‘3rd Wave’ Alters Course of Environmental Movement

Some stories from the environmental Third Wave:

--Late in 1985 the Sierra Club springs to the defense of a large timber company trying to defend itself from corporate raiders; the club submits a financial restructuring plan for the company designed to thwart a takeover.

--In Fresno the Environmental Defense Fund announces a joint project with some of California’s largest agribusiness interests. The project seeks to restore the soil quality of farmland in the western San Joaquin Valley.

--A Pennsylvania city asks a local environmental group to help design a new plant to recycle its garbage; the city accepts the plan and then floats $335 million in bonds to build the plant.

What’s going on here? It may be, some environmental leaders argue, the beginning of a new direction in their movement. In the place of political confrontation and litigation, some major environmental groups have begun--on occasion, at least--to pursue alliances with their traditional antagonists, big industry and development-oriented government agencies.

It is a change that is regarded by some as the natural evolution of a movement that began with President Theodore Roosevelt early in this century. It is being called the Third Phase or, in a racier version borrowed from author Alvin Toffler’s best-seller, the Third Wave.

At a conference of national environmental leaders held here last weekend, Chairman Lucy Blake of the League of Conservation Voters opened the first session by saying, “We are entering the Third Wave in our development.”

What this means, she said in an interview, is that “we have won the struggle for acceptance with Main Street America, and now people are looking to us for solutions. It’s not enough anymore to stand on the outside and take potshots.”

In New York, the executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund said he believes that the new tactics are the result of a “restiveness” in the public attitude toward environmental groups.

“There is some feeling that environmental groups could be more effective,” said Frederic Krupp, the executive director. “A sense that instead of being knee-jerk ideologues, we should become problem solvers. I happen to think the public is exactly right.”

The phrase Third Wave stems from the belief that the environmental movement can be divided into distinct eras. The first era, lasting from the beginning of the century until the 1960s, consisted mainly of isolated efforts by a small cadre of amateur conservationists; the second era, commencing with Earth Day in 1970, saw the ranks of supporters grow dramatically as organizations began to sponsor new laws and file lawsuits.

The Third Wave, according to its supporters, will be an era of bargaining and deal-making between those who want to protect the environment and those who want to extract profits from it. Many such deals, they say, will be arrangements to implement the new laws and legal victories won by conservationists over the last decade.

‘Laws Aren’t Going Away’

“Industry knows those laws aren’t going away,” said William Reilly, president of the Conservation Foundation in Washington. “And environmentalists have come to realize that it’s going to take cooperation from industry to get the laws working.”

Still, the new tactics have not arrived without controversy. Some leaders believe that environmentalists should remain firmly planted in the second era of confrontation, and a few are pressing for an even more combative posture. The Third Wave, they say, looks suspiciously like a sellout.

“It’s no coincidence that all this took place after Reagan took office,” said Barry Commoner, a biologist who ran for President on an environmental platform in 1980. “I regard this as a cynical and gutless reaction to Reagan; they’re saying the movement has to play ball if it wants to survive politically.”

And even as the new era of cooperation is being proclaimed, militant environmental groups are forming that promise to counterbalance the Third Wave with the most combative tactics ever seen in the movement. Groups such as the Sea Shepherd Society and Earth First! have declared their intentions to carry out aggressive actions against commercial interests perceived to be rending the environmental fabric.

Supporters of the Third Wave maintain that cooperative projects are not intended to become the sole tactic of the environmental movement. “The third stage is not a repudiation of the first two stages,” Krupp said. “We still need lawyers litigating in court and new laws. No one is talking about closing down their Washington offices.”

Nonetheless, Third Wave proponents say they have demonstrated that their efforts can produce results when other tactics have failed. Several of the most ambitious projects have been carried out in California under the sponsorship of the Environmental Defense Fund’s office in Berkeley.

Led by attorneys Thomas Graff and David Roe, the office achieved a landmark victory in 1981 with a project now widely regarded as the curtain raiser for the Third Wave.

Working with the staffs at the California Public Utilities Commission and Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the Environmental Defense Fund persuaded the company to forgo plans to build new power plants. A computer model developed by the environmental group demonstrated that a combination of alternative energy sources and conservation could deliver the same energy gains at lower cost.

