Digital Extra

The state Department of Environmental Management and the Coastal Resources Management Council publicly criticized each other and disputed which agency is slower to issue permits.

And a University of Rhode Island professor proposed wiping out the entire branch of the DEM that regulates water pollution.

Just when it was looking as if most of the major disagreements surrounding the proposed aquaculture legislation had been resolved, all sorts of trouble erupted yesterday during and after a House Finance Committee hearing on the bill.

Everyone from fishermen to government regulators agreed that Rhode Island needs to do something to move up from last place in the nation in terms of fish raised through various farming techniques.

Committee Chairman Antonio J. Pires insisted yesterday that his committee wasn't ready to vote yet and that it is taking great pains to write a fair law.

Pires and the bill's author, Rep. Eileen Naughton, D-Warwick, said that they had made several changes to smooth over objections that were raised at a hearing last week.

Pires pledged that the General Assembly would appropriate money to pay for a master plan indicating where aquaculture activities would be allowed around the Bay, and that funds also would be provided for a state "aquaculture coordinator."

But there were many new objections raised at yesterday's hearing.

Afterward, tempers got hotter. Robert DiSanto, president of the shellfishermen's association, and about two dozen fishermen met with Naughton and said they were through negotiating.

DiSanto said the fishermen would not support the bill unless it includes a moratorium on new leases in Narragansett Bay that would last until the master plan is written. He also demanded a guarantee that fish farmers wouldn't be allowed to harvest clams from polluted waters.

"Without these issues being resolved, I don't see the point of having any more meetings," DiSanto said. "It would be my intent to kill the bill.

DiSanto said he and other fishermen were tired of the seemingly endless meetings and were angry about the fact that Naughton wrote the bill without consulting an aquaculture task force that had met for a year.

"I have a 7-year-old kid and I'm really ticked off that I can't be with him right now instead of sitting here," DiSanto said to Naughton. "Let's get this straightened out so we can go back to our work and families."

The bill would transfer much of the authority for regulating aquaculture from DEM to CRMC.

DEM Director Timothy R.E. Keeney submitted an 11-page memo objecting to provisions that would exempt aquaculturists from the state's wetlands laws, provide what he considers an overly broad definition of farmer, and give CRMC sole authority over fish farming activities, even when they are far from coastal areas.

Keeney submitted a chart showing that CRMC took up to twice as long as DEM to grant the necessary permits for previous aquaculture projects. But CRMC spokesman James Boyd testified that DEM's review process was actually longer than was indicated by Keeney.

URI Prof. Michael Rice, an aquaculture consultant, questioned why Rhode Island allows DEM to regulate water quality when many other states allow the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to do it for them.

"You could save money on permitting at DEM, on salaried and rental office space," Rice said, if the issuing of permits were simply handed back to the federal government.

(DEM officials later pointed out that the EPA pays all the costs of DEM's permitting efforts, so eliminating DEM staff would save nothing for Rhode Island.)

Save the Bay spokesman Christopher Hamblett said Rice's suggestion was "outrageous."

But Hamblett complained that the Finance Committee continues to rewrite the aquaculture bill without involving all the interested parties. The committee is now working on its seventh rewrite.

"We should just put CRMC and DEM in a room to work on this bill," Hamblett said. "Save the Bay will organize the meeting."