Clinton to Order New Protections for Oceans

President Clinton will unveil a plan today intended to permanently protect coral reefs in the northwest Hawaiian Islands and set a course that would ban fishing, offshore drilling and other activities from sensitive ocean waters, a White House official said Thursday.

Clinton will order the Commerce and Interior departments to designate “marine protected areas,” marked by diverse marine ecosystems. Fishing, offshore oil drilling, mining and dumping, among other activities, would be prohibited in these areas off California and other coastal states.

In offshore areas where the most strict protections would be ordered, the prohibitions would be comparable to declaring forests wilderness areas from which all commercial activity and road-building are barred.

The president also plans to order the Environmental Protection Agency to step up its efforts to reduce pollution on beaches and in the oceans by imposing stricter water quality standards.

Waters as far as 200 miles from the U.S. coast would be covered by the president’s orders.

While national marine sanctuary and national park designations now protect areas such as the waters off California’s Channel Islands from some marine activities, the vast majority of coastal waters are open to fishing, mining and drilling. Less than 0.01% of the U.S. waters are protected as true “wilderness” areas akin to the wilderness areas on land.

Under Clinton’s expected order, the Commerce and Interior departments would have 90 days to come up with a plan to permanently protect the reefs of the northwest Hawaiian Islands. The reefs surround a 1,200-mile strip of uninhabited islands and support threatened sea turtles, endangered Hawaiian monk seals and other marine life, according to the White House. Coral reefs around the world are under attack from pollution, rising ocean temperatures and overfishing.

The steps, which Clinton is expected to announce at the scenic Assateague Island National Seashore along the Maryland-Virginia coast, reflect a burst of environmental activity by the White House and federal agencies in the closing months of the Clinton administration. The president is using his executive authority, rather than seeking legislative action from a Republican Congress reluctant to provide the legislative protection Clinton wants for the nation’s natural resources.

Similarly, as his administration drew to a close, President Carter used his executive authority to create five national marine sanctuaries, including the Channel Islands, now a national park.

Clinton’s decision does not name the individual areas that would receive protected designations. And because the steps are being taken by executive order, rather than by congressional action, a new administration could undo them. However, administration officials and others said, a retreat could not be accomplished easily.

Stymied by Congress and the calendar, the administration is churning out initiatives and regulations, none without controversy but many still politically appealing. The result is an end-of-term flurry of environmental activism.

In recent weeks, the administration has moved to restrict road building in national forests, issued rules that would limit pollution from heavy-duty trucks and buses and toughen limits on arsenic in drinking water. It is nearing completion of a report expected to link the chemical dioxin to cancer.

More is on the way: An initial decision is due on whether to restrict mercury in the atmosphere. One may be issued on limiting emissions from diesel-powered construction equipment. The EPA is nearing decisions affecting pesticide levels in food. Presidential orders may also declare vast stretches of Western lands to be national monuments, putting them off-limits to nearly all development.

And, perhaps within weeks, the federal government will begin a broad look at the environmental and economic future of the Columbia River Basin, including the dramatic possibility years from now of breaching its massive hydroelectric dams.

The actions Clinton is expected to announce today won praise from environmentalists. But they said that, while necessary, they are only first steps to restore fisheries, protect water quality and preserve highly sensitive coral reefs.

The prohibitions conceivably could ban boating in specific areas, if it was found to put the marine environments at risk, said Sarah Chasis, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, after hearing an administration official’s report on the plan.

The Clinton plan “creates a vehicle to accomplish some great things in the next eight months of this administration and a platform for the next administration to pick up the ball on this,” said Jack Sobel, an acting vice president of the Center for Marine Conservation. “We’ll be applauding tomorrow, but we’ll be holding the administration’s feet to the fire to accomplish as much as possible.”

Administration officials and other marine environment experts said that, although many areas are protected by the current moratorium on offshore drilling, the prohibition can be reversed at a new president’s direction and must be renewed to stay in force.

The plan could protect vast areas of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the Gulf of Mexico, at a time when they are greatly overfished, officials said.

A recent report by the National Marine Fisheries Service found that half of the nation’s economically important saltwater fish are dwindling because of overfishing, up from about one-third in recent years.

Administration officials said that the recent environmental activism within the federal government is driven both by coincidence and the calendar. Their focus is eight months away, when the Clinton White House goes out of business.

“Most of these are subject to processes going on for a number of years, but there’s obviously a desire to bring to a close those things that can be brought to closure,” said George Frampton, the chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Or, as Dan Weiss, the Sierra Club’s political director in Washington put it, each project “has been on a separate track . . . but the trains all arrived at the station at the same time.”

One senior environmental official in the administration said that he hopes it signals that the White House will be fighting for environmental issues until its last day.

“I hope it shows the administration can mount a long-term strategy for environmental protection and carry it out in an aggressive way,” he said. “The administration’s being very aggressive. Certainly there’s no easing off.”