A Key Battle

The Conch Coalition and Taras Lyssenko claimed environmentalists were out to destroy the culture and economy of the Keys. Voters listened.

A A A Comments By Sean Rowe Thursday, Jan 9 1997

...continued from page 9

Can Lyssenko and the Conch Coalition use their referendum victory as a springboard for further successes at the state and national level, achieving their ultimate goal of dismantling the sanctuary altogether? Even Ron Arnold, archdruid of America's anti-environmentalist groundswell, doubts it.

"I think they've alienated a hell of a lot of people in both places because they're noisy and rowdy," Arnold says. "If they win at either of those levels, it'll be a miracle. On the other hand, crazier things have happened, and I wouldn't totally discount them, these wild cowboys in the Keys.

Owing to a reporting error, the January 9 cover story, "A Key Battle," by Sean Rowe, contained an inaccurate statement made by Conch Coalition vice president Michele Wells-Usher, who asserted that the president of the environmental organization Last Stand was "put in jail for holding the Truman Annex building hostage in Key West and threatening to blow it up." Former Key West city commissioner Harry Powell, though a member of Last Stand, was not its president, nor did the organization endorse his seizure of a trailer in an attempt to block development of a condominium complex proposed by the navy. New Times regrets the error.