Following the lead of the V.I. delegate to Congress, Gov. Charles W. Turnbull on Tuesday asked President Clinton not to designate thousands of acres of submerged lands in the territory as national monuments.
On Dec. 22, Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt sent his list of five monument designations to Clinton. For the territory it would mean an 18,000-acre expansion of St. Croix’s Buck Island Reef National Monument and would create the 12,500-acre Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument off of St. John – a total of nearly 50 square miles.
In his letter to Clinton on Tuesday, Turnbull asked that the monuments not be declared because of the "questionable" manner in which Interior delineated the submerged lands. There is some debate over who owns the areas in question.
According to former V.I. senator Virdin Brown, who now chairs the Caribbean Fisheries Management Council, all the submerged lands within three miles of the territory were transferred to the Virgin Islands government by an act of Congress in 1974 and only that body can change the ownership of the lands.
The federal Antiquities Act authorizes the President to create national monuments without Congressional approval. That is, however, only on federal land.
Also, as president, Clinton is not subject to the National Environmental Protection Act, meaning the proposed monuments do not require an Environmental Impact Statement before they are designated. Such a statement is a lengthy process, entailing substantial public input and review of such proposals.
"The proposed jurisdictional boundaries of submerged lands in the territory have not been verified and the Virgin Islands community will be denied the opportunity to participate in this process," Turnbull wrote to Clinton.
He added that public input into the monument proposals was promised by Babbitt during his mid-September visit to the territory. Babbitt met with Turnbull, Delegate to Congress Donna Christian Christensen, Lt. Gov. Gerard Luz James II and Senate President Vargrave Richards to discuss economic issues and reef conservation.
During that meeting, Babbitt said there was a "compelling need to protect the reef resources and fisheries" in the territory.
Soon after Babbitt’s visit, high-ranking Interior officials held meetings on St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John to discuss possible reef management strategies. At the meeting on St. Croix, Interior representatives discussed how they mapped and then determined federal land holdings in area waters.
But they didn't divulge exactly what management strategies would be put in place. And even as Clinton has until Friday to sign Babbitt’s recommendations, the management regime for the proposed monuments remains a mystery.
Those questions caused Christensen to hold town meetings on the monument proposals throughout the territory last week. Following concerns about the ownership issues and possible impacts to local fishermen in the designated areas, Christensen asked Clinton to reconsider the proposals, or at least scale them back.
Christensen said last week that she was scheduled to visit the White House on Wednesday to discuss a variety of issues.
Turnbull, meanwhile, told Clinton that if the monument declarations were to proceed without an opportunity for public input, "serious negative ramifications may be brought upon our efforts to establish a marine park, which would require community participation to be effective."
Babbitt’s move to protect U.S. coral reefs falls in line with the administration’s effort to further protect coral reef resources and fish spawning areas as part of President Clinton's 1998 Coral Reef Initiative.
