Assateague Island Administrative History

The Opposition Organizes

There was dissent aplenty in other quarters, particularly among those environmentalist and conservation groups who had opposed the development mandates in the seashore authorizing legislation. Representing this sentiment, the National Parks Association commissioned Jonas V. Morris of Morris Associates, Washington, D.C., to prepare a counter—plan. "Assateague Island, Maryland and Virginia: A Recreation Plan for a National Seashore and its Surrounding Region" appeared in December 1968 and was widely circulated. The Morris plan called for only a stabilized sand road on the island with visitors to be transported there by buses alone. The concession accommodations were limited to campsite and primitive lodge—type facilities. The absence of automobiles rendered parking facilities unnecessary.

The sponsors of the Morris plan did not hesitate to attack the National Park Service for proposing to despoil Assateague, frequently failing to note the legal requirements dictating the bureau's course. The attacks rankled Bert Roberts, who found them unfair and the attackers' counter—proposals infeasible and unrealistic. "Labeling us as 'precise and deliberate' despoilers is a little much," he responded to Anthony Wayne Smith, president and general counsel of the National Parks Association. ". . .[I]f everything in the master plan is built in future years at this recreation area—and you know we do not want or expect this to happen—it will involve a very small percentage of the land ..." To a fellow seashore superintendent he wrote, "With respect to Assateague, the [Morris] report contains many errors and assumptions and generally ignores the key planning mandates of the legislation. However, it will probably excite certain groups and bring in some dues and memberships, which might be the name of the game!" [13]

The one—sheet plan was a "conceptual plan" requiring detailed elaboration of its proposals before they could be implemented. Service planners were continuing with this effort in late 1968 and early 1969. Responding to the flood of critical public comment generated by the National Parks Association and the Morris plan, the Service issued a form statement on its course of action in March:

This Service is currently preparing a detailed master plan for this national seashore in accordance with the Act of Congress that authorizes the area. The master plan will be based on a conceptual plan concurred in by the Director of the National Park Service and the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife and reviewed with the Maryland and Virginia congressional delegations.... It is expected that the master plan will be completed and available for public inspection during the summer of 1969. [14]

Senator Joseph D. Tydings of Maryland, among the sponsors of the 1965 Senate bill on Assateague, had not opposed its enactment with the development mandates and raised no objection to the resulting Service plan at the congressional presentation in June 1968. But in May 1969, with a vocal segment of the public protesting, he expressed his indignation to the new Secretary of the Interior, Walter J. Hickel:

I am shocked to learn that the National Park Service has drafted a master plan that includes provision for two 100 room motels with restaurants; a 32 foot wide road; hard surface parking for 14,000 cars and dozens of carry out food shops. . . . This is a gross misinterpretation of the intent of Congress and the act that created this National Seashore. The purpose was to preserve this unique area, not to turn it into just another seashore resort, which is what the reported plan would do. . . . I feel that visitor accommodations should be placed on the mainland and hard surfaced roads and parking facilities be kept to a minimum so that visitors can enjoy the wildlife and the natural beauty of this rare primitive area. [15]

Tydings requested a meeting to review the master plan and was informed of one already scheduled for this purpose on June 18 with Anthony Wayne Smith and other conservation group representatives. The conservationists met separately with George Hartzog and NPS officials and John Gottschalk and BSFW staff. Hartzog held firm, telling the delegation that the plan had been dictated by the Assateague legislation and accepted by Congress, and that there could be no reconsideration or revision without a change in the law. He refused their request to halt construction of a sewage treatment facility at North Beach, stating that it was needed to correct sanitation problems from existing visitor use. [16]

Director Gottschalk, reflecting his bureau's lesser commitment to the master plan (and the national seashore generally), told the group he felt the time was right for a review of the plan and for new legislation. BSFW should have full control in Virginia and develop only day-use facilities at Toms Cove, he said, making no effort to conceal his breach with the Park Service. The group met last with Deputy Assistant Secretary Charles Carothers, who spoke candidly but in basic support of the Service's public position: "I am fully aware of the hard fight against the road. This Department and you were allies in it. Now Congress has worked its will and unless Congress changes its mind, we are committed to the road. We think we have found a route that does the least damage to the wildlife and natural values and still meets our requirements in the Act." [17]

The conservationist assault, calling into question as it did the Service's commitment to conservation, if anything increased Bert Roberts' emotional commitment to the plan he had worked so hard to hammer out. To offset the opposition he lobbied for local support, obtaining the Delmarva Advisory Council's endorsement of the plan on June 30. The National Parks Association and its associates simultaneously continued their efforts to obtain congressional support and action, enlisting Representative John P. Saylor, another sponsor of the Assateague legislation, in their cause. On July 22 he attempted to amend a pending Interior appropriations bill to prohibit any funding for the connecting road (although the bill contained no such funding). Representative Downing, reminding his colleagues that the road was integral to the compromise forged for the seashore, opposed the amendment and succeeded in defeating it. [18]

Despite George Hartzog's public stance before the conservation groups, he was no more eager to implement the legislated development provisions than he ever had been. Following the June 18 meeting he declared that the Service would seek no appropriations for the connecting road or island development, other than day—use facilities near the two bridges, for a five—year period, during which time the Service would continue to encourage visitor services by private enterprise off the island. The National Environmental Policy Act enacted January 1, 1970, which would require consideration of alternatives and the preparation of a complicated environmental impact statement before the Service could undertake major development, became another excuse for delay. Around the same time, scientific studies were underway that called increasingly into question man's ability to stabilize dynamic barrier islands like Assateague for any permanent development. [19]

Support for major Assateague development still existed, but it was dwindling. Senator A. Willis Robertson, the most vociferous advocate of the connecting road and concession accommodations in Virginia, had been defeated in a primary election in 1966. By 1970 private visitor services in Chincoteague had so expanded that the local chamber of commerce sought assurance from Interior that competing concessions would not be established at Toms Cove. It was assured that Park Service policy opposed in—park development as long as public needs were being met outside. The road proposal also encountered local opposition from businesses who feared it would siphon tourists off to the north. Learning of these shifts in his constituents' sentiments, Representative Downing dropped his defense of the road. [20]

By the fall of 1971 George Hartzog had abandoned all pretense of support for the master plan's major development proposals. Citing the difficulty of justifying the connecting road with the required environmental impact statement, he told the press, I think that with this kind of development we literally destroy that which we set out to save." Bert Roberts' successor as seashore superintendent, Thomas F. Norris, Jr., and J. C. Appel, manager of Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, drafted and circulated an environmental statement proposing greatly scaled down development and visitor capacity limits for the Toms Cove area. [21] That the Service could now publicly disown Assateague's legal mandates testified to the success of its leadership's delaying tactics in the face of external events and to the virtual collapse of the pro—development forces.

The overt Federal shift in direction was particularly gratifying to the Committee to Preserve Assateague, an umbrella organization of conservation groups and individuals formed in 1970 to carry on the fight begun by the National Parks Association. Judith Colt Johnson of Towson, Maryland, a woman of exceptional persuasiveness and persistence, assumed the chairmanship of the group, which characterized itself as a successor to the original Citizens Committee for the Preservation of Assateague Island. Among its first undertakings was to promote a state investigation of the future of Assateague State Park and the extensive development plans for that area. [22]