Anchorage Daily News

The so-called "clean water" initiative on August's ballot demonstrates again how easily private interests can shape Alaska's environmental laws for their own gain.

Special interests draft these private initiatives behind closed doors, without the sunshine of public input to balance their direction. The creation of these initiatives is in direct contrast to the creation of our laws and regulations, which offer opportunities for review and participation by legislators, citizens, businesses and the regulatory agencies that will have to monitor and enforce the laws.

Businesses like mine depend on stable laws on which to base their operations. Laws become a citizens' document through their public review process. Not so with initiatives. Initiatives turn important issues into populist decisions that address emotional needs as much as practical ones.

An initiative is something placed on a ballot by a special interest group with enough money to hire parking-lot ambushers to obtain the required number of signatures. These people appeal to citizens who, caught by some quick word of appeal, sign a petition for something already written in stone. I suspect most petition signers do not have an opportunity to evaluate the initiative, and I know that they do not participate in its creation.

In fact, some of the current anti-mining "clean water" initiatives cooked up this spring by special interests didn't make the ballot because they were unconstitutional. These initiatives are just plain anti-business and threaten to turn private businesses into a new endangered species in Alaska. Who is going to pay for the infrastructure of our state when private businesses become extinct because of restrictive special interests that only act to benefit their own agendas?

But, here we go again with an initiative, instead of stopping to ask, "What's wrong with the current clean water regulations?" If there is something wrong, then we need to change the laws and regulations. If there is nothing wrong, then we need to leave them alone and let businesses and regulatory agencies get back to work.

Our current clean water laws protect our environment and work with businesses in the manner they are intended. I have not heard any group of state employees get up and state that our current laws are not strict enough to provide clean water and ensure healthy communities. It seems to me that they would, since they are the ones who will be holding the sack if all the salmon disappear. (And believe me: I am going to be in the front of the line if salmon fishing disappears.)

In assessing these populist initiatives, we have to face an important fact here in Alaska. We have become the cash cow of national and international environmental groups; we are the very reason some of them exist. If they did not have their claims about the raping, pillaging and polluting of Alaska to fire people up, then they would not stand a chance of raising money for their continued operations.

Pristine, tiny Alaska (look on any map and you will see Alaska off in the Pacific Ocean, about the size of Maine) needs saving. That is a much sexier appeal for funds than some miniature mud frog in the Florida swamps.

As Alaskans, it seems our never-ending job is to sort out the hay and byproducts of this current herd of self-interested cash cow promoters and get on with government by and for Alaskans, protecting the best interests of its environment and its economy ... not voting for someone's special-interest initiatives.

Richard Faulkner is a local businessman. He holds a degree in economics from Alaska Methodist University and goes fishing at the drop of a hat.

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