SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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49–510 CC
1998
HEARING ON IMPACT OF FEDERAL LAND USE POLICIES ON RURAL COMMUNITIES
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
JUNE 9, 1998, WASHINGTON, DC
Serial No. 105–90
Printed for the use of the Committee on Resources
COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
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DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman
W.J. (BILLY) TAUZIN, Louisiana
JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
ELTON GALLEGLY, California
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado
JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland
KEN CALVERT, California
RICHARD W. POMBO, California
BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming
HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho
LINDA SMITH, Washington
GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, California
WALTER B. JONES, Jr., North Carolina
WILLIAM M. (MAC) THORNBERRY, Texas
JOHN SHADEGG, Arizona
JOHN E. ENSIGN, Nevada
ROBERT F. SMITH, Oregon
CHRIS CANNON, Utah
KEVIN BRADY, Texas
JOHN PETERSON, Pennsylvania
RICK HILL, Montana
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BOB SCHAFFER, Colorado
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada
MICHAEL D. CRAPO, Idaho
GEORGE MILLER, California
EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia
BRUCE F. VENTO, Minnesota
DALE E. KILDEE, Michigan
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American Samoa
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
OWEN B. PICKETT, Virginia
FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
CALVIN M. DOOLEY, California
CARLOS A. ROMERO-BARCELÓ, Puerto Rico
MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York
ROBERT A. UNDERWOOD, Guam
SAM FARR, California
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island
ADAM SMITH, Washington
WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
CHRIS JOHN, Louisiana
DONNA CHRISTIAN-GREEN, Virgin Islands
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RON KIND, Wisconsin
LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
LLOYD A. JONES, Chief of Staff
ELIZABETH MEGGINSON, Chief Counsel
CHRISTINE KENNEDY, Chief Clerk/Administrator
JOHN LAWRENCE, Democratic Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
Hearing held June 9, 1998
Statement of Members:
Chenoweth, Hon. Helen, a Representative in Congress from the State of Idaho
Cubin, Hon. Barbara, a Representative in Congress from the State of Wyoming, prepared statement of
Statement of Witnesses:
Arnold, Ron, Executive Vice President, Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, Bellevue, Washington
Prepared statement of
Conley, John, President, Concerned Alaskans for Resources and Environment, CARE
Prepared statement of
Favreau, Leon, President, Multiple Use Association, Shelburne, New Hampshire
Prepared statement of
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Gomez, Edmund, National Commission on Small Farms, Alcalde, New Mexico
Prepared statement of
McKeen, Hugh B., New Mexico Cattle Growers Association, Glenwood, New Mexico
Prepared statement of
Propes, Mike, Polk County Commissioner, Dallas, Oregon
Prepared statement of
Richardson, Jack, Val Verde County Administrator, Del Rio, Texas
Prepared statement of
Wesson, Donald R., Southern Pine Regional Director, Pulp and Paperworker's Resource Council, McGehee, Arkansas
Prepared statement of
Additional material supplied:
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, Report by, ''Battered Communities''
Recent Foundation Grants for green advocacy groups
The Boston Globe, ''The greening of a movement'' and ''Environmental donors set tone''
HEARING ON IMPACT OF FEDERAL LAND USE POLICIES ON RURAL COMMUNITIES
TUESDAY, JUNE 9, 1998
House of Representatives,
Committee on Resources,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 p.m. in room 1324, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Helen Chenoweth presiding.
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STATEMENT OF HON. HELEN CHENOWETH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF IDAHO
Mrs. CHENOWETH. [presiding] The Committee on Resources will come to order. The Committee is meeting today to hear testimony on the impact of Federal land use policies on rural communities. Under Rule 4(g) of the Committee on Rules, any oral opening statements and hearings are limited to the Chairman and Ranking Minority Member, and this will allow us to hear from our witnesses sooner and help Members to keep to their schedules. Therefore, if other Members have statements, they will be included in the record.
Today's hearing is designed to hear from working citizens from outside the Washington, DC, beltway, and they will testify about how Federal land use policies affect rural communities. The news media constantly reminds us that Microsoft millionaires and the affluent young urban professionals are succeeding, and we are all thankful that many in America are prospering, but, unfortunately, the media tends to tune out to what is happening in rural America.
Many of my rural communities in Idaho that are dependent on timber, mining, ranching and other resource industries are not enjoying the good economic times of their urban cousins. Mine closures, mill closures, canceled shifts and AMU reductions are becoming a regular occurrence. Indeed, there is a prosperity gap developing between rural and urban America. In my State and other western States, Federal policies are locking up our natural resources. These policies contribute to the prosperity gap between urban and rural communities.
But the West is not the only region affected. Federal policies now pose a significant threat to rural communities in the eastern States. One individual policy generally does not cripple these communities, but the cumulative impact of many such policies really can destroy them.
I welcome all of today's witnesses and their insights about what is really happening in rural communities. I will learn a lot from you. The geographical diversity of today's witnesses show this is more than a war on the West, as people from private land States such as New Hampshire, Arkansas and Texas will discuss Federal policies that threaten the prosperity and harmony of our rural communities.
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I look forward to hearing from an old friend, Ron Arnold, about a fascinating study done that outlines the extent of pain and suffering in resource-dependent communities. I also want to hear and learn from the many other witnesses that we have here today.
Our last panel today includes representatives from communities that are fighting the American Heritage Rivers Initiative. I have aggressively worked to end this illegal and ill-fated program by sponsoring legislation and filing a lawsuit in Federal court, and I have only just begun my fight.
Our witnesses today all represent communities where their local Congressman or Senator thought they had opted out of the program, yet the bureaucrats at the Council on Environmental Quality are moving full speed ahead. These people are justifiably asking what part of no doesn't this Federal administration understand.
Again, I welcome all of our witnesses today and those in our audience with the Fly In for Freedom. And I look forward to the testimony from the Ranking Minority Member when he does come in.
[The information referred to follows:]
Mrs. CHENOWETH. I'd like to introduce now our first panel: Mr. Ron Arnold, executive vice president, Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise; Mr. John Conley, president of the Concerned Alaskans for Resources and Environment; Mr. Leon Favreau, president, Multiple Use Association; and Mr. Edmund Gomez, National Commission on Small Farms; and Mr. Hugh McKeen, New Mexico Cattle Growers Association.
As explained in our first hearing, it is the intention of the Chairman to place all witnesses under oath. This is a formality of the Committee that is meant to assure open and honest discussion and should not affect the testimony given by witnesses. I believe that all of the witnesses were informed of this before appearing here today, and they have each been provided a copy of the Committee rules.
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Now, if you would all stand and raise your hand.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Now, I will introduce our first witness, Mr. Ron Arnold, executive vice president for the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.
Let me remind the witnesses that under our Committee rules, they must limit their oral testimony to 5 minutes, but that their entire testimony will appear in the record. We will also allow the entire panel to testify before I and any other Members who join me will be questioning the witnesses.
Now the Chair recognizes Mr. Ron Arnold.
STATEMENT OF RON ARNOLD, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR THE DEFENSE OF FREE ENTERPRISE, BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON
Mr. ARNOLD. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Madam Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, my name is Ron Arnold. I am testifying as the executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, a nonprofit citizen organization based in Bellevue, Washington. The Center has approximately 10,000 members nationwide, most of them in rural natural resource industries.
Madam Chairman, I am proud to state that the Center does not accept government grants and has not received any government funds since the day it was established on American Bicentennial Day, July 4th, 1976.
Madam Chairman, I would like to thank you on behalf of our members for holding this hearing today. It is timely indeed.
For the past year, at the urging of our increasingly concerned Members, the Center has been conducting an in-depth study of Federal policy and rural communities. Our 36-page study titled Battered Communities is being released at this hearing. You will find it attached to my hearing statement.
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Battered Communities was cosponsored by three other citizen groups, the American Land Rights Association, F.I.G.H.T. for Minnesota, and the Maine Conservation Rights Institute. Battered Communities delves into serious matters of Federal policy as it affects rural community life. On page 5, we address the most obvious problem, the urban-rural prosperity gap, the spread in wages and unemployment between the richest and poorest counties within each of the 50 States. I am not proud to announce that my State, Washington, is the top of that list with the worst gap.
While urban America today enjoys an economic boom, rural counties are finding themselves choked to death by Federal restrictions designed to protect the environment from the people who live and work in the environment. The most disheartening aspect of the conflict over the environment is that rural goods producers, ranchers, loggers, miners, are becoming a despised minority, morally excluded from respect and human decency, even in Federal documents, as we see on page 7 of the report in an Environmental Impact Statement characterizing miners as costly, destructive, stupid social misfits.
And now we turn to the visible damage. Rural communities are besieged with a bewildering array of Federal policies forcing them to starve in the midst of plenty. These policies are listed in part on page 8 of the report.
Madam Chairman, let me call your attention to the most serious problem our study uncovered, the systematic effort of a triangle of interests to harness Federal policy to their own agenda, against natural resource goods producers. The Center has identified a small corps of activist Federal employees, from the highest levels to on-the-ground technicians, working to reshape Federal policy from within according to agendas that paralyze goods production in rural communities. Pages 13 through 17 discuss a few of these activist Federal employees. To see their impact, you will find on page 24 of the report a chart of systematic timber sale appeals on two rural national forests in Washington State, the Okanogan and the Colville, and these appeals were filed in a coordinated pattern by a bevy of environmental groups. We found the frequent outcome was that the Forest Service simply withdrew the timber sale without even ruling on the appeal. The resulting mill closures are charted on page 25.
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This certainly appears to be undue influence, and it is a national problem, yet that is not the whole story. These environmental groups were in many cases acting at the behest of their donors on grant-driven programs not designed by the environmental groups, but originating within grantmaking private foundations. We discovered in documents, such as this thick directory of environmental grantmaking associations—foundations, a cluster of multimillion-dollar campaigns designed to set public policy against logging, mining, ranching and other resource producers according to the private preferences of a few custodians of vast wealth.
Some of these foundations do not even accept applications for grants, but design entire programs of social change themselves and handpick the groups that will act as their agents, pushing nonprofit laws to the edge. In the hands of these privileged people, Federal policy is being corrupted into a blunt instrument, battering rural communities.
Madam Chairman, these are serious charges. On page 35, the Center recommends that this Committee continue its attention to this vital issue with a detailed investigation of the causes behind America's rural Battered Communities. The Committee, of course, may take any or all of the pages of this report and make them a part of the report.
Thank you again, Madam Chairman, for holding this hearing on the anguish of rural America.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you very much, Mr. Arnold, for that outstanding testimony. It was riveting.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Arnold may be found at end of hearing.]
Mrs. CHENOWETH. The Chair recognizes Mr. John Conley.
Mr. Conley?
STATEMENT OF JOHN CONLEY, PRESIDENT, CONCERNED ALASKANS FOR RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT, CARE
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Mr. CONLEY. Madam Chairman, my name is John Conley, and I am the president of Concerned Alaskans for Resources and Environment, CARE. I have also served 6 years on the Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly, and I operate three NAPA auto parts stored located in Ketchikan, Craig, and Wrangell, Alaska.
The passage of the Tongass Timber Reform Act of 1990 was supposed to be the great compromise for the Tongass National Forest. TTRA was supposed to provide increased environmental protection, as well as a sustainable forest products industry. I have—since the passage of TTRA, I have witnessed the closing of two pulp mills and several sawmills in southeast Alaska. At the same time I have witnessed the increased funding of local environmental groups by tax-exempt national foundations.
These closings have greatly affected both my business and my community. In Ketchikan alone we've lost over 544 forest product jobs. We've lost 144 retail and support jobs, and $40 million of local payroll. Today my company employs eight less people, and my gross receipts have declined by $1.5 million. As I look to the future, I am extremely concerned about supporting my family and the families of the 30 remaining employees in my stores. Access to natural resources is vital to southeast Alaskans and is actually guaranteed by the Alaska Statehood Act.
Environmental groups have stated that tourism can and will replace lost forest products jobs. Madam Chairman, this is simply not true. Tourism is important to our local economy and throughout the State. I have supported and will continue to support this growing industry; however, it is a seasonal—it's a seasonal industry, and it only provides seasonal jobs. It does not provide families with the benefits of year-round employment. These jobs also will not replace the 25 percent return to our communities for education and transportation based on timber receipts.
Madam Chairman, it has become obvious to many that increased funding by national tax-free environmental foundations to the local environmental groups leads to decreased economic activity and local employment. The environmental industry states that they support a value-added timber industry for southeast Alaska. Madam Chairman, my community and I are confused, because these same small groups continue to object to harvest quantities adequate enough to sustain even a small value-added forest products industry.
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The Forest Service has a legal mandate to manage our national forests for multiple uses, which include timber production. The new land management for the Tongass dramatically reduced the amount of land available for a long-term sustainable timber industry in southeast Alaska. Even with this massive reduction of the available sale quantity on the Tongass, the environmental industry continues to fight timber production. This is not acceptable. At a minimum, we need to sustain our current economy. Legal challenges orchestrated and financed by the national environmental lobby continues to block multiple uses on the TTRA, and this is preventing our ability to maintain a stable economy.
Madam Chairman, I believe it's time to make these tax-exempt foundations that fund the environmental industry accountable. As a businessman, if I were to provide money to someone which they in turn used to destroy another business, I would be held accountable, and it would be illegal under RICO laws. Madam Chairman and members of the subcommittee, for the sake of my family and the families of my community, I urge you to hold these foundations accountable.
And I have a couple other items I'd like to have entered into the record. I have a list of the foundation grants that have gone into Alaska. And I have a copy of an article in the October 19th, 1997 Boston Globe—it came off of their Web page, and some interesting quotes in there, and I won't read them all, I will just read a couple: ''If a foundation had a large interest in Alaska and a lot of money, you definitely had a large interest in Alaska,'' and that was stated by a former Wilderness Society director.
Here's a statement about the gentleman that works for the Pew Charitable Trust: In Alaska, environmentalists credit Joshua Reichert with devising the national strategy to help bring an end to two subsidized contracts on the national forest.
So I would like to have these entered into the record.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. CONLEY. Thank you. And I also have a copy of a full-page ad from the Alaska Rain Forest Coalition asking for the President of the United States to end logging on the Tongass. And I can provide a copy of this. This is kind of a one-of-a-kind of an original. And the Alaska Rain Forest Coalition was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
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Thank you.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Conley. And if you can get a copy of that, would you like to have it entered in the record?
Mr. CONLEY. I would, ma'am.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. CONLEY. Thank you.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Conley.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Conley may be found at end of hearing.]
Mrs. CHENOWETH. And the Chair now recognizes Mr. Favreau.
