By PETER LORD Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer EXETER A blue volleyball floats above the net until a young man jumps high and punches it into the sand on the other side. It is a great spike. and in any other volleyball game it would score a point. But not here.

It's Labor Day afternoon at Brian H. Bishop's Austin Farm and the air sparkles with laughter and music.

In an old sawmill, painstakingly restored with locally cut hardwood, a three-piece band wails out two-steps. rhythm and blues and waltzes. During breaks two men with mustaches play lilting Cajun music on a fiddle and accordion. Nearby at the millpond, a big man in a vest quietly fishes for stocked trout while children jump in and out of floating tire tubes..

Dozens of people who have found themselves on Bishop's mailing list because of business, politics or acquaintanceships - walk between the great stone walls bisecting his 100acre farm and plunk down at the mill dubbed "Bishop's Castle" for an afternoon of dancing, Catamount draft beer and Bishop's own brand of "one-bounce volleyball".

"This is so great it ought to be in the Olympics," Bishop yells as the game roils on under the hot sun.

The spike doesn't score because in Bishop's game the ball can bounce once on the ground between each hit. Sure enough, a youngster patiently watches the ball hit the ground and bounce high in the air. When it Testimony of Brian Bishop

Brian Bishop loves the environment, but despises DEM and Save the Bay

comes down again, he swats it back
over the net.

There are no out of bounds in this
game. Players can cross under the
net to retrieve balls. Big players
have no special advantage. Everyone
has a chance. And there's no referee
to slow things down with anything
so annoying as rules.

It's the perfect game for this outspoken man who has spent the last three years waging a noisy little war against Rhode Island's two great umpires for the environment: Save the Bay and the state Department of Environmental Management.

Every spring when Save the Bay produces its annual meeting extravaganza at Newport's Goat Island, chances are you'll see most of Rhode Island's elected officials bellied up to the buffet line. It's the place for everybody who is anybody.

But not for Bishop.

Like one of those lonely figures protesting a bad deal at a car dealership, Bishop has stood outside and picketed Save the Bay's last three meetings, lambasting the popular environmental group with posters that complain it is "anti-people”.

Savoring even more distaste for the state DEM. he has set up his one-inan picket line outside DEM offices and crashed a few meetings between DEM and various environmental activists.

This summer. he was the only Rhode Islander to testify before a congressional panel on property rights issues. Unlike Rhode Island's

1

congressional delegation, which is four-square against such legislation. he was very vocally in favor

at

When he's not holding signs, he's in the computer his tiny farmhouse. generating rambling newsletters, elaborate brochures and colorful replicas of the publications he loves to spoof like Save the Bay's monthly newsletter and the Providence Phoenix.

For three years Bishop has waged a loud but lonely campaign against Rhode Island's environmental establishment.

With his dark hair and bushy beard, he looks like he should be playing accordion in a Cajun band. He usually wears flannel shirts and worn jeans and his hands are thick and callused. like a farmer's. But in a voice that booms so loudly you have to hold the telephone from your ear when he calls, he can talk - literally for hours about arcane environmental laws and movements and their effects on everyone from loggers in the Northwest Southeastern

homeowners

Massachusetts.

Just who is this guy?

Bishop runs a farm in Exeter. But he makes his living as a carpenter and landlord. He also promotes big parties and a small fishing club. He is an admitted violator of state wetlands regulations - and - when not otherwise busy - the local representative of a national movement called "Wise Use" people who believe they should he able to use their properties without Appendix A (Activist w/ Attitude)

intrusion from government regulators

He describes himself as an environmentalist who hates environmental groups: an advocate for those victimized by advocacy groups.

And while he readily concedes that he has attracted very little following here despite years of work, his efforts offer a glimpse into the growing nationwide movement to curb the environmental regulatory establishment with all of its regulations and permits.

Greeting a visitor to his farm recently. Bishop. 37, is bent over a power saw in his workshop. Around the corner a blacksmith pounds new shoes on the horses Bishop's tenants keep in the barn, under a roof with more swells than South County surf.

As he walks through his fields, a small shaggy dog trots alongside. Past the field, as he approaches his old mill and its pond, he startles an osprey that was waiting to snag a trout. It soars off with great swooping wings.

By working and preserving this farm. Bishop argues, he is doing plenty for the environment. He doesn't need any bureaucrat from Providence to tell him how to go about it.

All his life, he admits, he's disdained rules and authority figures.

Bishop grew up and attended schools on Providence's East Side where his father, Edward F. Bishop. runs an insurance and real estate business. His mother graduated from Pembroke and his father and two sisters are Brown graduates. Many of his friends were the children of Brown professors.

