Riding a Wave of Unpopularity : Southern California’s Surfing Congressmen Are in Troubled Waters Over Their Environmental Stances

Never turn your back on Mother Ocean

--Surfing’s Rule No. 1

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There is a word so vile to surfers that its mere mention can mean violence in Ventura, mayhem in Malibu or uproar in Orange County. It’s the No. 1 slight of surfing ability, first among fighting words, the ultimate insult. It’s the dreaded “k-word”:

“ Kooooook ,” as it is properly hooted in the heat of argument.

So it is with much consternation that Southern California Republican congressmen Brian P. Bilbray and Dana Rohrabacher have recently received this put-down. After all, these are the country’s only surfing representatives--watermen who say they hit the waves whenever they’re back home. San Diego’s Bilbray was known as the “Kahuna congressman” and ran on a campaign slogan that said opponent Lynn “Schenk don’t surf.” Huntington Beach veteran representative Rohrabacher was called the “rock ‘n’ roll Republican” and campaigned for reelection with bumper stickers that featured a classically shaped surfboard.

Now they’ve been called “kooks in Congress” by some influential surfers in Southern California.

But it’s not because they can’t noseride. The two have been skewered by surfers over an issue they themselves, as wave riders, say they know and care a lot about: the environment. Both men voted for a bill that proposes to roll back federal protection of America’s coasts and waterways. It passed last May. Bilbray also authored an amendment that exempts San Diego’s shore--home to the most beach closures in the nation--from Environmental Protection Agency rules and checkups. The amendment passed in July. The entire bill needs approval from the Senate to become law (and President Clinton has threatened to veto it).

“Clean water,” Rohrabacher says, “is good enough. We don’t have to have pristine water.”

It’s talk like that that earned both him and Bilbray a 0 on a scale of 100 from the League of Conservation Voters’ score card for the first 100 days of the new Congress. The two have also earned the ire of the Surfrider Foundation, Surfer magazine and other surfing environmentalists such as artisan board maker Skip Frye of San Diego, who has taken to printing bumper stickers that read, “Another surfer against Bilbray and for clean water.”

Seal Beach surfer and physician Gordon Labedz, who taught Rohrabacher how to surf in 1990, calls the congressman “a hodad”--a vintage term for kook. “I think that Bilbray and Rohrabacher are people who use their surfing to wrap themselves up in the mantle of the ocean and the environment as a political tool.”

“I think that bill,” Labedz adds, “is a crime.” But he says he and Rohrabacher are still friends: “I think he’s a nice guy and I have very few friends I agree with on every issue.”

The main bill, HR 961, aims to loosen the federal grip on environmental rules that require cities, farms and factories to reduce, treat or regulate their runoff of liquid pollutants. Supporters say the aim of the law--touted in the Republican’s “contract with America”--is to give local governments more control over their environment. The Bilbray bill--which also exempts San Diego from having to upgrade its main sewage treatment plant (an upgrade even some environmentalists say is not needed)--was touted by House Speaker Newt Gingrich as a first step in getting government off the backs of voters.

“The name-calling hurts to the degree that we’re talking about people who are judging us based on what they’ve been told by some liberal leftists who have a hidden agenda,” Rohrabacher says. “These leftists believe the federal government should have more control. That’s their religion.”

In a phone interview from his Washington office, Bilbray defended his integrity more than his vote: “I’m somebody who’s been involved with clean water issues since ’69. I know those who criticize me mean well, but they really don’t understand the issues. . . .

“To have somebody come up and say Brian doesn’t care about clean water is like saying Jesse Jackson doesn’t care about civil rights,” he says. “. . . You’re talking to someone who has built his political career on the environment.”

Bilbray, 44, and Rohrabacher, 48, have been praised in the past for their environmentalism. Rohrabacher stood firm against a federal proposal to build a wave-ruining breakwater in Seal Beach in 1990. And in 1980, Bilbray created a media event by hopping atop a bulldozer and building a dike to stop the sewage flow from Tijuana to his local surf spot. And the two are not without their surfing supporters.

“I just feel Bilbray’s been getting a bum rap from a group of people who have different views than he does,” says Steve Fuller, a San Diego plumber who surfs at Bilbray’s home break, Imperial Beach.

But many surfers insist Rohrabacher and Bilbray are not “bros”--surfspeak for brothers-in-arms. When the surfing congressmen were elected, “we had hoped that they would be strong ocean allies that we could count on. We were disappointed,” says Pierce Flynn, executive director of the 25,000-member Surfrider Foundation, an environmental group for ocean users that has run a two-page ad against the water bill in Surfer magazine.

(Surfrider is opposing Bilbray for his co-sponsorship of another bill that would lift a federal ban on foreign tuna caught at the cost of killing dolphins, which are often trapped in tuna nets. Supporters say the dolphin population has come back to strength and that the bill is needed to facilitate free trade agreements.)

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Flynn says the 1972 federal Clean Water Act, which would be weakened by the water bill, has made a difference in water quality (Santa Monica Bay and other area bodies of water are improving, according to studies). On the other hand, evidence shows more needs to be done, he says: San Diego County had more than 700 beach closures last year because of contamination, tourists are staying away from Southern California beaches in greater numbers in part because of fear of contaminated water, and more and more anecdotes arise of surfers getting sick from bacteria-infested waters each winter.

A forum for such concerns has been Dana Point-based Surfer magazine, which has rarely seen such heated politics since the ‘60s. Editor Steve Hawk, a self-described liberal, has published reports, editorials and letters about the bill in the past several issues of the magazine--and surfers have responded. “Any surfer worth his salt would err on the side of keeping the ocean blue,” Hawk wrote in the July issue.

“Mr. Bilbray,” wrote a reader, “please spare us your lies and start spending your time trying to protect the ocean.” Others have written e-mail letters to the editor. “Rohrabacher’s the kind of politician who contributes to people feeling totally disempowered in this so-called representative system,” wrote one Internet surfer.

Some have gone so far as to question the surfing skills of the two, though most agree they can surf. “Having worked as a lifeguard in Imperial Beach while growing up there, I had the chance to know Brian Bilbray . . .,” wrote one reader. “This jerk couldn’t surf any better than the biggest kook I’ve ever seen!”

Though his latest issue again lambastes what he calls the “Dirty Water Act,” Hawk says he’s ready to let things cool down.

And so it was when he embarked upon a surf outing earlier this summer and found himself parked next to a gathering of Bilbray and Rohrabacher supporters at San Onofre State Beach. The congressmen were there too--to surf and have fun.

Hawk walked up uneasily and offered his hand to his representatives. “To his credit, Bilbray took the edge off of everything and made me feel welcome,” Hawk says, then pauses: “He stopped short of offering me a beer though.”