STATEMENT OF LEON FAVREAU, PRESIDENT, MULTIPLE USE ASSOCIATION, SHELBURNE, NEW HAMPSHIRE
Mr. FAVREAU. Thank you, Madam Chairman, for allowing me to express my views on the impact Federal land use policies could have on a rural community like mine. My name is Leon Favreau, and I am president and cofounder of the Multiple Use Association. Our 500-member group is based in Shelburne, New Hampshire, and has been in existence since 1987. Most of our efforts go toward exposing the public to the truth about our Nation's forests.
You will soon see the results of some of our work when you receive an Evergreen Magazine issue on the Northern Forest Lands. We helped raise the funds needed for the production costs for the issue that will show the Northern Forest Lands as they are.
I am president of Bethel Furniture Stock, Inc., a primary and secondary wood products manufacturing firm that produces component parts for the furniture industry. The last title I will share with you is that of chairman of the budget committee for the small town of Shelburne, New Hampshire.
The concerns that I would like to express today have to do with H.R. 971, the Northern Forest Stewardship Act. As you may know, the so-called Northern Forest Lands are comprised of 26 million acres of primarily private forest lands that span across the State boundaries of northern Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and eastern New York. The Stewardship Act purports to prevent harm from coming to these lands and its resident one million people.
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The Multiple Use Association supported the study performed by the Northern Forest Lands Council that tried to determine what constituted a threat to the local forest. The report may have broken new ground by showing so much concern for local people.
The Stewardship Act, however, is different. We believe it will lead to greater Federal control over our local communities. The council made it very clear they did not recommend increased control. While local communities participated in the Northern Forest Land study, they haven't participated in the preparation of this legislation. Local hearings are necessary to correct that.
I know that you have heard from some in the timber industry that support the Act. I'm here to tell you that most of us in the local timber industry are against it. We understand that this is just another step down a slippery slope that will mean it will be even more difficult for us to do business in the Northern Forest Lands area. Increasing the focus on government land and easement acquisition, which the Act does, will mean a reduction in the availability of timber.
Since the Northern Forest Land Council's report found that our varied forests really weren't threatened, one needs to ask why all of this national interest in our 26 million acres? There was never any local groundswell to put more Federal or State controls on these private lands, nor was there any local groundswell for more government land purchases. Instead, this drive to change local land use comes from a vision concocted for us by our elite from the national environmental and charitable foundation communities. They initially promoted as examples to be copied for our area, controlled greenline areas, such as the Federal Columbia River Gorge scenic area and the New York State Adirondack Park.
The term ''greenline'' has now been discredited in the Northern Forest Lands area, partially because we brought out a mayor from the Columbia River Gorge who gave a devastating description of what it was like living and working at home in his elite-controlled area. Greens no longer mention the term ''greenline,'' but there is no doubt in my mind that it is still their goal for those of us who live and work in the Northern Forest Lands area.
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H.R. 971, I believe, will do nothing to help our rural communities. Almost everything in the Act is already occurring at some level. If the Act is passed, the local citizen's fight to maintain his or her land use rights and way of life will be raised to a higher and more difficult level. Senator Leahy isn't helping his constituents who live in Vermont's Northern Forest Lands area when he continually tries to attach the Senate Act to other pieces of the Senate's legislation.
I ask you to think of people like me when you consider whether to pass on H.R. 971. Thank you.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you very much, Mr. Favreau, very interesting. We're hearing another side of the story today.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Favreau may be found at end of hearing.]
Mrs. CHENOWETH. The Chair recognizes Mr. Edmund Gomez from New Mexico.
Mr. Gomez?
STATEMENT OF EDMUND GOMEZ, NATIONAL COMMISSION ON SMALL FARMS, ALCALDE, NEW MEXICO
Mr. GOMEZ. Madam Chairman, members of the Committee, my name is Edmund Gomez, and I live in Alcalde, New Mexico. I speak on behalf of my neighbors, friends and family who rely heavily on public lands for economic, cultural, social and spiritual survival. As an active member of the USDA National Commission on Small Farms, which was commissioned by Mr. Dan Glickman, USDA Secretary of Agriculture in July 1997, I also speak on behalf of small farmers and ranchers from rural communities across the country who rely on public lands for economic survival.
Communal land use by residents of New Mexico and the Southwest has historical roots dating back to 1598. During Spanish colonial settlement, community land grants were granted by Spain and later Mexico to groups of settlers and Native American pueblos in New Mexico and in the Southwest. Many of these tracts of land are currently held as public lands by the USDA Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. The descendents of the Spanish and Mexican land grants have continually utilized these lands for livestock grazing, fuel wood, hunting and timber harvesting, as well as a source of watershed for domestic livestock and agricultural use.
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New Mexico ranks 49th in per capita income. The northern counties of New Mexico are some of the poorest in respect to per capita income in the country. Over 50 percent of the land base in New Mexico is owned by the Federal Government. Many of the residents of northern New Mexico, including the Native American Pueblos, own very small parcels of land. Some sociologists attribute the correlation of poverty to the proportion of private versus public land ownership. Many of these public lands were once owned by the ancestors of these rural communities.
Livestock production represents over 85 percent of all agricultural income in northern New Mexico. The average livestock producer in northern New Mexico owns 20 head of cattle and utilizes public lands. Within the past 50 years, from 30 to 60 percent of the traditional savanna grasslands in the Carson and Santa Fe National Forests have been lost to woody shrub and tree encroachment due almost entirely to fire suppression, thus causing loss of livestock and wildlife habitat and economic stability within rural communities.
Some groups who desire to eliminate livestock grazing from public lands claim that ranchers are becoming rich off of the public lands. I have yet to meet a wealthy indigenous rancher from northern New Mexico, and I have lived there all of my life. Many of the residents of northern New Mexico, including Indian Pueblos, rely on public lands for fuel wood and timber harvesting as did their ancestors. A large percentage of these residents utilize fuel wood as their only source of heat and cooking fuel.
In 1994, a special interest group filed a litigation based on the Endangered Species Act with the USDA Forest Service on behalf of the Mexican spotted owl in the Carson National Forest. In 1996, a Federal court restricted all harvest of timber and fuel woods in the Carson National Forest until the forest complied with the Endangered Species Act. This action prevented local residents from obtaining fuel wood for heating and cooking. Many families endured a very cold winter that year because of this inhumane action. Incidentally, the Mexican spotted owl has never been historically documented as living within the Carson National Forest.
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Why do indigenous people continue to live in northern New Mexico rural communities? The indigenous people of northern New Mexico speak seven languages, including English. They have retained their culture, tradition, social values and spirituality. They were the first and continue to be the true environmentalists of the land, utilizing the sustainable practices that have fed and clothed their children for many generations, always returning more than they take.
The pristine beauty of the land remains intact and attracts new waves of settlers every year. Rural communities in northern New Mexico work and live as a family. This social and culture custom has given support during adverse situations and has allowed them to raise their children with the same values that have been sacred to the people for many generations.
Congress has passed legislation dealing with public land policy and environmental issues that were deemed necessary and essential, but a one-size-fits-all policy does not work for all public land situations. Congress has overlooked the endangered rural communities and their struggle for survival and a traditional way of life. We are just as important as the other endangered species Congress is protecting.
Rural communities were excluded when Congress developed policy that would ultimately affect their lives. Madam Chairman, and members of the Subcommittee, please find ways of amending the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act so that they will provide for the protection of the environment as they were intended, and not to be used as a loophole for special interest groups who continue to file litigation against the USDA Forest Service in an effort to promote their own agenda. Provide congressional provisions to establish local community-based public land management boards which will determine the management objectives for the local public land base and would include both environmental and economic considerations. This process will ensure that rural communities who traditionally rely on the land for survival will be included in the policy decision process for their region.
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And finally, Madam Chairman, and members of the Subcommittee, I extend an invitation for you to visit with us in northern New Mexico so that you may firsthand meet real people who have utilized public lands for over 400 years, who depend on these lands for survival, and the real people who have retained their culture and spirituality because of their harmony with the land. But please, please, accept my invitation before the rural communities of northern New Mexico become extinct.
Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Gomez, very interesting.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gomez may be found at end of hearing.]
Mrs. CHENOWETH. And the chair recognizes Mr. Hugh McKeen from New Mexico.
Mr. McKeen?
STATEMENT OF HUGH B. McKEEN, NEW MEXICO CATTLE GROWERS ASSOCIATION, GLENWOOD, NEW MEXICO
Mr. MCKEEN. Madam Chairman and Committee members, it gives me great pride to speak here today, although I have a heavy heart because of what's going on back home.
I want to read first of all, what it says in a forest publication here: the Forest Service administered its nationwide program of range resource management with the following major objectives, and I'm going to read the one that's pertinent to what we're talking about here, to promote the stability of family ranchers and farms in local areas where national forest and national grasslands are located.
We're doing the opposite here, Madam Chairman. I have three brothers. One brother served in Vietnam. Another brother was going to Vietnam, he was in the paratroopers, but he didn't go. I served my military also and my time in the Berlin crisis. We pay our taxes, we served our country with honor and sense of duty. Now our country is betraying us through the Federal bureaucracy, namely the Forest Service in our area.
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I want to recount to you an individual thing that happened to me. In 1995, I filled out my 10-year renewal for my grazing permit. They brought it to me, and I said I couldn't live with it. They instituted standards and guidelines I couldn't live with. They gave me the word again that they had no studies and so I said I couldn't live with it. They went back, they wrote a letter to FMHA, who holds the mortgage on my home, my farm. I didn't have to sign this 10-year renewal until March 31st. They wrote the letter on March 12th.
FMHA wrote a letter and said, we're going to foreclose because you haven't signed the grazing permit, and it's part of the collateral. They get other agencies to help them. They get two Federal agencies. That's the way they work. So, on March the 31st, I had to sign my grazing permit under the conditions they gave me. I either have a slow death or a fast death.
OK. The other thing I want to talk about is the—and the other thing that happened was that when I called up FHA and said, hey, you know, I've signed my permit, FHA says, well, the Forest Service has to tell us. I had to beg them three times to write a letter to FHA telling them that I had signed my permit.
The other thing that happened to us just here recently, we had a hearing in Tucson. Several environmental groups sued the Forest Service to have cattle removed on 32 different allotments in Arizona and New Mexico. We were told by the Forest Service before we went to the meeting that the Forest Service was representing the cattle people. They were going to look after our water rights, the grazing rights, and our economic rights, and all the things they're supposed to do, our families.
We got down to the Tucson hearing. It was a friendly suit. The Forest Service was there with the environmental groups to totally destroy us. We had witnesses there, we had our attorneys there, and as the hearing progressed after the environmentalists and Forest Service has presented their cases, it went before the judge, and the judge says, there's not going to be an injunction, there's not going to be any cattle removed.
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The Forest Service could see that they're losing the case. The environmentalists put on one of the poorest cases you could imagine. In one case they had one fellow who was a high school graduate, said he had been out on the permits and had actual accounts. He had been out there two days, something like 6 million acres. Another one was out there six days. This was the extent of their testimony as to actually seeing things, except for another expert.
As this thing progressed, the Forest Service could see they were going to lose the case, so they said, Your Honor, we want to go out and settle this thing out of court. So they went out, they excluded the cattle people, came back with a stipulated agreement, and the judge said, I'm not going to sign it.
Well, that excluded us from our testimony after we paid our people, after we didn't even get our day in court. So we went home, and what did the Forest Service do? They came home and began to remove livestock. The Forest Service came home and did everything—did the things they were told not to do in this court. So we have people right now at home having cattle removed by intimidation. They sent me a letter and said I can't use my private land because it has a little piece of forest land in it. It means I have to fence that forest land before I can use my pasture again. For somebody with a big long riv
er, it's disastrous, and that's what's happening. So rather than proceed as other people have, they're just removing their cattle.
So, Madam Chairman, we're in terrible shape. The Forest Service is totally a dictatorial thing that's come over us. They joined hands with the environmental groups, and we're down to the last straw. We need help from somewhere. Thank you.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you very much, Mr. McKeen, for your testimony.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McKeen may be found at end of hearing.]
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Mrs. CHENOWETH. The Chair recognizes Mr. John Peterson, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, for questions.
Mr. PETERSON. I'd like to commend the Chairman and the Committee for holding this hearing. For a little background, I come from the East, but I come from the west of the East I call it. I represent the northern tier of Pennsylvania, where we have the finest hardwood forests in America. And we have the Allegheny National Forest, which is currently under siege by the environmental groups to stop logging there. In the northern tier of Pennsylvania, we used to dig coal, we used to drill for oil, and we used to cut timber. That was very much a part of our quality of life, and all of those have been under attack.
The northern tier of Pennsylvania is more predominantly owned by the State than it is by the Federal Government. I have many counties that are 62 percent public land, 55 percent public land, 50 percent public land. And I think that when you have at least half of your land owned by government, you have a huge impact when government policies are made and when government policies are made that are given little thought that it's going to have a big impact.
And I personally believe that rural America is really under attack. I mean, the resources that made this country strong and rich came from rural America. And I don't know what the long-term plans of these groups are, but I guess it's to be dependent on imports for all of our resources.
I guess the one that's the most surprising to me is the timber issue, because with good management, our great grandchildren can be marketing timber the same as we are. It's a renewable resource, and it's one that you're leaning on, I'm leaning on.
We use it every day as we build our homes and furnish them, forest products, as we use paper, as we use many of our commodities. They're all derived from the forest products. I guess somehow we have to look at this as a war against rural America, and the quality of life there where critters and creatures and insects have a higher value than our children, who would like to live there and continue the quality of life that we've had in rural America.
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So would any one of you would like to respond to that question of how we collectively, I guess, educate the world of what's really happening? I don't think most of America knows what's happening to rural America.
Mr. ARNOLD. Congressman Peterson, my name is Ron Arnold, one of the items that I think that every State can do, such as yours, is to do the fundamental research into who really is behind this attack, as we have done. Our center stands ready to provide basic information, training and research techniques, community organizing even. We will go where the problem is. And I'm sure that everybody on this panel has information that would help you do that kind of thing and give it to the media first in your local areas, then the national media.
We have to make these local issues, national issues, to get any kind of a groundswell of public fairness. It's just plain a matter of appealing to the sense of fairness to Americans. And I think we're famous for that. Once they know, I think they will make the right decision.
Mr. PETERSON. I agree with you. I was a State legislator for 19 years, and I learned early on that if I held a news conference on rural issues, I would get three or four press there. If I held a news conference that was not looked at as a rural issue, I'd get 15 or 20 press there from the press corps in Harrisburg, which was the State government.