He likes to point out that his parents let him skip a Boy Scout meeting so he could march in the Vietnam War protest demonstrations Testimony of Brian Bishop

in the fall of 1969. "The only thing I learned from the Vietnam War was not that we were right or wrong - I learned that you should question authority"

He graduated from Classical High School with an admittedly spotty record and though he was admitted to the University of New Hampshire, he never set foot in a classroom.

Instead, he followed some friends to Michigan, where he spent several years doing carpentry and teaching mathematics in a private school.

He married a woman who raised horses and several years later they moved back to Rhode Island, where Bishop rented a rundown farm just west of Route 95 in Exeter.

Bishop grew two acres of vegetables, raised a herd of goats and began selling fresh produce on the East Side.

In 1986. Bishop and his family bought the farm. He is still annoyed that the Farmer's Home Administration, which grants lowinterest mortgages in rural areas. wouldn't give him a loan that would have halved his monthly mortgage payment.

"They'd rather lend for singlefamily houses than for farms, which are more risky," Bishop said. "The result was we had to less farming and work harder at our outside jobs to pay for the place.

Bishop rents the main farm house, out by the road. to several tenants. Bishop lives in a tiny house near the barn that was rented to itinerant farmers at the turn of the century. The outside needs shingles and paint. Inside you see the chaos of a home being renovated while in Use. Some walls have fresh sheetrock, others have none.

The kitchen table is covered with the letters, pamphlets and magazines that are the tools of an activist. In a back room a Macintosh coinputer

2

screen pokes above a torrent of computer disks, coffee cups and paperwork

This is where Bishop produces his endless stream of letters to editors. party invitations and position papers.

It all grew out of confrontations he had several years ago, first with local authorities, then with the state

In 1988 about 140 acres of woods went on the market across the street. Bishop. with backing from his father. bought the property for $375,000) and launched an effort to market it to some friends in 20-acre lots.

"I was naive. I know that now But then it was like a food co-op to We sell eight lots at about $60,000 a piece and earn enough to pay our expenses."

No sooner had Bishop bought the land than the local planning hoard decided he need to file a subdivision application. What was supposed to be a quick turnover of land dragged on for 2 years. Bishop said he would have dropped the project if he hadn't involved friends.

Carrying the costs of the new property forced him to fall behind on the mortgage and taxes for his own farin.

One of his lots was accessible only from the end of East Shore Drive, the road the runs along the east side of Boone Like.

Bishop said he was aware that a tew hundred square feet of undergrowth where he needed to build his driveway was probably wetlands or at least wet during the spring. (Last week it was dry but a few fems could be seen growing along the oaks and brush.)

But he reasoned that he was putting just on house on 26 acres not the five allowed by town zoning And he needed money badly.

Appendix A(Activist w/ Attitude

So he rented a backhoe, scooped up some gravel, and in one day built a driveway through the wetland.

He had a buyer, but the man wan worried about possible penalties and he persuaded Bishop to notify DEM.

"I felt strongly that I did the right thing by preserving more than a million square feet of open space. I said I'd go in and take my medicine from DEM," Bishop said. "So I hired an engineer and filed an after-the-fact application."

DEM charged Bishop with violating its wetlands regulations. find him $1675 and ordered him to remove the drive.

Bishop says he'll never forget the meeting where he tried to settle the dispute with DEM biologists.

"I agreed to take out the road. I offered to build a culvert. install pipes to do whatever it would take to make them happy. But all 1 wanted in return was an unofficial assurance they would let me put the drive back in after the repairs were done."

"They couldn't tell me than. And that's when I decided I was not taking part in a rational process."

Bishop later signed a consent decree and paid a $1000 fine. He sold the lot to someone who built a log home there. The new owner was immediately cited fro running heavy trucks through the same wetland.

A few months later, in the spring of 1992. Bishop read a story in the Journal-Bulletin about legislation filed by North Kingstown lawyer John J. Kupa. It would require the state to compensate anyone it prevented from developing their land

because of wetlands.

Kupa argued that if his bill passed the state could lay off most of its wetland regulators, and the state's economy would take a turn for the better Officials at Save The Bay and DEM were apoplectic, arguing it Testimony of Brian Bishop

would either cost the state tens of millions of dollars or give developers a license to destroy wetlands at will. Bishop says he knew right away which side to join.

Bishop showed up at the General Assembly hearing with buttons saying "DEM VICTIMs". He handed out brochures complaining that DEM was acting as prosecutor and judge in wetlands cases. And he found plenty of other people who felt the same way.

