The fall of 1977 was a whirlwind for advocates and opponents of the Torrijos- Carter Treaties. As the Carter administration embarked on its public relations campaign, the post- TAPS debate was heating up over building new west- to- east pipelines to distribute the surplus Alaskan oil, and the comments were rolling in on the draft EIS. The National Academy of Sciences was also hard at work; in a remarkable turnaround time after receiving the presiden-tial science advisor’s request on August 1, an ad hoc group chaired by Alfred Beeton of the Great Lakes and Marine Waters Centers formed. The Beeton Committee held a conference of two dozen experts on September 1–2, solicited comments from almost two dozen more, and issued its eleven- page report on September 28.29
Some of the biologists who had played major roles in the 1968–70 discussions served on the new committee, most notably Ira Rubinoff and Peter Glynn of the
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). Rubinoff, who became STRI’s director in 1973, had since come out against the seaway proposal, calling instead for the construction of a third set of locks with saltwater pumps, tidal gates, and a “toxic barrier” to kill fouling and migratory marine organisms.30 Other partic-ipants included Lawrence Abele, William Aron, John Briggs, C. E. Dawson, Syl-via Earle, Joel Hedgpeth, Meredith Jones, John McCosker, William Newman, C. Richard Robins, Richard Rosenblatt, Howard Sanders, Geerat Vermeij, and Gilbert Voss. Despite his rocky relationship with the scientific community, even John Sheffey participated, presenting on physical barriers to faunal mixing and on the Anderson Commission itself.31
The Beeton Committee report packed a lot of information into eleven pages, and provided the sea- level canal authors a fresh forum to explain why marine ecology mattered for maritime infrastructural development. Like the 1970 Mayr Committee on Ecological Research for the Interoceanic Canal (CERIC), the 1977 academy authors criticized the Anderson Commission for its notorious conclusion about the acceptable risks of adverse ecological consequences, and called for a barrier system to prevent the inevitable migration and colonization that would follow the opening of a sea- level waterway. But despite the passage of seven years, isthmian marine ecology had barely advanced. Few surveys had been conducted to identify the species capable of migrating, especially not in the deeper areas requiring special equipment and research vessels. Basic knowledge of marine parasites and disease organisms, even for commercially important or-ganisms, remained sparse.
The Beeton report also called for a more complex approach to predicting the seaway’s consequences for ocean life. The earlier controversy’s focus on ex-tinction events and charismatic species like the yellow- bellied sea snake and the crown- of- thorns starfish emphasized the direct effects of seaway construction at the expense of indirect effects on local marine communities. Just as the orig-inal Panama Canal had destroyed local mangrove forests, sea grass beds, and coral reefs when crews dumped masses of dredge spoil along the coasts, changes which in turn affected the members of multiple marine food chains, a sea- level waterway would affect nutrient dynamics, food webs, and species abundance by altering oceanic currents and sediment flows. State- of- the- art computer models, in concert with updated taxonomic information, offered promise for determin-ing such localized effects. But otherwise, because the “imposdetermin-ing uncertainties”
identified by the sea- level canal authors remained unresolved, the new academy analysis reiterated the importance of integrating marine ecology into any future engineering feasibility studies.32
Science Advisor Frank Press conveyed the report highlights to the president in early October, along with a mild warning: “I would recommend that you bear in mind the issue of potential ecological effects in your discussions and public statements and, as appropriate, acknowledge that the issue will require further detailed study.”33 Three days later, Carter faced the question of how committed he really was to the oil- crisis canal, when the director of the Office of Man-agement and Budget, James McIntyre, requested his input regarding Gravel’s bill to authorize the Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a new study. “As you consider it,” counseled McIntyre, “the proposal should be viewed in the larger context of (a) the impact of the proposal upon obtaining Senate consent on the Treaties and (b) how the proposal would be received in Panama.” On the plus side, he considered $7 million “a relatively small price to pay” for an updated assessment of the sea- level canal, especially if the energy crisis worsened enough to justify construction, now estimated at $6.2 billion. Yet a compelling coun-terargument could also be made: “Administration support for a sea- level canal study by the Corps—even though not a commitment to construct—will be strongly resisted by environmentalists who are concerned about potential ad-verse environmental and ecological effects from mixing waters from the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, e.g., introduction of poisonous Pacific sea snakes into the Atlantic.” After implicitly referencing the Beeton report, McIntyre emphasized the project’s questionable economic returns, even in the context of increasing energy- transportation problems.