So we used to try to figure out ways of couching that we were having a rural issue, and I don't understand that. I mean—but that was the bias. You'd get three or four press to come to a news conference that dealt with rural issues, and yet most of America wants to enjoy rural America, but for some reason they don't want people who live in rural America to have a quality of life that they will even be there.
Now we also have to, I think, work from the understanding that some of these groups, not all of them, but some of these groups, want half of America to be as natural as it was when Columbus came, and they want people there; they certainly don't want vehicles there. They don't want anything there except critters. Now that's a philosophy I guess I just don't happen to agree with. But that is the baseline of some groups, and somehow we have to think in that perspective, too, that they want the land for the critters, not for people.
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Yes, sir?
Mr. FAVREAU. Can I make a comment? Being from the timber industry, I really appreciate your comments. You asked what you could do in your area to try to educate the public. I'm really high on the Evergreen Magazine and the Evergreen Foundation. Their sole reason for being is to restore the public confidence in forestry, and they're very highly credible, and I think raising a little bit of money to get an issue on your area would be a big plus.
The other thing I'd like to comment—comment I'd like to make is about the industry. I think that, you know, I've got—I belong to industry associations, and, you know, there are a lot of dear friends in the industry, and I think the industry still hasn't figured out what's going on and isn't doing what it could to try to save itself. We're dealing with some people that are really determined.
Let me give you just one little example. At one of the Northern Forest Lands hearings I had a discussion with one of the activists who is trying to control everything. And I was trying to make a point, and I said, you know, we don't accept disease in our bodies, we don't accept disease in our pets, we don't accept disease in our gardens, but we're going to accept disease in our forests. And that didn't go anywhere, because he told me that he felt disease in people was good because there are too many of us.
He did say he preferred it wasn't in his own body. But anyway, this tells you what the mentality is, and we're never going to change that. What we need to do is expose it.
Mr. PETERSON. I would be interested if any of you that have—because the East is now just being impacted like the West was, and—you know, in the Allegheny National Forest, because it's a very mature hardwood forest. We had many people that felt it wouldn't happen to us, and it is now happening to us.
And I want to thank all of you for coming out today and sharing with us, because it's a battle that we really cannot afford to lose.
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Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Peterson.
And we will have a second round if you would like that. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Nevada, Mr. Gibbons.
Mr. GIBBONS. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I appreciate the fact that you've taken the time to hold this hearing today. And I want to welcome all of our panelists here before us. And I know many of you have traveled far and gone to great lengths to appear here today, and I want to say that we appreciate your interest, as well as your commitment and your contribution as well to all of this.
I guess my first question is—is to Mr. Arnold. I know you talked a little bit and you explained a little bit about grant-driven Federal employees. Could you elaborate a little more, maybe give us an example of what you mean by that?
Mr. ARNOLD. Yes, Congressman, I would be happy to do that. As a matter of fact, if you take a look within the Battered Community report, we actually have a fair profile of a number of them, page 14, 15, and 16. One of them is the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. It's—it advertises itself as consisting of present, former and retired Forest Service employees, and it says that it works to create a responsible value system for the Forest Service based on land ethic and so on.
But if we take a look at the chart that I've provided of where the money came from that got them started, it's not clear who had the idea to start them even, whether it was Andy Stahl, who is listed as the executive director, or Jeff DeBonis, who is the first in that position. We have—in the year they started and started getting money in 1990, as you can see clearly in the chart, $100,000 from the W. Alton Jones Foundation, $15,000 from the Rockefeller Family Fund, $20,000 from the Nathan Cummings Foundation and $10,000 from the Beldon Fund, and there are more like that.
But if that isn't grant-driven, and the purposes of these grants is stated to foster new support sustainable among U.S. Forest Service workers, it's difficult for me to comprehend what does ''grant-driven'' mean.
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Mr. GIBBONS. It's your impression that Federal dollars are being used to further private interest?
Mr. ARNOLD. Well, it's not so much Federal dollars, even though many of these environmental groups do receive Federal grants. It's essentially a matter that tax-exempt money from large foundations is being used to promote organizations that themselves promote within the Forest Service and other organizations within other agencies, within the government, to promote agendas that stop goods production, so that appears to me as undue influence.
They are on the inside. We can't reach them. They were not elected. They are not accountable. There are no regulations that control them. What's wrong with this picture is the first question that pops into my mind about that.
Mr. GIBBONS. Thank you.
Mr. Conley, have you run across private foundations in Alaska that have funded environmental groups which are contrary to the best interests of your constituency?
Mr. CONLEY. Congressman, yes, I have. In southeast Alaska we have a number of groups and we've been able to track, and I've included that for the record, but we've been able to track the foundations and the local environmental groups and the dollar amounts. And there's a Tongass Conservation Society. It's a small 14-member group in Ketchikan, and the leader of that group received a grant from SEACC, SEACC received a grant from Brainerd Foundation, and they all flow together.
But the gentleman that runs the local environmental group produced a pamphlet offering his services as a person that could help shut down pulp mills; that he was now an expert and that he could help other environmental groups shut down pulp mills, and that was—it was real obvious that the reason that the tax-exempt foundation money had flowed into our area was to shut the two pulp mills down, and they were successful.
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Mr. GIBBONS. Thank you.
And finally, Mr. Favreau, in the balance of the little time that I have left, would you discuss with us how foundations and environmental groups outside of the New Hampshire area are driving the issues within your State?
Mr. FAVREAU. Back in April 1971, there was a meeting that was held in Lincoln, New Hampshire, that was on the issue—we were getting a lot of interest in the Northern Forest Lands, and I spoke about why we didn't need outside help, and the term ''greenlining'' was being mentioned a lot at that time. There was a person sitting in the audience who made an impression on me, and he made several comments. One of them, he called my thinking bunker mentality, and he also named all of the greenline areas. He said that he agreed with me that none of them worked, but he just knew that we could make it work here.
Then he said that the environmental community had $100 million to spend on the Northern Forest Lands. I think he said this to impress on me it was too big an issue for a little guy like me to fight.
I didn't understand the real significance of this until I read Ron Arnold's book when I saw where, and in reading his book, that this particular person was listed as one of the national directors of the Environmental Grantmakers Association at the time.
Mr. GIBBONS. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you very much.
You know, I think one of the most interesting things that I've heard from the panel, and all five of you have had riveting testimony, came from Mr. Conley when he said, as a businessman, if I were to provide money to someone which they in turn used to destroy another's business, that would be an act that could follow under the RICO statutes, you would have to be held accountable.
Mr. CONLEY. Madam Chairman, the RICO Act is currently being used to prosecute the folks that have bombed the abortion clinics. So I think there's precedents to pursue that. And, unfortunately, as a small businessman and from a small area—from a small town in a big area in the United States, as a legal challenge we can't afford it. I think that the Congress has to do it. I mean, you folks have attorneys that work by the years, and, you know, unfortunately we have to pay our attorneys by the hour.
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Mrs. CHENOWETH. The only problem is, Mr. Conley, our attorneys do not prosecute. That's left up to the Justice Department. And if we were to ask Janet Reno for help in our resources right now, she would say, I am very preoccupied right now; in fact, she is.
Mr. CONLEY. Maybe next year.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. I think you're onto something there, and it's something that I've been suggesting for a very long time. The Congress can put forth very good, sound laws, and we have, and they've been signed into law, but when we have an administration that continues to decide to disobey the law, and we do not have a Justice Department that will pursue justice in this case, it's up to either the individuals who are damaged to bring a lawsuit or up to us to expose it to the American public, which we will do.
And we will continue on this Committee to work in an exhaustive manner, which we have been, to expose what this administration is doing to our rural communities. But I thank you for putting that in your testimony, because I think it's the key that will unlock a lot of the problems that we are involved with today.
A very interesting Supreme Court decision that was rendered several years ago, but it's never been overturned in whole or in part, entitled Bivens v. Six Unknown Agents, of course, the Supreme Court ruled that when any agent steps—of the Federal Government steps outside the protection, the direct protection, of statutory authority, they are personally liable for the damage. That isn't often talked about. It's more to the benefit of the administration to ignore it. But it's to our benefit, and I don't think you and I should ignore it.
So we will do whatever it takes to bring life back to our rural communities and life back to our resources. And I thank you very much for making that point.
I do want to ask, Mr. Gomez, are the private foundations—well, has there been any resolution of the firewood collection issue?
Mr. GOMEZ. Madam Chairman, a few months after this story hit the news media, the same group, the Forest Guardians, purchased three or four truckloads of firewood for these two or three small communities that were outraged by this action. And ironically, they purchased the firewood from the Jicarilla Apache Reservation, where they had found—they hadn't seen it, but they thought that they had heard a Mexican spotted owl.
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It continues to persist. One issue is overcome, another issue comes about. I spoke with the—with the Forest Service about a week ago, and they have told me that 36 cases have been presented to district III or region III of the Forest Service in the Southwest within the last 10 years. Ten percent of the total budget for region III is spent in litigation. It's not grazing; now it's water quality.
Just in last week's Santa Fe New Mexican, these groups are starting to ask why is the water quality diminishing? In most of the tributaries along the New Mexico-Colorado border, there is no money, there is just livestock grazing and wildlife habitat. The farmers in northern New Mexico do not use fertilizers because they cannot afford them. They're very, very small farms. But now they're threatening the livelihood of the people with the Clean Water Act. It just goes on and on and on.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. You testified that the average rancher there owns 20 cows?
Mr. GOMEZ. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Mr. McKeen, are the private foundations funding—the private foundations that have been mentioned earlier, are those foundations funding the activities that are reducing grazing in Catron County; do you know?
Mr. MCKEEN. I know there's all kinds of foundations that's providing funds, and I know there's government grants that provide funds. The Pew Charitable Trusts, I think, put in something like $700,000 into these groups, and I'm not that familiar with that.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. I see.
Mr. Arnold, have you done a study, or do you have information available to us or to anyone with regards—as to who funds the grantmakers?
Mr. ARNOLD. Madam Chairman, we have done an extensive amount of work on a data base that tries to compile who are the Environmental Grantmakers Association. It's actually not incorporated, or at least it wasn't to the last of our knowledge. It operates as an informal group with a rotating board of member executives out of the New York city offices of the Rockefeller Family Fund, and that's run by Donald K. Ross. It has a small staff, and it simply holds meetings and promotes interchanges among people in the grantmaking foundations.
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Environmental Grantmakers has over 190 members now. We have found that most of the trouble that we're talking about comes from a core cluster of these foundations. Many of them are not only innocent of acts that we're talking about, they don't even know they're going on. They're just members that think they're doing some good things for the environment, and that's fine with us, we don't have any problem. But where they're targeted ones, we have tried to track those, and, indeed, we do have a data base, which I would be happy to make available to this Committee.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Arnold. I have gone over my time, and I thank the Committee for their indulgence. I do have to go manage a bill on the floor, a bill that has just come up that's one of my bills out of this Committee. So I'm going to do that chore, and Mr. John Peterson from Pennsylvania will take over the Committee, and then I'll come back as quickly as I can.
He may want to do another round of questioning, but I do want to ask Mr. McKeen just one final question while I'm here.
Mr. McKeen, have you asked—have you done a freedom of information request on your file with—from Farmers Home, as well as the Forest Service?
Mr. MCKEEN. No, I haven't.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. It might be a wise thing to do to see if there has been any communication between Farmers Home and the Forest Service.
Mr. MCKEEN. I have copies of letters where they did communicate, yes.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. You need—I would suggest that you do a FOIA request and get your file and review it, OK?
Mr. MCKEEN. I know my experience with the Forest Service, with your FOIA requests, sometimes they just don't do it.
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Mrs. CHENOWETH. If you have any trouble at all, you let us know here on the Committee, and we will subpoena information for you.
Mr. MCKEEN. Thank you.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. But it's really better if the individual, or also working with your cattle association.
Now, you were a commissioner in Catron County?
Mrs. MCKEEN. Yes, I was, for 6 years.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. I think you have some attorneys down there who are awfully good at making these requests. But I would suggest you do that right away. OK?
Mr. MCKEEN. Thank you.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. I thank you all, gentlemen, very much for your testimony. I only wish that your time and ours, too, allowed for us to hear from you more, but you have certainly motivated me even further. And so I'm going to leave now and turn the Committee over to Mr. Peterson.
Thank you very much.
Mr. PETERSON. [presiding] I'll try not to get that motivated that I have to leave—I'm just kidding. The Chairman is to be complimented on this hearing, and, Congressman Gibbons, I think you had some more questions.
Mr. GIBBONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the recognition here.
I want to go back to perhaps finish my questioning and turn it to Mr. McKeen, as a person who comes from a State with a great deal of grazing, that would be Nevada, as well. We've had a number of problems dealing with our condition of the forest or the grazing areas within our forest. They're normally under grazing permits.
I would like for you to perhaps describe for us the condition of the forest in your areas there in New Mexico, if you would for us, Mr. McKeen.
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Mr. MCKEEN. OK. I'm going to give you a story here that really bothers me. As a kid I grew up on Mineral Creek. I was born in Mineral Creek, and we still have some property there, and I live within 3 miles of it. As a kid, I fished for trout in Mineral Creek. My grandfather farmed on Mineral Creek, and other people farmed on Mineral Creek. There was over 200 acres of farmland on this one creek, which is a tributary to the San Francisco River, which is a tributary to the Hilo River.
You go there today—and my grandfather raised alfalfa, by the way, which was a year-round crop, takes water year round, takes a lot of water, and the other farmers were there. Over 200 acres, you go there today you can't raise one sprig of alfalfa because our national forest, where this water originates, that stream is totally gone. The only water we get out of this stream is it comes down through the then farming area, it gives you a snow runoff. We get the floods.
But that area—and you go back, say, 30 years ago when the then forest supervisor said he wanted to save that area as a pristine area, not log it, not let it burn, because they wanted to build a road up through there. They wanted it to be real scenic. Well, it's not too scenic to me when trees take over meadows, trees take over all of your grasslands. Trees are 80 to a thousand trees per acre, when they should be 80 trees per acre.
And what happens is when you get that many trees, it's like a study, and the only study I can find to compare it to is one in Texas, where they were studying the ground cover. And when you get a 60 percent ground cover—and in this study, no water goes into the underground source. But that's in Texas where they get more rain that we do in New Mexico.
In New Mexico I have to guess, because I asked the Forest Service if they had any research or anybody had any research on it. They don't have any, or they don't want to give it to me. I imagine when we get a 30 or 40 percent canopy, no water goes under the underground source. Consequently, Mineral Creek is an example of all of the streams in the Hilo Natural Forest in the Hilo Wilderness, wherever you go.
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I farm on the San Francisco River, and it's gradually going dry because of the type of management we have right now. And now they're wanting to do more preservation. They're wanting to do more saving of land and not log and not thin the forest, not have fires, controlling burn. So Mineral Creek is an example of a stream that just died.
