He's water torture for developers.

• Position: Jim Clark's campaign to preserve Durham County's environment

Jim Clark likes to call on-the-scene news conferences to "shine the light of day," he says, on dangers to the Triangle's water supplies.

But what local business people are wondering is who -- other than Clark himself -- designated a salesman from Miami as the region's environmental spokesman.

"I mean, who the hell is this guy?" asks Stephen W. Barringer, chairman of the Friends of Durham, a pro-business political group. "What are his qualifications? What makes him such an expert?"

"I think he's a zealot," Durham developer W. Clay Hamner says. "I think he'll go to any tactic -- whether it's true or not. He'd do anything to win."

What has Hamner so hot is Clark's criticism of Treyburn, Hamner's posh residential and commercial development in northern Durham County.

In 1985, Clark formed a group called Save the Water to block the proposed project. He feared the proposed project. He feared the 5,200-acre complex would pollute nearby Falls Lake, which provides Raleigh's drinking water. Treyburn was approved, but Clark has been battling Hamner ever since.

Durham County is redetermining Falls Lake's boundaries -- and the restricted-development zones around it -- after Clark and a neighborhood group charged last year that the county map lopped off parts of the lake.

And Clark is voicing loud opposition to Treyburn officials' attempt to persuade the state that its proposed watershed regulations -- which widen the protected zone surrounding shorelines -- would...