BY LAWRENCE LATANE III

Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

Watermen and environmentalists have set aside their differences to ask Congress for disaster relief while Virginia and Maryland clamp down on the economically important blue crab harvest.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation environmental group and several watermen organizations asked the region's U.S. senators yesterday to secure emergency funding.

Ken Smith, acting president of the Virginia Watermen's Association, a signatory to the letter, said the alliance highlights the link between water pollution and economic stress on the bay.

"We've kind of put a face on this water-quality issue," he said of watermen in both states who are being forced to cut their harvest of female crabs by 34 percent.

The reduction will cost the Virginia seafood industry between $11 million and $15 million over the next three years according to figures released earlier this month by Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine.

On May 2, Kaine asked the federal government to declare Virginia's blue crab population a fishery resource disaster. Such a declaration could make money available to put watermen to work rebuilding oyster reefs, planting underwater grasses or other bay-restoration work.

Watermen and the bay foundation are hoping a funding proposal in the Senate's emergency supplemental appropriations bill will finance such a program for watermen hit hardest by the harvest restrictions.

About 150 people who dredge for crabs in the winter will lose that opportunity this year after Virginia's decision last month to close the four-month season. The state also prohibited the taking of female crabs during the final month of the crab-potting season beginning Oct. 27. Virginia and Maryland cut harvests on the advice of scientists who said the bay's shrinking population of crabs is vulnerable to collapse.

Watermen and the bay foundation said pollution has reduced the bay's ability to sustain a healthy crab population.

"I hope this will be a new era in working together," said Chris Moore, a bay foundation scientist based in Hampton Roads. "Watermen are at ground zero for all the pollution that flows downstream."

The letter -- to Sens. John W. Warner and Jim Webb of Virginia and Barbara A. Mikulski and Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland -- also was signed by bay foundation President William Baker, representatives of two Tangier-area watermen's groups and Larry Simns of the Maryland Watermen's Association.

Rep. Robert J. Wittman, R-1st, also is working in the House of Representatives to preserve disaster aid for watermen in the supplemental appropriations package. Congress is considering a budget supplement to fund the war in Iraq.

Watermen and the bay foundation have clashed over harvest limits in the past, leaving watermen reluctant to endorse the foundation's efforts to restore the bay.

"There's one common cause here that everyone should agree on," said Smith, who crabs on the Northern Neck. "It's past time that something should be done."

Contact Lawrence Latané III at llatane@timesdispatch.com