And, of course, what happens to the people that lived on the stream? Their economy went away, because they can't raise the crops they used to. Most of them are gone. Those lands are just idle now.
And the only reason I'm farming today on my farm—I have 80 acres of farmland on the San Francisco River, and the only reason I'm farming is I put a scenic ditch in, and I'm running out of water every year a little more, a little more, a little more, and the only reason I'm still farming is because the farmers upstream are gradually running out of water, and they quit farming, and then there's a little more water coming down to me. And that's the condition of almost all of our forests in the Southwest. Our water is going away.
Mr. GIBBONS. So what you're telling the Committee, if I can summarize it, is that poor management of our forest area, failure to properly address thinning and improper forest management has yielded an excess number of trees, which literally sap the water that would normally be there for the few remaining trees and runoff for farmers down below based on the amount of water each tree requires for proper growth, and this management has been—or poor management has been the ultimate result in the economic downturn in communities and farms in your area; is that what you're saying?
Mr. MCKEEN. Yes. And I'll give you an example—this is my thing to do. I tell you, I've tried and tried and tried to improve my forest permit and do watershed work. And one of the biggest problems we have in my counties is by Pinon juniper preservation, by golly, they turn me down every time I want to do something. The environmentalists come out there and appeal every time we want to clear these invasive trees. They don't want people there, and when you try to even improve the watershed, they don't want watershed improvement either.
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Now, I have an example. When we went up and cleared our Pinon juniper trees on a portion of our place, which I pushed and pushed and pushed to do, we created a spring by just pushing a small hill, or a little mesa. We created a spring. And the Forest Service denied it ever since. They don't want to hear about it, but it's an example of what we can do.
Now in my county where I have—I went to Congress one time. I went through my Congressman or delegation so I could push trees to improve the land, and it's like getting the weeds out of your garden. People love trees, but grassland is what makes our underground source and our wildlife and everything else. Of course, you've got to have trees, too. But in this instance when you remove Pinon juniper, you start at the headwater. We talk about riparian nowadays, how we are going to treat riparian areas. Forget it. If you don't want to start at that headwater where that water starts from, those riparians are going to continue to flood. You've got to start at those headwaters and stop that water and get your grass back and running. And when you do, and when you go and put these juniper trees back on your place, back on my place, you will have an explosion you won't believe. You will have birds. You will have all kinds of animals out there that weren't there before.
The condition we have in our forest today is you go out through this Pinon juniper country, it's sterile. You're going to see a crow flying around there, a coyote walking through. You're not going to see anything, because those trees as they progress, they take over the browse first. And this is in your Forest Service literature that I'm getting this. There are studies, the trees take over the browse first, and then once the browse is taken out, then the grass goes next, and then you have no grass, and then you go nothing but trees down there.
Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Chairman, if I may just ask one followup question.
Mr. McKeen, do you think, in your opinion, that there is a much greater risk for damage to the existing forest due to the current management practice of allowing excess number of trees, failure to deal with the underbrush or the fuel growth underneath; from the current conditions, is your forest and your area much more at risk to fire, to disease, pestilence, whatever, than they have been in the past under previous management?
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Mr. MCKEEN. Oh, there's no doubt about it. There's no doubt about it. I mean, we have the Forest Service—I've been up in the Gila Wilderness several times, and I don't know why it doesn't get fire and all of it burn. There's tall grass, dead trees laying in every direction. There's standing dead trees, high percentage. There's infestation of parasites. The country that once was opened as a kid when I went up there, it opened big trees and grasslands, it's solid trees now. And it's a dying, decaying-type situation.
Mr. GIBBONS. What do foresters say in the area about this condition? I mean, obviously it's a recognizable, plainly obvious condition that needs to be addressed, and yet there seems to be very little coming out of those people we've charged with the proper management of our forest. Is this because of their fear of publicity gained through efforts of these environmental groups? What have you been told?
Mr. MCKEEN. The Forest Service to me is nothing more than a bunch of PR people saying what they wish was out there. If you go into their office and you see the bookshelf there, it's got articles by environmentalists and environmental authors. It's got pictures of flies, pictures of deer, pictures of elk and lions and all of these things. There's not one pamphlet in there that somebody can pick up that gives the true nature of the national forest, not one. They've got lots of studies that shows that it's in bad shape, but you won't find one put in their display.
Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Chairman, may I just have one more broad range of questioning?
Mr. PETERSON. Please go.
Mr. GIBBONS. I'm very disheartened by the remarks about the condition of the New Mexico forest. I wonder if other areas, for example, Alaska or New Hampshire or other forests, are seeing the same sort of trending conditions based on the same or similar types of management. Anybody?
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Mr. ARNOLD. In Washington State, we are seeing that in just about every national forest, and we have a lot of them.
Mr. CONLEY. Congressman, in Alaska, we have got a lot of second growth, and the recognized forestry practice is thinning, and the forests are not being thinned at all. I mean, they are just absolutely choking themselves to death as they grow.
Mr. FAVREAU. In Maine and New Hampshire, we are seeing a reduction in wildlife. It is the—I don't think it has been as bad as what it was in New Mexico, but it is getting there. It certainly is the—the conditions are worsening.
Mr. GIBBONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will release.
Mr. PETERSON. I will continue here a response on that issue.
In Pennsylvania, of course, we have a rather mature hardwood forest that is very valuable. Just recently the lawsuits—we've had lawsuits before, but they've really impacted us more recently. A few months ago, two students from Clarion University put in a suit against what was called a mortality II cut, which was 17 plots that added up to about 5,050 acres. And they were successful, because the Forest Service didn't do an EIS, but there were 17 small plots.
It was kind of—when you looked at it and the way it was sold, it looked like one large cut, but it was not. It was 59 percent dead trees, salvaged, and the rest was green. But they used the assistance of two law professors from the University of Pittsburgh pro bono, so they didn't have any investment and were successful at setting aside that sale—there are some other small sales that were advertised recently, and they have also put lawsuits against—in all of those.
But we're just getting into the lawsuit phase where I think most of the West has been through it for years, but it's just now reaching us.
The point I would like to ask you is a little bit of followup of Jim's. The Federal Government has 700 million acres and are buying, and then we have in Pennsylvania—we have I think it's 4 or 5 million acres of public land owned by the State and local governments, too. It seems to me that we need to have a discussion of whether the Federal Government under one blanket policy can manage land in Alaska, New Mexico, New England, Pennsylvania, and all over this country where there is no similarity to the forest. Even the western forest is more similar, but there certainly is probably very little similarity to New Mexico than Washington or Idaho or Alaska, and yet you're using the same policy from the Federal Government.
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And I guess the disheartening part now is—and I've not been here a long time, but, as an observer, it seems like for the first time we have the Vice President and Katie McGinty really running—adjunct running the Forest Service. I mean, it's their policies that are being utilized. They've not been debated by anybody. There's been no public forums nationally certainly to make sure those are good policies. And so we really have untested, untried policies to manage our forests and to manage our public land without a public discussion. And it seems somehow it ought to be regional.
I guess the question I would like to ask is, what kind of support and help can we depend on from your States and local officials? Are your Governors with you? Are your State legislatures with you? Or what kind of support do you get from them?
Mr. ARNOLD. Well, to start with Washington State, our Governor-at-large is unaware of the problems, and we're not sure he would be sympathetic were he informed in Washington State. But our county commissioners, particularly in the rural areas where we have this urban-rural prosperity gap so badly, most certainly are on our side. And if you take a look in the Battered Communities Report that I've submitted for the record, we have a number of statements from county commissioners.
I think they would probably pretty widely all over the United States be with us, because we have them from Minnesota and Washington State. And I don't see any reason with a little further work we could not get a fairly good organization of support from them.
Mr. PETERSON. Anyone else?
Mr. CONLEY. Congressman, in Alaska, it's unfortunate, but we have a Governor who aligns with the White House, and so the policies are real similar. We have a Governor that—we have an area of some State land, and it's a dead forest. It's been affected with the spruce spark beetle. It's a fire hazard. At one point, we could have gone in and cut that wood down and had a marketable value. It would have prevented a massive fire that happened a couple years ago. He absolutely gets his marching orders from the same place the White House does, and that's the Sierra club.
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Mr. FAVREAU. In New Hampshire, for the natural forest alone, we do get support from broad-based—our senators, Congressman and the local officials, a lot of support.
Mr. GOMEZ. In northern New Mexico, we get a lot of support from our county commissioners and from our State legislators; but we don't hear anything from the Governor's office.
Mr. MCKEEN. Yeah, I think that's true. The local people, the local county commissioner and these kind of people support us. And I felt we had support from our Governor, and we have support from our congressional delegation here in Congress here.
Mr. PETERSON. I'm going to conclude with this and dismiss this panel. And our Chairman is with us now. I will turn it back over to him.
I'm not going to turn it back over to him. I will at this time offer a chance to ask the questions to our chairman from Alaska.
Chairman YOUNG. Mr. Chairman, may I suggest that you do an excellent job; and you're well versed in this subject. I hope you will see the day when you sit in that chair as the chairman of the full Committee. It will be a long while. I want you to know that.
JC, the Sitka Pulp Mill, you're from Ketchikan, but is it my information that that mill has been closed longer and there were those in that town at that time that were optimistic about the economy because it lasted pretty well for numerous years. But has that optimism been justified by the results in Sitka?
Mr. CONLEY. Congressman, not living there, I can't really quote the numbers and figures, but I do have many dear friends that live there and are in business. And in my conversations with the folks in Sitka, they feel that the economy is down 30 to 35 percent. I know that the tonnage, the freight tonnage of goods is down 33 percent, and it's not good.
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And, you know, there was an anomaly after the APC closure. There was not really as much severance money as we got in Ketchikan for our workers. But there was additional funds that these no-longer-employed folks had that came out of some of the profit sharing and pension deals that they had, and they did have a little spike in the economy. There was also outside money. This influenced the real estate market there. There were a great number of homes that were bought from people from California as kind of a summer place to go, an investment. You know, now with the mills gone, you know, we'll go up there and get some cheap land, you know. And, really, I don't think it was a real estate boom. I think it was a carpetbagging boom.
Chairman YOUNG. JC, I promise—I was pleased what you had to say about the Governor because there's doubt in my mind that he does not support—in fact, he had the gall to call Jim Lyons to suggest to lower the cut that was recommended in the TLMP, which was about 128 million board feet a year. We had been cutting about 400 million board feet a year and to have them drop that amount is ridiculous.
But I think that the chairman just mentioned that the support for timber industry or timber management is still an anomaly, because no one really understands it, other than the people that are actually dealing with it. And the chairman is absolutely right. The policy of this administration is socialism—to run everybody out of private business, to let the trees die and let the trees supposedly act as nature. And when we basically need the fiber, the government will develop it.
And I really—it goes against everything I've ever thought of, that, as you know, I've introduced a bill to give the Tongass back to the State, which is, I think—I don't see any justification for the Federal Government owning land, other than the Statute of Liberty and maybe a few parks, maybe a few refuges, but to just own land to do nothing with I think is a disservice to the constitution and to the people of the United States.
But it's going to take an awful lot of effort from people like you and from your communities to stir this up. Because, unfortunately, as you know, most of our population now live in Philadelphia—I just came from there yesterday—San Francisco, New York, Miami, Chicago, and, you know, LA, and they haven't the slightest idea where toilet paper comes from. And that gives us our biggest problem.
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So it's going to be up to you. Because, although I just know some of the people in Congress say they support you, when it comes right down to the votes, sometimes they're not there. And that's very, very concerning to me. So it's going to take a great deal of team effort.
I've been in this business now 26 years, and I've watched the administration and interest groups, I think, destroy the basis of our society. And that's resources management and not necessarily destruction or elimination but management. And anybody who can tell me a dead tree is a good tree is smoking something. And I just don't understand it.
But, anyway, Mr. Chairman, I don't have any other questions.
Mr. PETERSON. Earlier, there was some question about the Pew Charitable Trusts. That's a Pennsylvania foundation. That's funded by the resources and wealth of the Sun Oil Company. It's kind of a strange that they would attract forest products, but they have.
I would like to thank the panel, and I appreciate your traveling here and sharing your good testimony with us.
The next panel we introduce is Mr. Donald Wesson, Southern Pine Regional director, Pulp and Paperworker's Resource Council; Honorable Mike Propes, Polk County Commissioner, Dallas, Oregon; and Mr. Jack Richardson, the Val Verde County Administrator, Del Rio, Texas.
If you would please take your seats at the table.
STATEMENT OF DONALD R. WESSON, SOUTHERN PINE REGIONAL DIRECTOR, PULP AND PAPERWORKER'S RESOURCE COUNCIL, McGEHEE, ARKANSAS
Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Wesson, if you would like to proceed.
Mr. WESSON. Mr. Chairman, I want on thank you and the Committee for holding this very important hearing and for allowing me to participate.
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My name is Don Wesson. I am the Vice President of United Paperwork Workers International Union, Local 1533, located in McGehee, Arkansas. I serve as the Southern Pine Regional Director of the Pulp and Paperworker's Resource Council. I'm currently employed in the pulp and paper industry as an industrial mechanic. I reside in Desha County, Arkansas; and I'm a constituent of the 4th Congressional District.
A few years ago, I was like most all Americans. I went to work, paid my share of taxes, voted in most elections and depended on my elected officials to take care of me. I've always felt my freedoms as well as my property was protected. After all, America was founded under the Constitution.
One day, I heard some disturbing news of how a Spotted Owl put thousands of my union brothers and sisters out of a job in the very industry in which I am employed. I started paying more attention to what my government was doing and realized some of those elected officials in which I placed my trust was not looking out for my well-being or the well-being of America. It was then that I realized that the world is run by those who show up, and I would start showing up.
I got involved with the PPRC. The Pulp and Paperworker's Resource Council is a grassroots coalition consisting of labor workers who work in the pulp, paper and wood products industries of America. We have lost thousands of jobs in our industry in the past few years due to various government regulations.
I am here today to address the American Heritage Rivers. We feel this is just another governmental program that will end up hurting our communities and cost us more industry jobs.
I live in Desha County, Arkansas, which borders the mighty Mississippi River, the life blood of America. The Mississippi River is among the top 10 rivers that is already nominated as Heritage Rivers. I have had several meetings with the Office of Council on Environmental Quality concerning this nomination. I have met with Mr. Ray Clark, associate director of the CEQ, as well as the chairman of American Heritage Rivers on three different occasions.