For PG&E;, the alternatives meant lower utility rates and higher shareholder returns; for the fund it meant fewer nuclear and coal-powered power plants across the California landscape. Today, PG&E; pays the Environmental Defense Fund to lease its computer model; and the PUC recently sent the group a check for $256,000 as compensation for its contribution to energy savings.

‘A Win-Win Situation’

“It was a win-win situation,” Graff said. “Everybody gained. Our major job was showing them, from an economic point of view, that building the new power plants would be irrational.”

The defense fund’s emphasis on economics has become a hallmark of its strategy. Zach Willey, the office’s economist, was the first full-time economist ever hired by an environmental group. Since his arrival, Willey’s work has served as the foundation for several of the group’s projects.

In the San Joaquin valley, for example, the fund has plunged into a joint project with one of the traditional archvillains of conservationists, the Westlands Water District. The largest federal water district in the nation, Westlands annually consumes millions of acre-feet of water whose cost is heavily subsidized by taxpayers. Its membership includes some of the wealthiest farming interests in the nation.

When a plague of selenium and salt deposits from irrigation water attacked the western portions of the valley, some environmental groups jumped into the fray by demanding that the farmers be forced to shut down some of their farmland. The Environmental Defense Fund, on the other hand, developed a plan whereby it and the Westlands would jointly sponsor an experimental desalting plant. In August, 1985, Westlands agreed to pursue the project.

‘Easier Than the Old Days’

Jerald Butchert, manager of Westlands, said his first response to the proposed deal was “wariness.”

“I thought, ‘What are these guys up to?’ ” he said. “When I realized they were serious and intended to be fair, I decided to give it a chance. It’s a lot easier than the old days when environmentalists only knew how to say no, no, no.”

Still, leaders of some environmental organizations have been reluctant to make too many new friends in strange places. Carl Pope, political director of the Sierra Club, engineered the attempt to rescue a Northern California lumber company from a takeover attempt. He supported the company because of its longstanding record as a good steward of its timberlands, Pope said. But he doubts that many such opportunities will present themselves.

‘We Are Not Technocrats’

“What the Sierra Club does best is make its opponents feel pain,” he said. “I believe it would be a mistake to switch personalities now. We are not technocrats.”

Some critics of the Third Wave also point out that the road to success for many such projects has proven long and frustrating. The Environmental Defense Fund’s proposed desalting project in544499813for months by financial problems and the sponsors were forced to abandon efforts to raise seed money from Congress. A revised strategy using private financing is expected to begin soon.

Reilly, president of the Conservation Foundation, said he believes that some environmental groups may have other reasons for backing away from the new tactics. “Negotiating is not as easy to sell to the membership,” he said. “I think they perceive that this sort of thing can cost them financially.”

Ambitious Programs

Nonetheless, the Conservation Foundation has embarked on one of the most ambitious Third Wave programs. Significantly different from the Environmental Defense Fund projects, the Conservation Foundation has established an office in Washington whose purpose is to negotiate the implementation of new environmental legislation.

“Environmentalists have been enormously successful at passing new laws,” Reilly said. “Yet real progress has been extraordinarily slow. What we’ve seen is endless litigation, and when the litigation is over everybody runs back to Congress to change the law. We concluded there must be a faster way to make progress.”

Issues have ranged from the cleanup of toxic waste sites to the imposition of wilderness designation on federal lands. Some have succeeded; others have failed at various stages.

‘It Can Fall Apart’

“You do expose people to the risk of failure,” Reilly said. “This sort of thing does not allow the luxury of saying no, no. You have to stand for something, and it can fall apart on you.”

Despite those risks, most supporters of the Third Wave say they are determined to press ahead. At the Environmental Defense Fund, a project was recently announced to try a new method of controlling pollution of underground water supplies in Southern California.

In a joint effort with the Metropolitan Water District, the environmental organization will attempt to identify sources of potential pollution and reduce the sources before they reach underground aquifers. Typically in the past, underground pollution programs have emphasized cleanup efforts after contamination has occurred.

Officials from the Environmental Defense Fund and the water district believe that the new approach could reduce pollution of aquifers by 75%. If successful, they say, the program will save money for government agencies by cutting cleanup costs and reduce regulatory pressures on industry.

“I was on a Chicago radio station the other day discussing this kind of tactic,” Krupp said. “One of the founders of Earth First! called in and said we need to be uncompromising. He said the goal is not to appear to be reasonable but to save the planet. I told him I thought being reasonable was exactly the way to save the planet.”