The truth of what happened at Butler Bay, St. Croix, as a result of undersea drilling by AT&T lies somewhere between the death of 100 conch, which is what AT&T claims, and the destruction of corals, sponges and feeding grounds of several turtle and bird species, which is what the Planning and Natural Resources Department claims.
Either way, the 1996 incident was unfortunate, preventable and a loss to our environment.
However, during discussions of what AT&T should pay in penalties for these environmental violations, some V.I. officials and labor leaders made it sound as though it was AT&T's job to solve some of the territory's fiscal woes by paying what appears to be an unprecedented amount for the company's infractions.
The law passed in 1997 committing half of all fines and penalties collected as a result of pollution and CZM violations to the Union Arbitration Fund seemed to leave some folks drooling at AT&T's door to collect many millions of dollars to pay long-overdue retroactive wages.
This is very bad policy, and decidedly bad press for a place that longs to lure new business and investment to our shores.
We are sorry — very sorry — for the government employees who have watched while every manner of financial abuse has been uncovered: 11th hour lump-sum payments, illegal contracts, uncollected receivables, fat raises for political cronies, waste, graft and corruption. It is totally unacceptable that these workers waited while everyone in front of them lined their own pockets.
But demanding that private businesses somehow make up for the territory's budgetary shortfalls in a manner that appears to disregard the crux of the issue — which was environmental violations, not the state of the Union Arbitration Fund — gives the appearance that, once again, we look frantically for someone else to bail us out and someone else to blame for our self-imposed financial problems.