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Mr. Clark keeps insisting that the American Heritage Rivers is the greatest thing since motherhood and apple pie. He expressed that lies are being told about American Heritage Rivers. He insisted that there are no new regulations, no new money, and this is truly a bottom up program. It is a community based—it is community based, and there will be no impact on private property. He stated that money was already in place. The purpose of this program would be to just manage the rivers and to administer the funds where needed.
This is why I have a grave concern over the executive order. If a river community is designated for this initiative, there are potentially serious negative implications for local governments. Depending on the direction the project takes, local land use zoning boards could be negated or completely bypassed. There is nothing in the language that would allow a designated community or individual landowners the ability to opt out of this program. Without the right to opt out, a private landowner or local government should be concerned about losing any power of income or development of assets, as well as its sovereignty.
The idea of using a river navigator to coordinate the river communities efforts in itself is somewhat a disturbing idea. When the person selected can be a Federal or non-Federal employee selected jointly by the river community and Federal agencies, the potential for conflict of interest exist.
Many agencies, such as the Department of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service and the Army Corps of Engineers have become more and more active in reducing or restricting the use of our natural resources. If the river navigator is chosen from an agency that has a definite preservationist slant, the chances of the river communities choosing a plan to the detriment of private property rights and industrial development would be greatly increased.
Whenever tourism, economic security, environmental protection and protecting/preserving our heritage are mixed into one initiative, the American public becomes skeptical. This mixture in the past has meant the decrease in high-paying industrial jobs. Even when there are tourism jobs created, the employees are not paid well and in many cases are seasonal jobs.
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I urge you, Mr. Chairman, and this Committee to stop the American Heritage Rivers Initiative. If this program is as great as we are told, then the office of the CEQ would not mind it having a congressional oversight. We do not need 16 different governmental agencies and a river navigator to manage our rivers or to regulate our private lands that borders these rivers.
Any proposal that is set up under the premise of streamlining government but yet would still include at least nine different Cabinet positions as well as countless other government agencies hardly makes this initiative more user friendly. Instead, it would just lead to another level of bureaucracy that the American public is already weary of.
If you have any questions concerning how too many levels of government bureaucracy affects the jobs in resource-based industries, you could ask any one of the over 100,000 workers from the Pacific Northwest who have already lost their job over a Spotted Owl.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wesson may be found at end of hearing.]
Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Propes?
STATEMENT OF MIKE PROPES, POLK COUNTY COMMISSIONER, DALLAS, OREGON
Mr. PROPES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to address your Committee.
I'm Mike Propes. I'm chairman of the Polk County Board of Commissioners, and I'm also vice president of the O & C Counties on the Board of Directors of the Association of Oregon Counties, and I'm on the Willamette Liveability Council. I'm also chair of two water basin boards, so I have a lot of experience in water basins and river protections in Oregon.
We share some of your concerns about the Federal policies being developed in Washington, DC, with little input from rural communities that are most impacted. I offer the following observation, quoting from our letter dated August 19th, 1997, to Karen Hobbs, Council of Environmental Quality, and that letter is included in your packet.
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''Looking at the American Heritage Rivers Initiative from the bottom up, it seems quite obvious that the initiative was developed without an awareness of the efforts already underway by regional, State and local citizens in cooperation with Federal Government agencies to protect our rivers. The preliminary meetings involving approximately 690 attendees, held in large metropolitan areas, seems to have been the basis for launching the American Heritage Rivers Initiative. This hardly seemed representative of over 225 million people on this matter, and thus seems to have been spawned from an inadequate understanding of the need or want of both the citizens and the rivers.''
This information came out of the Federal Register of how this initiative started. So these are not our figures. These are the figures from the people that attended the meetings, right out of the Federal Register to start this program.
This program is supposed to be voluntary, but it appears that these designations will occur in spite of strong opposition from local governments. This is the first promise broken with respect to the American Heritage Rivers. Broken promises seem to be a pattern with this administration with environmental issues.
Four counties along the Willamette River—Lane, Linn, Polk and Yamhill—have asked to be excluded from the Heritage River Initiative. And I think this is where it's really important to understand what has happened locally. We have been told locally that it takes local people opting into this program, and if an area doesn't want it, you're not going to be included.
We now have 26 counties in Oregon—and this is in one of your exhibits that is included in the packet—that has asked to opt out of this program. Out of the 36 counties, we have 27 that have opted out. We don't have a single county that has asked for it.
Well, after that had happened, we were told, well, it couldn't be locally opted out. It took somebody from your congressional delegation to opt you out. So we went to our congressional delegation, and one of our Congressman opted us out—and one of our senators. And then we were told, well, no, now it takes your whole congressional delegation to opt you out.
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Well, I think it probably takes Congress to opt us out. And that's what we're here to ask for, is to opt us out. And we're not sure if this is a good program or a bad program. We have read every bit of information we can get on it and we can't figure it out if it's good or bad.
We do know that it's a new Federal program. Is there new regulations? We can't tell. Is there new moneys? Well, there appears to be new moneys, but are there going to be strings attached to that, that you have to use it a certain ways? We cannot tell. We do not want to be a guinea pig for another Federal program.
I was back in Washington, DC, my last time, a little over 10 years ago, and I came back here to discuss the Spotted Owl and the Endangered Species Act. And I had a conversation then, the same as I had yesterday with some staff members back here, about that I'm overreacting, that, no, it really isn't going to be the things that you are perceiving is going to happen with this program.
Well, 10 years ago, we were predicting that we were going to have some severe cutbacks in our economy because of the Spotted Owl in Oregon; and people in Washington, DC, thought we were crazy, that can't happen, that's not what this program is. This is to help protect animals, and it's good for people and everything else. Exactly what we feared with that program happened, regardless of what people told us here. And that's the fear we have with this program.
Real quickly I would like to just mention the exhibits that I have attached. I do have the resolutions from the 27 counties that have opted out, and I have resolutions from two of the cities that are on the Willamette River that have asked to opt out. And I have resolutions from the Oregon State Senate, from the Oregon Cattleman's Association, Oregon Farm Bureau, Oregon Logging Conference, Oregon Wheat Growers and the Yamhill Republican Central Committee, a very important committee.
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Also, I do have a map that is attached; and that is Exhibit D. That shows the counties that had opted out. That's the 24 counties. There's an additional three counties that have opted out that are not on the map. And that's Deschutes, Wheeler, and—sorry, I can't recall the third one now—that have opted out.
And you may look at the map at the very bottom of the page. It looks a little different. That is the United States stretched out just a little. We'd like to get further away from DC, not closer.
Thank you.
Mr. PETERSON. I get your message, and I agree with you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Propes may be found at end of hearing.]
Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Jack Richardson, please proceed.
STATEMENT OF JACK RICHARDSON, VAL VERDE COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR, DEL RIO, TEXAS
Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes. Thank you for the opportunity to testify before the Natural Resources Committee on the American Heritage Rivers Initiative and the pending application for the Rio Grande River.
My name is Jack Richardson. I'm a county administrator in Val Verde County, Texas, which is located on the Rio Grande River. Val Verde County has got an estimated population of about 48,000. The entire county borders on the Rio Grande River.
The county, while small in population, consists of 3,171 square miles. Sixty-two square miles of that is usually water, but it's not now, because the International Boundary Water Commission pulled the plug on Lake Amistad. These facts qualify Val Verde County to have a true voice in any initiative that encompasses additional Federal regulations upon the county.
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I have lived there for more than 25 years. I know many of the families that have lived there and worked there for generations. In fact, my five grandchildren reside on a tributary of the Rio Grande. It's called San Felipe Creek.
We do not need a Federal initiative to tell us how important the Rio Grande is and to recognize the rich culture and heritage that exists along the border. We honor our culture and heritage every day as we go to work, raise our families and just simply live there.
I worked for the United States Border Patrol for 32 years. I guess I'm one of those suspect Federal employees. And I've been exposed to an awful lot of Rio Grande River culture, believe me. I do not claim to be an expert on the Rio Grande, but I've had a lifetime of experience working there, and the Rio Grande has played a significant role in all that work.
I would kind of like to know how many members of this Blue Ribbon Panel have even seen the Rio Grande. They tell me maybe one. Now, I understand the Rio Grande is on a list along with several other rivers as a potential candidate to be named as an American Heritage River. Exactly what that would mean for the communities and the people who must live and work along the river is still not fully known, just like he said.
I know the full impact will not be known until the initiative is being implemented; and, at that time, it's been our experience that it's just too late to stop it.
The AHRI is another unfunded mandate, and we've had a bunch of those. We really have one which cost us about $20 million, anyway, of which the true cost to the local communities and the impacts on income, property rights, production and competitiveness are still unknown.
I am here today to make sure that the concerns of all of those who live and work along the river are heard. We want to be fully understood that nonsupport for the Rio Grande nomination flows up and down this river. Many communities in my region do not want the strings that come attached to Federal programs. And there's always the price to pay when you say ''I do'' with the Feds. You know that, and I know that.
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I have with me today resolutions and letters of nonsupport from counties that are located along the Rio Grande within its watershed. One of those county resolutions is from my home county of Val Verde. It kind of surprised me when they did that, because you can't get those five people to agree on anything, and yet this was a unanimous resolution.
I have letters of opposition from many agriculture organizations, property rights organizations. We have 77 resolutions and letters of nonsupport for the designation of the Rio Grande as an American Heritage River. This represents thousands of Texas citizens that do not want the AHRI in Texas.
Mr. Desmond Smith, president of the TransTexas Heritage Association, also will come up to testify on behalf of the membership that represents 15 million acres of private land in Texas. They didn't want the AHRI to designate the Rio Grande River either.
The San Antonio Express News recently quoted our Governor Bush as stating, when it comes to ONRW or the American Heritage Rivers, whatever it is, I'm against it. Well, if you're Governor and he doesn't know what it is, the likelihood of us knowing it is pretty remote. And he said, I will not, so long as I'm Governor, concede the sovereign rights of Texas.
Well, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Congressman Henry Bonilla have both sent letters to the Council on Environmental Quality in opposition to the Rio Grande designation. Congressman Bonilla requested his congressional district not be included in the initiative, and seven other members of the Texas delegation also requested their districts not be included.
There are 800 miles of Rio Grande that run through the Congressman's district. I'm talking about—if you can visualize—from El Paso up here to Laredo down here. We're way down here on the food chain. For some reason, CEQ ignored Congressman Bonilla's opt-out letter and further misrepresented his position by stating, in a letter to Senator Hutchison, that Congressman Bonilla supported a designation for the Rio Grande. Congressman Bonilla had to send another letter to the CEQ restating his position.
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Regardless of our expressed opposition against the designation of the Rio Grande as an American Heritage River, the nomination has continued to proceed. How many more resolutions do we need to pass? How many more letters do we have to write? How many more times do we need to testify that we do not want the Rio Grande designated as an American Heritage River? I think the big question down there is when are the CEQ and the panel going to listen to us?
From the beginning, there has been a back-door attempt to get the Rio Grande listed as an American Heritage River, regardless of the views of those who live and work along it. There have been secret meetings, attempts to prevent the public have having a voice at the so-called public hearings and an unwillingness to accept the fact that the AHRI is not wanted for the Rio Grande.
And I would like to quote an excerpt from the letter sent to Senator Hutchison by the CEQ dated May the 7th, 1998, signed by Kathleen McGinty. It states, ''The American Heritage Rivers Initiative is 100 percent locally driven.'' Now I ask, if the CEQ was really listening to the local communities, would the Rio Grande still be in consideration for nomination?
Not only is AHRI in the process of being imposed on the local communities against their wishes, but this is another layer of bureaucracy that is not necessary. Do you have any idea how many Federal agencies already have their toes dipped in the Rio Grande River and are controlling every action involving that river? I tried to count them up this morning, and I quit at 33. You've got to remember every federation usually has two or three branches. From those branches, you can bet the state of Texas has got a matching entity in there. When you get into Mexico, every Federal agency in Mexico will have a bureaucracy level almost identical to that existing in the State of Texas and the United States.
I can assure that you we have enough problems working with the EPA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife, Army Corps of Engineers—they pull some good ones—and the International Boundary and Water Commission under their current authority and programs that they have. These Federal agencies do not need to have their authority expanded under any program, especially a program that still does not have standards for evaluation and guidelines for establishing the priorities.
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Those of us who live along the Rio Grande understand better than anyone the need to clean it up. We all want to live in a clean environment, but creating another layer of government to work through is not the way to go about it.
This is an international river, and it's going to take international cooperation to clean it up. What I think they lose sight of more than anything is 60 percent of that water is Mexico. There's three rivers feeding into the Rio Grande. We've got two, anyway. You measure the water. We're the junior partner in this cleanup campaign. And I can just see that this big bureaucrat is going to go over there and tell these guys that's holding 60 percent of the water what to do, and I can tell you what he's going to tell him.
This is—it just takes a few minutes to visit with anyone who works and lives along the river, and you will soon come to realize that the Rio Grande cannot be treated like any other river. The culture and heritage that makes the river so special also creates many unique problems. I do not see that this initiative will address our unique situation, which will just serve to create more problems. Bureaucrats don't solve problems; they create them.
From the very beginning, there has been a cloud of questions hanging over this initiative. What would a designation mean for river communities? What benefits or drawbacks would this hold for those who live along the river? And if it was such a good deal for the communities, why have the supporters felt the need to meet in secret and misrepresent the views of those who oppose the AHRI?
These questions have never been answered, and I doubt they will be. It's been imposed—the AHRI has been imposed from the top down from the very beginning. And I'm here today to speak on behalf of the many counties, communities, citizens and organization who are represented by these letters and resolutions of nonsupport. They send a loud and clear message that we are opposed to the Rio Grande being designated as an American Heritage River.
Thank you. I would be glad it to answer any questions.
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[The prepared statement of Mr. Richardson may be found at end of hearing.]
Mr. PETERSON. I would like to thank the panel. And I will offer time for questions. Congressman Gibbons, who has to leave shortly.
Mr. GIBBONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, also, for your patience and your effort to get here today to testify before us.
I'm very curious where the information stems from that you heard that it would take all of Congress to opt out of this system when I—and I'm sure that the chairman sat here in this Committee and listened to Katie McGinty from the CEQ's Office state specifically that any Congressman in his congressional district could by request opt his district out of the American Heritage River Initiative. Which seems to be now that so many of us have taken that step, that there seems to be a transition and a change in attitude that hasn't been announced by the CEQ, but that doesn't surprise me.
What I want to go to, and perhaps each one of you could talk to me a little bit and maybe help the Committee understand better, just what did this administration do with all of you in its efforts to explain to you what the American Heritage River Initiative would do for your individual areas when they were proposing it, when they were considering it? Did they bring you in, tell you what was going to take place, how it would be implemented, what actions would be taken, what course of—or what opportunities you would have in terms of contributing to the overall outcome?
