April 10, 2014 — On Monday, we learned that NOAA got a split decision in U.S. District Court in Washington DC in a lawsuit filed by the Conservation Law Foundation and Earthjustice.
When the local burghers show up outside your windows holding pitchforks and torches, it's probably not going too far out on a limb to assume you'e not the most popular household in the neighborhood. It must be how the folks at NOAA often feel when they gaze down at the hoi polloi from their monument to bureaucracy in Blackburn Industrial Park that, to paraphrase Bruce Cockburn, frowns out over Gloucester like Dracula's Tower.
If it's not those pesky fishermen assailing our federal fish gendarmes, it's the pricklish environmentalists. Everywhere NOAA looks, someone's hitting it with the Boston Rag. What's a poor regulator to do?
But then there are weeks such as this, when NOAA and its mini-me, the National Marine Fishries Service, get to stroll up to the dish (what do you think their walk-up song is? "Dirty Water" by the Standells? "Fishin' Blues" by Taj Mahal?), put together a couple of good swings and take their sweet time circling the bases.
On Monday, we learned that NOAA got a split decision in U.S. District Court in Washington DC in a lawsuit filed by the Conservation Law Foundation and Earthjustice. The court ruled in favor of the environmentalists on the first element, concurring that NOAA violated federal law by setting groundfish catch limits that allowed over-fishing. The court ruled in favor of NOAA on the second element, upholding NOAA's stance that it has the authority to potentially open up some fishing grounds that have been closed for years.