Even some of the legislators who were lawyers began offering anecdotes about delays and poor treatment in seeking wetland permits for clients from DEM bureaucrats.

Bishop was hooked. He began attending other hearings, meeting with others who had had trouble with DEM and working with national activists.

He says he poured so much energy into his activism, he let his marriage fall apart.

He now has a second wife, and keeps writing his party announcements and news release. Local newspapers publish some of his essays, and he mails others to govemment officials and newspaper editors.

Bishop, who has founded Rhode Island Wise Use and is the northeast representative for Alliance for America, an umbrella group for Wise Use groups, says in a recent "statement of purpose" that he's seeking solutions to environmental concerns that are sensitive to mankind as well as to plants and other animals.

he:

In a sampling of recent essays.

• Chastises the Journal-Bulletin ("a fan club magazine for DEM") for praising a decision by DEM director. "talk-lots, do-little re-engineer Tim Keeney, to appoint longtime DEM

3

Questions how federal officials could raise concerns about Rhode Island's air quality when it's not that bad. "They spend more time dwelling on scaring us to death shout our air quality and less time on advertising where and when on can easily catch the bus."

He picketed at a Save the Bay party this summer hosted by Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, complaining they are elitists who made radical alterations to the land around their Montana ranch, while supporting environmental groups that fight against every move made by local developers.

And he held up signs when Vice President Al Gore attended Save the Bay's last annual meeting. One proclaimed: "Stop Gore's Genocide of Rural Culture"

"What's interesting is that even though (Bishop) has put together a message and gotten it on the airwaves, he has not picked up any momentum at all. He's been out there for four years, spent some money, varied the issues, and there really has not been a public following."

"I think that's because there is a firm commitment to the environment in Rhode Island."

This year Bishop worked with Mate Rep. Lou Raptakis on efforts to pampone state plans to set up regional auto emissions testing centers, and Raptakis lauds his work.

"He's very articulate. He comes out with some very fascinating date." Ruptakis said. “He helped me quite a bit putting my legislation together."

But Save the Bay spokesman Fred Mawie isn't so impressed.

"He's tilting at windmills. His language and presentations talk a bout a conspiracy of evil that no one

"He has a constituency of one. And in a way it's kind of sad because he represents this back to the land' movement, but on the other side there's this developer. On one hand he is counterculture, but on the other hand he uses arguments of the timber industry."

"k always puzzles me when individuals jump on the bandwagon

Testimony of Brian Bishop

He says he responded to accusations about siding with big business when he testified before Congress this summer.

While most witnesses raised horror stories about their disputes with government bureaucrats, Bishop says he focused on the history of Americans revolting against their government.

"To hear this is a corporate war on the environment really irks me,” he says, "These are individuals - real people."

"The biggest piece of my life has always been the farm," he said. "But now i write for a land rights newsletter. I've demonstrated against Al Gore and Ted Turner. But until I feel I've rounded the corner, I won't be able to concentrate on the farm. Because I'll always feel at risk that someone will come and tell us what we can do here."

"People don't understand me. I am unusual. I know in some sense by being the person I am I create a certain level of criticism by being out of the sphere. But that is not going to make me go back into the sphere."

"I am not going to get a huge following or change the state. But I am going to keep being who I am."

Last year some neighbors

complained about parties at Bishop's farm.

The Exeter Zoning Board finally ordered him to sup holding the parties because they amount to a communal use of residential land

Bishop insists the farm has been used communally for decades for everything from hunting groups to fish clubs. So he continues inviting guests by the hundreds.

After the Labor Day volleyball game. Bishop, clad in cut-off shorts and sneakers, runs to the edge of his mill pond. bounces into the air and performs a somersault before splashing into the pond.

He comes out dripping and laughing

"Every time I play I lose." he says. "But what the hell. Everybody has a good time."

Then he pours himself another beer from the kegs his sister brought from Verinont. He steps into the mill that he rebuilt with his friends. He passes the yogun cup around for donations to the band that got together just for this party.

He picks out a friend, and they two-step around the room as the hand plays on.

Once a month, Air, Lund & Water explores how government policies and the actions of individuals and businesses affect the uir we breather, the water we drink and the landscape that surrounds us.

you have comments or suggestions, please Contuct environmental reporter Peter Lord in the Warwick office at 737-3070 or by writing him. care of the Providence Journal-Bulletin. 535 Centreville Rd.. Warwick, R.I. 02886.

Appendix A(Activist w/ Attitude)