Maybe you could—each one just take a brief moment and explain to me what this administration offered in terms of meetings and explanations to each of you in your areas.
Mr. WESSON. OK. From the State of Arkansas, the only thing I know they did was they got a hold of the Governor and—through some of the county commissioners, and they tried to say how it was going to be a big tourism boost. And in southeast Arkansas where I live, nothing could be a big tourism boost. I mean that's the flat land, the delta. It's nothing but farm communities.
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They never put anything in any newspapers saying any public hearings, meetings or what have you in the State of Arkansas that I'm aware of. They just tried to make it that it's going to be the greatest thing that could happen to any river.
Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Propes?
Mr. PROPES. We got the information from a very strange document. It was the Congressional Record. That was the first time we even knew there was any such a program being talked about. And, from that, we started doing some inquiry to see what it was. Because when the Willamette River was listed as one of the 100, there was originally a list with 100 rivers on there, and since it affects literally all of Polk County, our county, we were interested in what was going on.
We sent letters back to Karen Hobbs asking questions about that, and to this day we've not had any contact back, and that was the August, 1997, letter. At that point in time, we were not opposed to it. We were just trying to figure out what it was. And then we heard from our people about that you could opt out locally.
Never from the administration, we have never had any contact from the administration, never had any answers from them. So everything we've got has been through newsletters or other publications, and we've been following what those have said.
Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Richardson?
Mr. RICHARDSON. They mailed us a letter, and of all things I think it come to us from TNRCC, which is Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. They did come down and talk to us a couple times, as I recall, just very more like a courtesy call than an informative call.
They had some running around, trying to avoid anybody making any opposition to this in Marathon, Texas. And if you've ever been to Marathon, Texas, it's a lot of local humor. It's a very small place. It's hard to be secretive in Marathon, Texas.
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We have had some—most of that information, we were, in the county, were able to get come from the city councilman, that would say, hey—they would come over to us and say, what do you do with this thing? We said, we don't know, you know, and that's about it.
Everybody got to looking at what could develop from it. And our commissioners sat down and they says, well, wow, we don't want any of this, and that's where we are today.
Mr. GIBBONS. Let me ask just a yes or no question from any of you. Do any of you know of public hearings that were held in your areas with regard to the proposal for the American Heritage River Initiative that might have allowed for your input into the creation of this initiative?
Mr. PROPES. No.
Mr. WESSON. No, sir.
Mr. RICHARDSON. Just the one at Marathon is the only one that I'm aware of.
Mr. GIBBONS. How big is Marathon?
Mr. RICHARDSON. Oh, maybe 15, 20 houses, very small place. And we don't know.
And this one—there was some attempts at intimidation about grants along in there. But my judge is 73 years old, and you couldn't intimidate him with a bulldozer, you know. He just—so that was the end of that discussion, and it didn't last long.
Mr. GIBBONS. Thank you very much, gentlemen. And I will yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. PETERSON. Representative Chenoweth?
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
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Mr. Wesson, it's good to see you.
Mr. WESSON. Glad to be here.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. I'm glad you're here. And Ballach Forest, where you work, is next to the Mississippi River. If this segment of the river is designated under the American Heritage Rivers designation, how do you believe that the local economy and communities will be affected? Have you addressed that in my absence?
Mr. WESSON. Well, that's a good question. It really scares me because, about 4 months ago, the Ballach went into a joint venture with Anderson, actually, and bought 365,000 acres between the levy and river. And I have been talking to my CEO and some other people and I said, I hope you all realize if this American Heritage River comes by, you might have just lost everything you've got.
It could very much affect us. We're all—the Mississippi River is a working river, and in southeast Arkansas we have agriculture. We have the paper industry. Like my mill, we get the water out of the river. We use it in the mill. We clean it up. We put it back in the river. Our chips come down the river to the mill, or the logs do, to our chip mill one.
And, you know, the agriculture, the farmers use it for irrigation. There's several thousands of acres, if not hundreds of thousands of acres, between the levy and the river that on the years that the river don't flood, they use that for farmland. And it's a very big asset to the economic industry.
And last week, a year ago this time, I met with Katie McGinty and Ray Clark at the CEQ, and at that time any person could opt out. I mean, it took a person to designate, and it took a person to opt out. Since then, they've changed it to, well, then your county has to opt out. Then they said your Congressman has to opt out. Well, last Thursday, we was told that even if your Congressman opts out, if your Governor wants it, you can still get it. So we don't know what the deal is.
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Mrs. CHENOWETH. Very interesting. I think I understand what the deal is, and I think we will work to straighten that out. Because there was testimony before this Committee that if a Congressman wants to opt out, their areas will be opted out, and we intend to hold CEQ to that.
I'd be interested in having anything in writing or even an affidavit from you with regards to the fact that a one-time CEQ made a promise that an individual could opt out. Could you help the Committee out on that, Mr. Wesson?
Mr. WESSON. Sure. I would be glad to.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. I would very much appreciate that.
Mr. Richardson—and I'm getting back to you, Commissioner—but I understand that there was a high-level meeting last spring in Laredo. Did you address this?
Mr. RICHARDSON. We don't—we were not really very conversant about it, because we don't know anything about it.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. I understand in this meeting in Laredo they discussed the possible designation of the Rio Grande as an American Heritage River Initiative. Could you discuss the highlights of that meeting and if your county was invited?
Mr. RICHARDSON. We knew nothing of the meetings. But, generally, if we were invited to attend, I would know.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. So you were——
Mr. RICHARDSON. The mail comes to me.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. So the mail comes to you, and if you were invited, if the county was invited, you would know?
Mr. RICHARDSON. I would know. I believe I would know.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. And you did not receive an invitation?
Mr. RICHARDSON. No, we don't know anything about that.
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Mrs. CHENOWETH. Well, the administration believes that designation of the Rio Grande will result in more cooperation with the Mexican government to clean up the river. As one who worked on the Border Patrol for 32 years and has lived in the area a lifetime, how do you feel about this?
Mr. RICHARDSON. They are very sensitive to any overt action by the American—I think the phrase is: Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States. They don't want us meddling in the thing. And you've got to remember, like I said, they own 60 percent of that water. We only own 40.
There's three contributory rivers into there and two coming into our area anyway. Sixty percent of that water is theirs. They've had a session of bureaucrats telling them what to do and when to do it.
My big fear when I was working in Mexico or conducting liaison with my counterparts across the river was some American politician would go to Mexico and run his mouth, because it would put us in a real strain. You can't treat your neighbor that way.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. And so three of the contributing rivers come from Mexico that make up 60 percent of the water in the Rio Grande and two of the tributaries come from America?
Mr. RICHARDSON. That's correct.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. And you don't treat your neighbors that way?
Mr. RICHARDSON. I don't think the nature—human nature being what it is, that, yes, they're very—they understand. They know about—they have the maquilas to appease, the Americans, the maquila industries have expanded their operation. If you crowd those officials in Mexico, they merely state, hey, the pollution comes from the American factory and look at you and smile.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Yes.
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Mr. RICHARDSON. What are you going to answer? I don't think Mexico is ready for another layer of our bureaucracy. I really and truly don't.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. We're not ready for it either.
Mr. RICHARDSON. I don't think they will work with you to clean it up. I believe that. But you're not going to tell them or exert—they call it Yankee supremacy, whatever. You're just not going to do that down there. So my—I don't think the way to go is another government bureaucracy.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, sir.
Commissioner, it's good to see you. You're a neighbor of mine.
Mr. PROPES. Yes.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. And I share your concerns about the Blue Ribbon Panel on the American Heritage Rivers Commission. In fact, that panel would not allow me to even address the public last month in Washington, which is unusual.
Your testimony mentions that two of those committee members are from Oregon.
Mr. PROPES. Yes, they are.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. How did these two members respond when they learned that four affected counties and Senator Gordon Smith have formally requested the Willamette not be designated?
Mr. PROPES. We have not heard any response from them at all.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. From the commissioners?
Mr. PROPES. Yes. It seems to be definitely silence when we try to get information about what's going on. We don't get letters returned when we've asked questions. It's almost as if we don't exist.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. My word. Are you aware of any other Federal program that has been this unresponsive to the wishes of Polk County Commissioners?
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Mr. PROPES. Besides Endangered Species Act? No, we haven't. And, actually, the other Federal programs, we've worked with a lot of Federal programs, and they've been very responsive to us. We may not always agree with the outcomes, but we get answers back, and they're responsive.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. With the amount of opposition, why do you believe that the river is still being considered for designation?
Mr. PROPES. Well, our Governor is in favor of the designation. But we were led to believe that if local areas opt out, that you could get out of it. And that was nothing that was told to us by any Federal agency. It was just different things we had read on it and information that we had received. And then, when we found out we couldn't opt out locally, we went to our senator and Congressman, and they opted us out. And then we have heard that that doesn't work either.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Well, they keep moving the goal post, and we keep trying to plant them.
Mr. PROPES. Yes, that's what it appears to be.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. I think, Commissioner, it might be awfully good if your Governor talked to some of his friends in Lane County. I'm very pleased that Lane County opted out.
Mr. PROPES. Yes. Lane County is a major county that would be affected—could be affected by this. If you read all of our—that's our problem. We do not know what this means. All we know is that it's another Federal program, and it has so few specifics in it and in the Federal Register, we just absolutely can't tell. We've asked questions. Nobody can answer our questions.
So we feel it's better not to be in the program until we know what it is. If it's a good program, we will be knocking on the door wanting in. But that's the way Federal programs should be. They should be designed that if there's a need in a local area for that Federal program, the local areas come after it. They shouldn't be pushed down on this.
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Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you very much, Commissioner.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. PETERSON. Thank you.
I just thought I would share for the record here the words of Katie McGinty, Madam Chairman. I would like to offer some declarative statement about this program, because it's helpful to clarify, I think, in simple terms what this is and what it is not. What it is it's 100 percent voluntary. Communities don't have to participate. And after participating at any time, a community can opt out. It's 100 percent locally driven. This is purely a bottom-up process, whether to participate in the plan for participation is completely under the control and in the hands of the local citizens.
I think they've broken those rules already.
In response to Mr. Cannon about could it be—these rivers be employed politically, well, I would also remind us that a community—any community is not going to be a part of this program at all in order for that scenario to eventuate, unless they have elected to become a part of the program. So that, for example, if you have in mind that this is a political tool and places will be chosen around the country for political favor, that is, I think, pretty well precluded by the notion that it's not top down, communities participate from the bottom up.
And one more statement for the record here.
Ms. McGinty—well, let me say several things.
First of all, in terms of the veto, a Senator will have the right to exercise a veto as well as a Member of Congress in whose district this river or stretch of river might run.
In addition, the Federal Register notice makes clear the authorities of the State and also the necessity of having State support. It itemizes, for example, letters of endorsement from not just local governments but State and tribal governments. It also makes clear, as it says here, of course, any projects identified in the nomination packet must undergo applicable State review process.
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After our conversation it also makes clear that the American Heritage Rivers Initiative, for example, may not conflict with matters of State and local government jurisdiction, and it goes on.
But it seems to me like her statement here that day—and she sat in the same chairs with Bruce Babbitt, if my memory is correct, at least the day I was here.
I would like to commend you for your testimony.
Ms. Chenoweth, do you have any further questions?
Mrs. CHENOWETH. No, Mr. Chairman, I have not.
Mr. PETERSON. I would like to thank you for traveling here and participating.
I guess one final thought I might have, would a legislation that forces them to hold a large public hearing in each region before designating be something that would be helpful?
Mr. PROPES. It would be helpful. But I'm still not sure if everybody showed up and said we don't want it that they still wouldn't list us. It seems like there needs to be something that there is actually a way not to get listed, if there is enough support for that.
Mr. PETERSON. There may be 200 votes for that. I'm not sure there's 218. That's our problem. We have some here with not much courage when it comes to going against those who have a plan for this country that we don't happen to agree with. But it would seem like it would be less threatening to them that if they were at least forced to hold a well-described, good, thoughtful public hearing in each region, which would at least allow all of those, they should have the right to publicly state why they have concerns.
Mr. PROPES. That would certainly be better than the process we've gone through.
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Mr. PETERSON. With no further advice from the real chairman, I would consider this hearing adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:15 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
[Additional material submitted for the record follows.]
STATEMENT OF RON ARNOLD, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR THE DEFENSE OF FREE ENTERPRISE
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, my name is Ron Arnold. I am testifying as the executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, a nonprofit citizen organization based in Bellevue, Washington. The Center has approximately 10,000 members nationwide, most of them in rural natural resource industries.
Mr. Chairman, I am proud to state that the Center does not accept government grants and has not received any government funds since the day it was established on American Bicentennial day, July 4, 1976.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank you on behalf of our members for holding this hearing today. It is timely indeed. For the past year, at the urging of our increasingly concerned members, the Center has been conducting an in-depth study of Federal policy and rural communities. Our study, titled ''Battered Communities,'' is being released at this hearing. You will find it attached to my hearing statement.
''Battered Communities'' was co-sponsored by three other citizen groups, the American Land Rights Association, F.I.G.H.T. for Minnesota, and the Maine Conservation Rights Institute.
''Battered Communities'' delves into serious matters of Federal policy as it affects rural community life. On page 5 we address the most obvious problem, the urban-rural prosperity gap—the spread in wages and unemployment between the richest and poorest counties within each of the 50 states. While urban America today enjoys an economic boom, rural counties are finding themselves choked to death by Federal restrictions designed to protect the environment from the people who live and work in the environment.
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The most disheartening aspect of the conflict over the environment is that rural goods producers ranchers, loggers, miners—are becoming a despised minority, morally excluded from respect and human decency, even in Federal documents such as we see on page 7 in an Environmental Impact Statement characterizing miners as costly, destructive, stupid social misfits.
Now we turn to the visible damage: Rural communities are besieged by a bewildering array of Federal policies forcing them to starve in the midst of plenty. These policies are listed in part on page 8.
Mr. Chairman, let me call your attention to the most serious problem our study uncovered: the systematic effort of a triangle of interests to harness Federal policy to their own agenda, against natural resource goods producers.
The Center has identified a small corps of activist Federal employees—from the highest levels to on-the-ground technicians—working to reshape Federal policy from within according to agendas that paralyze goods production in rural communities. Pages 13 through 17 discuss a few of these activist Federal employees. To see their impact, you will find on page 24 a chart of systematic timber sale appeals, filed in a coordinated pattern by a bevy of environmental groups. We found the frequent outcome was that the Forest Service simply withdrew the timber sale without even ruling on the appeal. The resulting mill closures are charted on page 25.
