MIAMI (Reuters) - A Texas millionaire's plan to build a rocket assembly plant in the U.S. Virgin Islands is stuck on the launching pad, stalled by conservationists who say it will ruin an environmental and historical enclave.

The conflict in the Caribbean territory has spawned pickets, a lawsuit and an escalating war of words that is colored by race and economics.

"It's going to be a good fight,'' said Virgin Islands Sen. Anne Golden, who supports Frisco, Texas-based Beal Aerospace Technologies Inc.'s plan to build a $75 million rocket manufacturing plant and corporate headquarters in St. Croix, the territory's largest island.

Proponents of the Beal deal, who include Virgin Islands Gov. Charles Turnbull, say it would create 145 jobs and boost the faltering economy in St. Croix, where weeds sprouting in roofless, crumbling buildings still bear witness to the devastation unleashed by Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

Those supporters also say the deal, which includes at least a decade of local tax exemptions that could save the company about $20 million annually, would be a boon to the territory's shrinking private sector.

But opponents, while saying they would welcome Beal to the islands' industrial area, call a land-swap provision that was recently approved by Virgin Islands senators illegal.

'A BIG MELEE'

"I can say that they haven't behaved themselves very nicely,'' said Dennis McKinney, a director at the St. Croix Environmental Association, which is preparing a lawsuit to stop the deal. "It's a big melee. That's a Virgin Islands word for a big brouhaha.''

The battleground is Camp Arawak, a neglected but historically and environmentally significant oceanfront site.

Golden, who represents St. Croix, was among the senators who recently approved a proposal to change the allowed use of the site and transfer the property -- home to pre-Columbian ruins and a dilapidated Danish plantation house, slave quarters and sugar cane mill -- to the company in exchange for two other sites on the island.

Soon after the vote, Sen. Alicia "Chucky'' Hansen and 19 others won a temporary restraining order blocking the land swap, which still must be approved by the governor. In making the ruling, Territorial Court Judge Alphonso Andrews said senators violated an agreement struck when the land was donated to the government on the condition it be developed as a public beach, park or for other recreational use.

He called the transfer a "significant blow'' to the islands' slave descendants and said it also violated a law that prevents the government from selling or trading shoreline property.

The government has asked a U.S. District Court judge to rule on the validity of the lower court's decision.

BAD PRECEDENT?

Meanwhile, the St. Croix Environmental Association said the swap set a bad precedent. It planned to ask the court to appoint it as Camp Arawak's trustee so that its historic sites, salt ponds, animal breeding areas and mangroves are protected.

Beal Aerospace was founded by Texas banking entrepreneur and math whiz Andrew Beal, who wrote the Beal Conjecture, an advanced math problem, in 1997 and offered a $50,000 prize for solving it. No one has claimed the prize yet.

Beal has his eye on the private satellite launching business and is developing some of the industry's largest rocket boosters to ferry cargoes to orbit. Its officials call the Virgin Islands accord a "win-win'' agreement and have handed out "Make the Beal Deal Real'' T-shirts to supporters.

"Opponents are trying to make emotional arguments. Nobody's doing anything to maintain the property, it's being used as a garbage dump. To say it's being used as a recreational site is farcical,'' Beal Vice President David Spoede said.

Beal officials and other supporters say the deal's chief opponents are wealthy, white expatriates who do not want the company in their backyards.

"We've looked at the legal issues closely, and we're confident we're going to win,'' Spoede said.

The company also is encountering resistance to its plan to put a rocket launch pad on Sombrero Island in the northeastern Caribbean.

Wealthy residents of nearby Anguilla, who control the island, are fighting the move. They say the launches would be deadly for the brown booby, the black lizard and other species that, along with a handful of lighthouse keepers, call the barren limestone isle home.