PUBLIC LANDS: After partisan fight, House panel OKs first wilderness bills since 2010
Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
Greenwire: Tuesday, January 28, 2014
The House Natural Resources Committee today passed its first wilderness bills since the 111th Congress, though not without a partisan fight.
The committee passed an amended version of H.R. 163, a bill by Rep. Dan Benishek (R-Mich.) to designate roughly 32,000 acres of wilderness at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan, by voice vote.
But the bipartisanship ended there.
Democrats raised loud objections to an amendment by Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) to restrict land acquisitions and road closures and give agencies more flexibility to fight wildfires within the proposed Pine Forest and Wovoka wilderness areas in Nevada, saying the language is an affront to the Wilderness Act.
The committee eventually passed the wilderness measures 29-14, with the support of Democratic Reps. Steven Horsford (Nev.); Joe Garcia (Fla.); and Raul Ruiz, Tony Cardenas and Jim Costa of California.
"We are creating more wilderness than we are actually adding to economic development," Bishop said of the combined package, which included Horsford's H.R. 696 and Rep. Mark Amodei's (R-Nev.) H.R. 433, as well as a handful of smaller Nevada lands bills. "[It] hurts me to say that."
The bills would create nearly 75,000 acres of wilderness -- the most restrictive form of public lands protection -- while releasing or selling roughly a third of that amount into multiple uses and economic developments including a copper mine in Lyon County, Nev.
But Democrats echoed the objections of conservationists that the Bishop amendment flouts the spirit and letter of the Wilderness Act and could violate the Constitution.
It would only allow the federal government to acquire new lands within the Nevada wilderness by exchange or donation but not through an outright purchase. It would also forbid federal agencies from closing roads in or near the wilderness without opening a road of "equivalent value" nearby.
In addition, it would allow mechanical timber treatments within the proposed Pine Forest wilderness in order to tame future wildfires, an activity generally prohibited under the Wilderness Act. It would also prohibit the Interior secretary from ever studying the lands adjacent to the Pine Forest for their wilderness or other environmental values, a provision conservationists claim has never been included in a wilderness bill.
"We can't find a precedent for doing business this way," said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), the committee's ranking member. "It's a 'sort of' wilderness proposal."
DeFazio said the proposed restrictions on land purchases are actually a veiled attack on the Land and Water Conservation Fund and could flout the Constitution by depriving the owners of inholdings from selling the lands to the federal government.
Bishop said the language is standard and was added to strike "a trade-off and balance."
"There's nothing new or unique about it," he said.
It's a good indication of the types of compromise GOP leaders will demand to advance wilderness bills in the 113th Congress.
DeFazio said such language has never been standard and would not pass muster in the Senate.
"You want that to be standard because you hate the Land and Water Conservation Fund," he told Bishop.
The committee also passed by voice vote an amended bill by Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) that would require the National Park Service within three years to pass a regulation designating which streams in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks may be used by canoes, kayaks or rafts.
While the measure was amended to restore agency discretion, parks advocates said it would still be costly and unnecessary.
The committee also passed by voice vote H.R. 2259 by Rep. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) to protect a watershed west of Glacier National Park.
By voice vote, it also passed an amended H.R. 2095 by Bishop to halt land acquisitions until the Bureau of Land Management lists parcels available for disposal in an online database.
Along party lines, the committee also voted 23-19 to pass Rep. Jason Chaffetz's (R-Utah) H.R. 2657, which would require the Interior Department to sell 3.3 million acres of lands it identified during the Clinton administration for disposal.