This certainly appears to be undue influence. Yet that is not the whole story. These environmental groups were in many cases acting at the behest of their donors on grant-driven programs not designed by the environmental groups, but originating within grantmaking private foundations. We discovered, in documents such as this thick directory of environmental grantmaking foundations, a cluster of multi-million dollar campaigns designed to set public policy against logging, mining and ranching according to the private preferences of a few custodians of vast wealth. Some of these foundations do not even accept applications for grants, but design entire programs of social change themselves and hand-pick the groups that will act as their agents, pushing non-profit laws to the edge. In the hands of these privileged people, Federal policy is being corrupted into a blunt instrument battering rural communities.
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Mr. Chairman, these are serious charges. On page 35, the Center recommends that this Committee continue its adoption on this vital issue with a detailed investigation of the causes behind America's rural Battered Communities.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing on the anguish of rural America.
STATEMENT OF JOHN CONLEY, PRESIDENT, CONCERNED ALASKANS FOR RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT (CARE), KETCHIKAN, ALASKA
Mr. Chairman:
My name is John Conley, I am the president of Concerned Alaskans for Resources and Environment (CARE). I have also served six years on the Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly and manage three NAPA auto parts stores located in Ketchikan, Craig, and Wrangell Alaska.
The passage of the Tongass Timber Reform Act of 1990 (TTRA) was to be the great compromise for the Tongass National Forest. TTRA was supposed to provide increased environmental protection as well as a sustainable forest products industry. I have witnessed the closing of two pulp mills in Southeast Alaska and several sawmills. At the same time I have witnessed increased funding of local environmental groups by tax exempt national foundations.
These closings have greatly affected both my business and my community. In Ketchikan alone, we have lost over 544 forest product jobs, 144 retail and support jobs, and $40 million of local payroll. Today my company employs eight less people and its gross receipts have declined by $1.5 million. As I look toward the future I am extremely concerned about supporting my family and the families of the 30 remaining employees in my stores. Access to natural resources is vital to Southeast Alaskans and is guaranteed by the Alaska Statehood Act.
Environmental groups have stated that tourism can and will replace lost forest product industry jobs. Mr. Chairman, this is simply not true. Tourism is important to our local economy and throughout the state. I have supported and will continue to support this growing industry. However, it a seasonal industry providing only seasonal jobs; it does not provide families with the benefits of year round employment. These jobs will also not replace the 25 percent return to our communities for education and transportation based on timber receipts.
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Mr. Chairman it has become obvious to many, that increased funding by national tax free environmental foundations to the local environmental industry leads to decreased economic activity and local employment. The environmental industry states they support a value added timber industry for Southeast Alaska. Mr. Chairman, my community and I are confused because these same groups continue to object to harvest quantities adequate enough to sustain even a small value added forest products industry.
The Forest Service has a legal mandate to manage our national forests for multiple uses which include timber production. The new land management plan for the Tongass (TLMP) drastically reduced the amount of land available for a long term sustainable timber industry in Southeast Alaska. Even with this massive reduction of the available sale quantity on the Tongass the environmental industry continues to fight timber production. This is not acceptable. At a minimum we need to sustain our current economy. Legal challenges orchestrated and financed by the national environmental lobby continues to block multiple uses on the Tongass National Forest which is preventing our ability to maintain a stable economy.
Mr. Chairman I believe it is time to make these tax exempt foundations that fund the environmental industry accountable. As a businessman if I were to provide money to someone which they in turn used to destroy another business that would be an illegal act under the RICO laws and I would be held accountable. Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, for the sake of my family and the families of my community I urge you to hold these foundations accountable.
Thank you Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee for the opportunity to testify today.
STATEMENT OF Y. LEON FAVREAU, PRESIDENT, MULTIPLE USE ASSOCIATION
Thank you Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee on Resources for allowing me to express my views on the impact Federal land use policies could have on a rural community like mine. We agree with your statement that too often ''Federal policies are developed from Washington, DC with little input from rural communities that are most impacted.''
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My name is Leon Favreau, president and co-founder of the Multiple Use Association (QUA). Our 500-member group is based in Shelburne, NH, and has been in existence since 1987. Most of our efforts go towards exposing the public to the truth about our nation's forests. This is something that is dearly needed as too much bad information about forests is promulgated by our nation's powerful environmental groups and by the media. Everybody says they want a good forest environment. To achieve this, however, we need to deal with the facts as they are and the truth as it is. You will soon see the results of some of our work when you receive an Evergreen Magazine issue on the Northern Forest Lands. We helped raise the funds needed for the production costs for the issue that will show the Northern Forest Lands as they are.
I am also president of Bethel Furniture Stock, Inc., a primary and secondary wood products manufacturing firm that produces component parts for the furniture industry. Our innovative wood bending process, introduced in 1986, has helped us become what may be this country's largest custom bender of solid wood. The last title I will share with you is that of Chairman of the Budget Committee for the small town of Shelburne, NH.
The concerns that I would like to express today have to do with S. 546, ''The Northern Forest Stewardship Act.'' As you may know, the so-called Northern Forest Lands (NFL) are comprised of 26 million acres of primarily private forest lands that span the state boundaries of Northern Maine, New Hampshire & Vermont and Eastern New York. The Stewardship Act purports to prevent harm from coming to these lands and its resident one million people.
MUA supported the study performed by the Northern Forest Lands Council that tried to determine what constituted a threat to the forest. The report may have broken new ground by showing so much concern for local people.
The Stewardship Act, however, is different. It doesn't follow the spirit of the Council's work. We believe it will lead to greater Federal control over our local communities. The Council made it very clear they did not recommend increased control. While local communities participated in the NFL study, they haven't participated in the preparation of this legislation. Local hearings are necessary to correct that.
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I know you have heard from some in the timber industry that support the Act. I'm here to tell you that most of us in the local timber industry are against it. We understand that this is just another step down a slippery slope that will mean it will be even more difficult for us to do business in the NFL area. Increasing the focus on government land and easement acquisition, which the Act does, will mean a reduction in the availability of timber.
A good local example of what happens when the government owns forest-land is to look at the recent occurrences of the White Mountain National Forest (WMNF). In less that 10 years, the harvest level has been reduced from a one half of sustained growth to a quarter. No one is confident even that low level will be maintained. For the town of Shelburne, it used to be considered an asset to have close to half its land in the WMNF. Now it reduces our tax base and local employment.
Since the NFL Council's report found that our varied forests really weren't threatened, one needs to ask, why all this national interest in our 26 million acres? There was never any local groundswell to put more Federal or State controls on these private lands. Nor was there any local groundswell for more government land purchases. Instead, this drive to change local land use comes from a vision concocted for us by our elite from national environmental and charitable foundation communities. They initially promoted as examples to be copied for our area, controlled ''greenline'' areas such as the Federal Columbia River Gorge Scenic Area and the New York State Adirondack Park.
The term ''greenline'' has now been discredited in the NFL area, partially because we brought out a mayor from the Columbia River Gorge who gave a devastating description of what it was like living and working at home in his elite controlled area. Widely distributed copies of his talk had a chilling effect. Greens no longer mention the term greenline, but there is no doubt in my mind that is still their goal for those of us who live and work in the NFL area.
Consider the following:
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1. The Wilderness Society sponsored a closed conference for forest activists in Bethel, Maine, November of 1990 and greenlining was on the agenda. Attached is material from this meeting. It is telling they called greenlining a ''game.'' The elite is playing a game with our livelihoods. At this same meeting, an Executive Vice-President of the National Audubon said he wanted to take the northern forest ''all back,'' and he encouraged attendees to ''be unreasonable . . . you can do it . . . today's hearsay is tomorrow's wisdom . . . it happens over and over again.'' So much for promoting the truth.
2. At a meeting held in Lincoln, NH in April of 1991, a prominent member of both the environmental and foundation communities said he had visited all the greenline areas (and he named them) and he agreed that none of them work, but he said he ''just knew we could make it work here.'' He said this in response to my criticism of the land and people control system of greenlining. He labeled my thinking as bunker mentality. He also said that the environmental community had $100 million to spend on trying to achieve their goals for the Northern Forest Lands. Given the number of known grants given to the environmental associations that comprise the Northern Forest Alliance and by observing all their efforts, we believe this is possible. This individual's statement on funds took on added meaning when we later learned he served at the time on the board of the Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA).
3. Tapes of the October 1992 EGA meeting off the coast of the State of Washington revealed its interest in the NFL area. These same tapes revealed some interesting information about the discrepancy between what they knew about wise use groups and the information they were promoting about them.
History has shown that when greens take a special interest in certain legislation or regulation, it doesn't end up used as was intended, but to further their goals. Two examples that come to mind are the Endangered Species Act and regulations on wetlands. Nobody intended for them to be used as they have. The green's substantial political, financial and bureaucratic clout allows them to change intents.
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S. 546, I believe, will do nothing to help our rural communities. Almost everything in the Act is already occurring at some level. It will be another tool to help the greens and their funding foundations further their land use control goals, which I believe is ''greenlining and much more government ownership.'' If the Act is passed, the local citizen's fight to maintain his or her land use rights and way of life will be raised to a higher and more difficult level. Senator Leahy isn't helping his constituents who live in Vermont's NFL area when he continually tries to attach the Act to other pieces of Senate legislation. I ask you to think of people like me when you consider whether to pass on a companion House bill.
INSERT OFFSET FOLIOS 57 TO 62 AND 125 TO 131 HERE
STATEMENT OF R. EDMUND GOMEZ, NEW MEXICO STATE UNIVERSITY, COOPERATIVE EXTENSION SERVICE, RURAL AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENT AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS PROJECT, ALCALDE, NEW MEXICO
Statement made and exhibits presented to the United States House of Representatives Committee on Resources on the impact of Federal land use policies on rural communities, June 9, 1998.
The use of communal lands in northern New Mexico dates back over four hundred years. These same lands are now considered Public lands and the descendants of the indigenous people and the first settlers have continued to utilize them for as many generations. The people of northern New Mexico rely on these Public lands for economic, cultural, social and spiritual survival. Federal land use policy without community input may adversely affect the survival of rural communities in northern New Mexico.
My name is Edmund Gomez and I live in Alcalde, New Mexico. I speak on behalf of my neighbors, friends, and family who rely heavily on Public lands for economic, cultural, social and spiritual survival. As an active member of the USDA Commission on Small Farms which was commissioned by Mr. Dan Glickman, USDA Secretary of Agriculture in July of 1997, I also speak on behalf of small farmers and ranchers from rural communities across the country who rely on Public lands for economic survival.
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The purpose of the USDA Commission on Small Farms was to recommend to the Secretary of Agriculture a national strategy to ensure the continued viability of small farms and ranches and for the Commission to determine a course of action for USDA to recognize, respect and respond to their needs (Exhibit A: National Commission on Small Farms, A TIME TO ACT, 1998).
Communal land use by residents of New Mexico and the Southwest has historical roots dating back to 1598. During Spanish colonial settlement, community land grants were granted by Spain and later Mexico to groups of settlers and Native American Pueblos in New Mexico and the Southwest (Exhibit B: Torrez, THE ENDURING LEGACY OF SPANISH AND MEXICAN LAND GRANTS IN NEW MEXICO, 1998). Many of these tracts of land are currently held as Public lands by the USDA Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Descendants of the Spanish and Mexican land grants have continually utilized these lands for livestock grazing, fuel wood, hunting, and timber harvesting as well as a source of watershed for domestic, livestock and agricultural use (Exhibit C: Meyer, THE CONTEMPORARY SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO TO LAND USE ISSUES IN NORTHERN NEW MEXICO, 1998).
New Mexico ranks forty ninth in per capita income. The northern counties of New Mexico are some of the poorest in respect to per capita income in the country. Over 50 percent of the land base in New Mexico is owned by the Federal Government. Many of the residents of northern New Mexico including the Native American Pueblos own very small parcels of land. Some sociologists attribute the correlation of poverty to the proportion of private versus Public land ownership. Many of these Public lands were once owned by the ancestors of these rural communities.
Livestock production represents over 85 percent of all agricultural income in northern New Mexico. The average livestock producer in northern New Mexico owns twenty head of cattle and utilizes Public lands. Within the past fifty years, from 30 to 60 percent of the traditional savanna grasslands in the Carson and Santa Fe National Forests have been lost to woody shrub and tree encroachment due almost entirely to fire suppression, thus causing loss of livestock and wildlife habitat and economic stability within rural communities. The snow ball effect. Some groups who desire to eliminate livestock grazing from Public lands claim that ranchers are becoming rich off of Public lands (Exhibit D: Wolff, THE CITY SLICKER'S GUIDE TO WELFARE RANCHING IN NEW MEXICO, 1998). I have yet to meet a wealthy indigenous rancher from northern New Mexico and I have lived there all of my life.
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Many of the residents of northern New Mexico, including Indian Pueblos, rely on Public lands for fuel wood and timber harvesting as did their ancestors. A large percentage of these residents utilize fuel wood as their only source of heat and cooking fuel. In 1994 a special interest group filed a litigation suit based on the Endangered Species Act with the USDA Forest Service on behalf of the Mexican Spotted Owl on the Carson National Forest. In 1996 a Federal Court restricted all harvest of timber and fuel wood on the Carson National Forest until the Forest complied with the Endangered Species Act. This action prevented local residents from obtaining fuel wood for heating and cooking. Many families endured a very cold winter that year because of this inhumane action. Incidentally, the Mexican Spotted Owl has never been historically documented as living within the Carson National Forest.
Why do indigenous people continue to live in northern New Mexico rural communities? The indigenous people of northern New Mexico speak seven languages, including English. They have retained their culture, tradition, social values and spirituality. They were the first and continue to be the true environmentalists of the land, utilizing the sustainable practices that have fed and clothed their children for many generations; always returning more than they take. The pristine beauty of the land remains intact and attracts a new wave of settlers every year. Rural communities in northern New Mexico work and live as a family. This social and cultural custom has given support during adverse situations and has allowed them to raise their children with the same values that have been sacred to the people for many generations.
Congress has passed legislation dealing with Public land policy and environmental issues that were deemed necessary and essential, but a one size fits all policy does not work for all Public land situations. Congress has overlooked the endangered rural communities and their struggle for survival and a traditional way of life. We are just as important as the other endangered species Congress is protecting. Rural communities were excluded when Congress developed policy that would ultimately affect their livelihood. Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, please find ways of amending the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act so that they will provide for the protection of the environment as they were intended and not to be used as loopholes for special interest groups who continue to file litigation against the USDA Forest Service in an effort to promote their own agenda. Provide Congressional provisions to establish local community based Public land management boards which will determine the management objectives for the local Public land base and would include both environmental and economic considerations. This process will insure that rural communities who traditionally rely on the land for survival will be included in the policy decision process for their region.