Carter’s two options appeared at the end of the memorandum, under the heading “Presidential Decision.” At some point, in his careful script, he checked and initialed the second choice: “Do not support legislation to authorize study.”34 It must have been a difficult choice for Carter, having raised so much fuss among the treaty negotiators just weeks earlier. Yet he must also have known that he had secured Gravel’s vote for ratification, leaving him free to concentrate on other senators—a vital task given that public opposition to the treaties was running two to one.35
Most analyses of the ratification campaign focus on the rapid, unexpected rise of the New Right, and the immense pressure grassroots neoconservative groups exerted on undecided senators to vote against the treaties.36 Environmentalist NGOs might not have possessed the resources to flood senatorial offices with millions of letters about the treaty EIS, but NEPA afforded them leverage by enabling them to sue federal agencies for producing inadequate environmental impact statements.37 Although Carter’s team had shown little interest in en-vironmentalists’ concerns about the treaty earlier in the spring and summer,
that started to change in the wake of the September 6 telegram publicity. At one of the first post–signing ceremony ratification campaign events held by the White House, on September 15, 1977, environmental groups constituted six of the thirty- two civic organizations represented.38 Carter’s subsequent decision in early October not to authorize Gravel’s bill for a new sea- level canal study probably reflected a deeper appreciation of the proposal’s controversial history, as conveyed by the National Academy’s Beeton report.
Coverage of the Beeton Committee findings by high- profile venues generated unflattering publicity for the administration and Article XII. New York Times science writer Walter Sullivan, who had covered the debate seven years earlier, published an article on October 10 that began, “The revival by President Carter of the proposal for a sea- level canal across Central America has evoked renewed concern among marine biologists about the effects of unimpeded access between the tropical Atlantic and Pacific.”39 The London- based New Scientist addressed the new scientific report as well as the antiseaway advocacy of Friends of the Earth. Describing the group’s interpretation of the seaway as “a sinister move on the part of the oil lobby,” the magazine quoted from a scathing editorial by President David Brower that appeared in the November 1977 issue of Not Man Apart, FOE’s newsletter.40 Brower’s piece accused the Carter administration of
“a breakdown in decision- making.” Likely drawing on his close relationship with Edey, he excoriated Carter for promoting the project without having solicited CEQ’s recommendations or directing an EIS to be conducted before the treaty talks began. Instead, days before the treaty signing, “an obviously inadequate draft EIS was released by the State Department,” thereby preventing the ad-ministration from making an informed decision in accordance with NEPA.41
Brower alleged that Carter had responded “to the persuasion of a senator whose vote he wanted for ratification of the treaty,” citing Gravel’s public ad-mission that he had met with the president to discuss Panama issues shortly before the Yazoo City pronouncement. In Brower’s view, the Alaskan senator tried to circumvent Congress, the CEQ, and the public by persuading Carter to have the sea- level canal written into the treaty, thereby mandating a new government- funded feasibility study. The allegations gained a much larger au-dience when New Scientist republished his biting conclusion: “Proponents of the treaty have urged Friends of the Earth to be silent on the sea- level canal provision because it was put into the treaty only to satisfy Senator Gravel.” Even so, argued Brower, “when one Senator can talk a president into a commitment that flies in the face of long- standing and well- documented environmental and scientific objections, we cannot stand by silent.”42
More bad publicity addressed the ways in which megaprojects compounded the problems of tropical developing nations seeking to accelerate modernity. In December 1977, a widely distributed Washington Post article by a World Bank ecologist, Robert Goodland (the first person hired in that position), framed the sea- level canal as one component of a “triple threat to Panama ecology.”
The country also faced massive changes due to a proposed highway through the Darién Gap and the newly completed Bayano Hydroelectric Complex, which displaced thousands of Indigenous people in the eastern portion of Panama west of the Darién. The three huge projects embodied the challenges of recon-ciling economic development with respect for human rights and environmental quality.43
Much more was thus at stake than invasive sea snakes and starfish. Rubinoff and another Smithsonian official, Ross Simons, made that clear when the special assistant to the president, Joseph Aragon, paid them the compliment of asking for their take on the environmental issues raised by the Panama Canal Treaty.
The two scientist- administrators urged the administration to provide technical and financial assistance for natural resource management, noting that “such an initiative would be welcomed from Panama as long as it did not appear to be an ‘imperialistic’ scheme.” They also called for the joint commission specified in Article VI to include a robust scientific basis and to make the most of an opportunity for a new era of hemispheric partnership: “The tropics are being de-stroyed with extreme rapidity, a situation which in the long- term could have the same social and economic consequences as our current energy problems. We in the temperate zone should recognize that we cannot divorce ourselves from the tropics.” As for the seaway, “perhaps the most emotional issue to environmental-ists,” Rubinoff and Simons advised Carter’s team to assure them that no decision would be made in the absence of further scientific study.44 Representatives of the most vocal environmental groups had also been calling for such assurance, though they would likely have objected to being described as emotional.