use the word fishery,” Donofrio said, adding that cultural heritage and traditions are being greatly risked by the MLPA Initiative.

He also pointed out that no-take zones have proven costly to coastal communities. “The California Department of Fish & Game estimates an annual cost of $35 to $40 million for its part in managing these zones, while a recent socioeconomic analysis shows that these arbitrary no-access zones will subtract millions of dollars from coastal economies and fishing communities through lost access to the public, lost revenues to small, local commercial and recreational fishing businesses, and the tax-base of coastal counties of California.”

“These aren’t short-term losses, they are as permanent as the marine reserves themselves. Safeway is really impacting their future bottom line by supporting the MLPA initiative, as their coastal customer base is already reeling financially by the lost access,” Donofrio added.

“If Safeway is betting that the saltwater anglers of America will continue shopping at their stores while they arbitrarily cut off our public access to our public resources they are greatly mistaken,” said Martin. “In California, we already know how this ends up, and it’s time to educate anglers about corporations like Safeway that steal our fishing heritage through their support of an anti-fisherman agenda.”

Martin added that California’s Indian tribes and tribal communities retain long-held, federally-recognized harvest rights to California’s ocean waters, and that the RFA-CA remains a strong supporter of tribal sovereignty.

“We also see the non-commercial, subsistence harvest of marine resources by the general public as a basic human right, established under the public trust doctrine, and we plan on letting Safeway know what their beneficiaries in the environmental community think of our basic human rights as Americans,” Martin added.

 

 

 

 

 

NORFOLK, Va. — North Carolina lost more than $4 million worth of business to Virginia this spring because the Oregon Inlet on the Outer Banks wasn't deep enough for large fishing boats to safely travel through, according to state estimates provided to The Associated Press on Tuesday.

More than 1.2 million pounds of flounder and nearly 33,000 pounds of black sea bass had to be sold and processed in Virginia between March 7 and the end of the season April 15 because sand was filling the inlet faster than the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could dredge it out.

The lone navigational channel by the Bonner Bridge is being encroached upon by a southward drifting Bodie Island. The corps has said it doesn't have the funding to keep the channel at its congressionally authorized 14 foot depth and has struggled to provide the 10 feet of depth most large trawlers need to safely travel through.

Read the complete story from The Daily Reporter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mayor Scott W. Lang of New Bedford, Massachusetts urges immediate action through Congress, and asked that tax credits be offered to truckers, farmers, fisherman and others who must pay for gas to travel 12,000 miles or more annually for business purposes.

NEW BEDFORD, Massachusetts – April 25, 2011 —  Mayor Scott W. Lang of New Bedford, Massachusetts released a letter sent Friday calling upon President Obama to take immediate action to halt the gas crisis affecting citizens in cities across the country. “I have witnessed the devastating consequences of the recession on ordinary citizens,” said Mayor Lang.  “Rising gas prices will cripple any economic recovery and disproportionately burden the very individuals who have already suffered the most.”

In a letter dated April 22nd, Mayor Lang welcomed the President’s recent announcement of a task force to examine possible fraud in the oil markets, and asked that he take additional, immediate steps to prevent gas prices from rising further.  Specifically, he requested that President Obama ask Congress to enact legislation to:

(1)     give the President the authority to implement gas price controls;

(2)     provide tax credits to truckers, farmers, fisherman, and any other workers who pay for gas to travel 12,000 miles or more annually for business purposes; and

(3)     impose a windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies.

These measures would provide immediate relief to American workers and mitigate the regressive effect of rising gas prices.  Moreover, any shortfall caused by the tax credits would be more than offset by the windfall profits tax.

While the proposed legislation is urgently needed to secure our nation’s economic recovery, the city of New Bedford is also committed to the ultimate goal of reducing its dependence on fossil fuels.  Living in the former whaling capital of the world, the citizens of New Bedford are keenly aware that a nation can completely change the sources of its energy consumption.  As such, the city is aggressively seeking to support the development of renewable energy sources and was chosen last year to be the staging site for the Cape Wind project.

“As New Bedford and cities across the country work to support a transformed energy policy, I ask that you work with Congress to ensure that our citizens do not bear the burden of rising gas prices,” stated Mayor Lang.

Read the letter.

Read the original press release.