evelopment's going to continue," Klemens recognizes. "Humans are on this planet for better or for worse. It's a matter of where we develop and the types of development. Traditionally, there are two ways of dealing with land. Lock it up and protect it in preserves or easements, or say we're developing this area and basically give it up. But we can't lock up enough land to really protect the function and integrity of ecosystems. We don't have the money or the resources. I think a lot of land that's put away, especially under the easements of land trusts, is put away for tax advantages or people's self-interest, to protect the viewshed around their houses or for the tax write-off. They're rarely informed by a real ecological sensibility.
"What I'm saying is that the huge portion of land we're giving up to development -- much larger than anything we're protecting -- has the potential to still function for wildlife. We can do a much better job of maintaining the porosity of the landscape, the interconnectivity of the landscape, so that developed land can still function." Dealing with developers, he acknowledges, is always going to be a messy business. "So the question is, can you get that mess to be less messy and more biologically intact?"
I ask Klemens whether people will actually apply his best development manual to a real-life project. "Yes," he answers categorically -- and Dover is a good case in point. The town's supervisor, Jill Way, has turned out to be a particularly apt student. She meets us at the site, a diminutive woman whose waved coif speaks dutiful professional but whose well-worn hiking boots reveal someone who's spent time out on the trail. Most of her weekends, winter and summer, are spent hiking, she tells me.
Way has been town supervisor since 1996, when she ran on an environmental platform, concerned particularly by the hazards posed by a local gravel-mining operation. She met Klemens at an environmental leadership workshop at New York City's Pace University. When Klemens founded his organization, she was one of the first to sign on. Klemens, she asserts, "provides the town board with credibility. He's known nationally and around the world. He's respected by the state Department of Environmental Conservation as well as by grassroots organizations and other consultants. He is simply the best at what he does."
That kind of credibility, says Way, is important when a developer shows up at your door with a proposal that can bring the town big revenues. Not that she is prejudiced against development, she assures me. In fact, just the opposite is true.
"The town needs development. I want development to happen. I just want it to happen right."
Developers, of course, often come armed with lawyers, consultants, and money. Faced with this juggernaut, many towns lack the resources to make and defend effective zoning regulations. The alliance's work, Way tells me, has helped to level the playing field.
Klemens is often hired by both developers and towns, or by their consulting attorneys, to do environmental assessments. That's how he comes to be working on the Dover project: Jill Way has brought him in as the result of an agreement worked out with the developer.
I remind Klemens of an article I wrote several years ago about scientist-consultants for hire who go back and forth freely from representing environmental groups to representing developers. He himself had referred to them as "biostitutes." With all due respect, I ask if he ever fears that he has become one.
Klemens is never not intense. But this is one of those occasions when his eyes get steely beneath the broad ridge of his brow and his long face, with its straight Alexandrian nose, hardens perceptibly.
"I'll answer that very bluntly. I don't work both sides. I don't work one side against the other. When I have a client who's concerned about my impartiality, I say, 'My clients have four legs and crawl on their bellies.' The animals are my ultimate clients. I have one project where I'm working for the developer's law firm and we have terribly contentious meetings. He says, 'You're not meeting the needs of the project.' I tell him, 'If I'm going to tell the town that this is a decent project, you're going to take this house lot off, move that water tower, that road,' and the guy's sitting there with his tongue hanging out about how much it will cost, and I say I really don't care.
"My contract has unique provisions in it. I don't withhold any data. All data are public. There's complete transparency. Contracts can be terminated, and often it's the threat that I'm going to leave the project that brings them to change their approach. There's no secrecy. Frankly, it's the name that they want. My reputation and integrity are my biggest assets. If I lose those, then I'm any run-of-the-mill consultant, and I become your biostitute."