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Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, I extend an invitation to visit with us in northern New Mexico so that you may first hand meet real people who have utilized Public lands for over four hundred years. Who depend on these lands for survival and the real people who have retained their culture and spirituality because of their harmony with the land. Please accept my invitation before the rural communities of northern New Mexico have become extinct;
Thank you.
STATEMENT OF HUGH B. MCKEEN
Chairman Young and members of the Committee, first let me thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today, although this is the last place I want to be today or any day. My name is Hugh B. McKeen and I am from Glenwood, New Mexico, where I live with my wife Margie, my mother Emma Jo, my brother Bob, his wife Donna, and their two children.
We are a family ranching operation that has been part of Southwestern New Mexico since 1888 when my grandfather settled there. Our land holdings are made up of state, private and Federal lands that are co-mingled to make up a ranching unit that supports eight people as well as providing part of the economic base for Catron County and rural New Mexico.
We earn everything we have. Margie and I raised four children off the ranching operation. We do not have Federal or company insurance and retirement plans. We do not get paid vacations. We pay our taxes and we've never been on welfare.
In addition to owning the ranch, I have served as a Commissioner for Catron County, so I have first hand knowledge of what is happening in rural areas of my state, as well as the rest of the West.
I was asked to come here and speak about the impacts of the Federal land use policies on rural communities. My personal dealings with Federal land management agencies have been with the U.S. Forest Service.
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We were raised to take pride in our country and our government. Bob and I both served in the U.S. Army. Bob was a paratrooper. Once we might have considered ourselves a partner with the Forest Service, working to protect and preserve the land so we could pass it on to the next generation in better shape than it was passed to us.
That hasn't been the case for quite a long time. Not only are we not a partner, but we are THE enemy. We have learned to distrust and fear the government that we were raised to believe was of the people, by the people, and for the people.
On one hand, I can agree with the radical environmentalists who are suing the agencies left and right. The government has not done a good job of managing the land. Our forests are in terrible shape. They are powder kegs waiting to explode with such force that after the fires are over; the land will be useless to anyone. The fuel load in most Southwestern forests today compares with parking 20 or 30 fuel tankers on the land and setting them on fire. Additionally, this growth depletes our underground water sources, adversely affects watershed quality and quantity, and increases parasites and diseases.
But that is not the fault of livestock grazing or logging or recreational use and the demise of these industries will not solve the problem. It will only get worse. Unless and until the Forest Service undertakes an aggressive management program that stops choking the forests with too many small trees that don't allow full maturity of any trees, that prohibits the growth of natural forage to provide habitat for wildlife and livestock, the situation is only going to get worse.
However, the radical environmentalists aren't suing the government to protect the land. They are suing the government to control the land and the government is working right along side them.
I have had numerous run-ins with the Forest Service over the past several years and I am currently involved in several lawsuits involving the Forest Service. In 1995 in renewing my term grazing permit, which is for ten years, the Forest Service not only didn't do the studies they said they had on our allotment, they didn't even know what was private property and what was government lands. AND they falsified data. AND they shredded positive information.
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Even though they finally admitted that they had false information, the Forest Service refused to correct the record because the studies had been completed and filed.
Because I knew what these changes in our operation would do to our ability to feed our families, I initially refused to sign the permit, although I had a time frame in which to come to a final decision. Our operation is financed by the Farmers Home Administration (FHA). Prior to the time was up for me to sign the permit, the Forest Service contacted FHA and told them I would not have a permit.
I immediately received foreclosure notice from FHA. I was forced to sign the permit, which I did, noting that the signature was under duress. I am now part of a coalition of 26 permittees in New Mexico and Arizona who are suing the Forest Service for the changes in our permits that will put us out of business. One lady from Arizona had her permit cut by 80 percent and her season of use by one month. What are we supposed to do with our cattle for a month? You can't just stop feeding them and stack them up in a warehouse until the Forest Service decides to let us on to country that we have used for generations.
Why did the Forest Service make these radical changes? Because they were afraid they MIGHT be sued and because they have a computer model and aerial and/or satellite photographs that tell them there MIGHT be a problem. In Federal District Court last month, the Interdisciplinary Team Leader who was in charge of these cuts admitted that the team spent a day and half on the ground actually looking at the tens of thousands of acres of land before making these decisions. He also admitted that many of the decisions made were done solely by he and his wife.
We spent a little over a day-and-half last month in Las Cruces on a motion for preliminary injunction to stop the Forest Service from implementing their decisions until the merits of our case have been heard. I was shocked to see 18 Federal employees on hand for the first day of this hearing. Only 15 showed up for the second day.
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My family and fellow permittees had to take time away from our operations to defend ourselves against the government. We were not paid for the time we spent in court, nor were our expenses paid for us to drive to or stay in Las Cruces for the hearing. But our tax dollars paid for the time and expenses of all of these folks. What was even more frustrating is that with all those people sitting there, the government was represented by only two attorneys who called only three witnesses. What were those other 10 guys for and how much did they cost us?
We hear constant whining about how the agencies don't have enough money to do their jobs properly. And some of it may be justified. The Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act are certainly proving to be unfunded mandates. These laws provide for citizen lawsuits that allow radicals to sue the agencies at every turn for not meeting the letter of the law.
There probably isn't enough money in the entire Federal Government to pay for the things the radical environmentalists want, and in that respect we can sympathize with the agencies. But the agencies working in concert with the greens to put working American taxpayers out of business isn't going to solve the problem. It isn't going to protect the land or the wildlife and it isn't going to help the government.
Evidence of the Forest Service's collusion with the radicals is the new proposed amendment for the Forest Plan for the Southwestern Region. This document has the power not only to eliminate grazing from National Forests, but all human use. One prize quote in the document that even the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture cannot define reads:
''Allow no activities that slow or prevent progression of potential habitat (habitat within 10 years of becoming suitable) toward suitable conditions, or that reduce the suitability of occupied or unoccupied suitable habitat.''
It further reads, ''the term 'species habitat' encompasses all stream courses (bank to bank) which are occupied, unoccupied suitable, potential, or designated or proposed critical habitat . . .'' Another area says, ''exclude off-road vehicle use from within species habitat and riparian areas.''
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Given the first quote, it sounds like ''species habitat'' could be virtually anywhere any thing might want to go . . . including your neighborhood McDonalds.
Most of us in natural resource industries have our whole lives and that of our families for generations invested in our operations. Our ranches aren't just jobs. They are our homes, they are our culture. They are our values. They are our lives. If we are forced off our ranches, where are we to live? How are we to feed our families?
I often hear these questions compared to the buggy whip industry. Nobody saved them. Why should any useless industry be saved? We are not producing a product that is no longer needed. We are part of a minute percentage of Americans, less than 2 percent, who provide food and fiber for the rest of the nation as well as a large part of the rest of the world. We are part of the safest and most wholesome food supply in the entire world.
Our Cedar Breaks allotment is also at issue in two suits filed by radical environmentalists against the Forest Service in New Mexico and Arizona regarding endangered species. Instead of standing their ground and fighting, the Forest Service rolled over and negotiated a ''stipulation'' with the greens that would require fencing some 60 of 160 allotments off riparian areas and biweekly or weekly monitoring by the agency.
Fortunately, the livestock industry had intervened in the suit on behalf of the permittees involved because the Forest Service certainly exhibited no concern for them or their rights. The industry refused to sign off on the stipulation so the Court refused to sign it. THEN the Forest Service and the greens simply made the document a settlement agreement that did not require the participation of the livestock industry or the Court and went on their merry way. Never did the Forest Service consult with the permittees or consider the private property rights they were impairing if not outright taking.
In New Mexico water is a private property right. Many of the fences the Forest Service has agreed to put up will prevent water right owners from using their water and could subject them to forfeiture of the right for non-use. Additionally, there is private property co-mingled with the Forest Service lands that will be affected by the fencing.
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Not only does the settlement agreement affect private property rights, but it breaks numerous other Federal laws as well as the Forest Service's own policy. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) calls for assessment to be done on the environmental, economic, social and cultural impacts of major Federal actions. The potential of erasing some 60 small business in one region certainly appears to be a major Federal action in my book, but the Forest Service entered into the settlement agreement without complying with NEPA on the affected allotments.
The Forest Service violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) by failing to allow grazing permittees to participate in actions and decisions relative to their individual allotments. The Forest Service violated its' own policy by providing no formal decision documents to permittees that are appealable.
The Forest Service's own acting Director of Range for the Southwestern Region admitted under oath in Federal District Court in Tucson that their actions would result in numerous appeals and lawsuits.
Making the situation even worse is the fact that even if the Forest Service weren't breaking all of these laws and regulations in the name of the Endangered Species Act and every permittee was happy to comply, the Forest Service would not be able to keep up their end of the bargain with the agreement. The elk in the area won't permit it. In a 20-mile radius of Reserve, New Mexico, the New Mexico Game & Fish Department estimates there are 10,000 head of elk. That is one-seventh of the total elk population in New Mexico. Those elk don't know about the settlement agreement and they are going to tear down fences. When the fences are down, the cattle are gong to cross them, and then the permittee is in trouble. Forest Service employees have already admitted publicly that they won't be able to keep the fences up.
Additionally, where is the Forest Service going to get the personnel to monitor all those allotments on a weekly and/or biweekly basis? What other jobs are going to be left undone?
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Prior to the signing of the settlement agreement in Tucson in April, Forest Service employees were on the ground trying to coerce permittees into agreeing to fence their allotments off from streams without protecting their rights of appeal. Now the Forest Service employees are on the ground telling permittees that they are changing the way they are doing business because they have a court order. In a Forest Service press release the agency refers to the agreement as a stipulation. It is bad enough that the Forest Service betrayed us in this manner, but then they lie about it!
The question being discussed today is the impact of Federal land use policies on rural communities. I am here to tell you that if the Forest Service persists in its present manner there will be no rural communities for you to worry about.
Catron County is made up of 2,500 people in Southwestern New Mexico, down from 2,900 just a few years ago. The traditional major industries for the County have been logging and livestock. The timber industry was literally killed by the Forest Service because of lawsuits filed by radical environmentalists, nearly breaking the County. Livestock is now the major component in the economy. Without livestock production, there will be no economy in Catron County.
We hear a lot about how tourism will make up the difference when we lose production industries but that simply isn't true. When recreationists come to our area, they come with ice chests filled with food and drink bought at big city discount stores. What little they buy at local markets isn't enough for them to make a living on. They arrive with gas tanks filled with low price gas purchased at big city discounts. They are seasonal and can't be counted on month in and month out for rural businesses to pay the bills and keep the doors open.
Catron County is no different from every other rural county in the West. Maybe we saw what was coming a little sooner than most and have tried to put in place policies that would protect our economy like land use planning committees.
Another question I would like for you to consider is who is funding the litigation that is driving Federal land use policies. The Tucson, Arizona based Southwest Center For Biological Diversity, who by the way has just petitioned the Department of Interior to list two more species directed at removing cattle from the Gila Forest, has filed some 75 lawsuits under the citizens lawsuit provisions I mentioned earlier.
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According to a story in the Albuquerque Journal written by Mike Taugher, the only reporter in the Southwest listed as a contact in the Forest Service's Communication Plan, in 1995 the Southwest Center paid only $2,201 in legal expenses. The group's director states that they don't pay for lawsuits.
There are two reasons that these radical environmentalists don't pay for their lawsuits. One is that they are funded by nonprofit foundations who are answerable to no one for their actions. According the news article, the Pew Charitable Trust, a Philadelphia-based foundation, pumped nearly $700,000 into radical environmental groups between 1995 and 1997. Another nearly $228,000 was provided to these same groups via four other sources including Ted Turner, the Levinson Foundation, and the W. Alton Jones Foundation.
There are no voters in these foundations, no customers, no investors. They are tax exempt and most of them are based in the East while they are setting policy thousands of miles away in the West where they don't have to see or live with the consequences of their actions.
The other source of money for these radicals is you folks, the Federal Government. Until recently the Justice Department had a policy of simply paying costs to the suing party any time they lost or settled a suit. We have been told that in the future the policy will be for the suing party to have to at least fight to have their costs paid. Believe it when you see it.
I don't want to mislead you. Natural resource industries are filing suits against the agencies ourselves. We are left with no other choice. The agencies are not protecting our interests and are not even taking our interests into consideration. But we have no foundations to pump hundreds of thousands of dollars into our efforts. We are funding our litigation with bake sales, dances and ropings, and the $5 and $10 contributions of widows who know we are right and that we must win if our rural areas are to survive.
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In closing, I would like to say that I am proud to be before you today and that I am proud to be in our great nation's capitol. But I am not. I am sick at heart and soul at the shape I find our country in today. I am sick that the hard earned dollars of New Mexico's cattle producers had to be spent for me to be here today to tell you how our government is literally killing us. I can only hope and pray that all of you will do something to stop this madness before the situation gets any worse.
Thank you.
STATEMENT OF DONALD R. WESSON, PULP & PAPERWORKERS' RESOURCE COUNCIL, SOUTHERN PINE REGIONAL DIRECTOR
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you and this Committee for holding this very important hearing, and for allowing me to participate.
My name is Don Wesson. I am the vice president of United Paperworkers' International Union Local 1533 located in McGehee, Arkansas. I serve as the southern pine regional director of the Pulp & Paperworkers' Resource Council. I am currently employed in the pulp & paper industry as an industrial mechanic. I reside in Desha County, Arkansas and I'm a constituent of the 4th Congressional District.
A few years ago, I was like most all Americans. I went to work, paid my share of taxes, voted in most elections, and depended on my elected officials to take care of me. I've always felt my freedoms, as well as my property was protected. After all, America was founded under the Constitution. One day I heard some disturbing news of how a spotted owl put thousands of my union brothers and sisters out of a job in the very industry in which I am employed. I started paying more attention to what my government was doing, and realized some of those elected officials in which I placed my trust, was not looking out for my well being, or the well being of America. It was then that I realized that the world is run by those who show up, and I would start showing up. It was at that time I got involved with the PPRC.
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The Pulp & Paperworkers' Resource Council is a grassroots group consisting of labor workers who work in the pulp, paper and woodproducts industries of America. We have lost thousands of jobs in our industry in the past few years due to various government regulations. I'm here today to address ''The American Heritage Rivers.'' We feel this is just another governmental program that will end up hurting our communities and cost us more industry jobs.
I live in Desha County Arkansas, which borders the mighty Mississippi River, the life blood of America. The Mississippi River is among the top ten rivers that is already nominated as heritage rivers. I have had several meetings with the Office of Council on Environmental Quality, concerning this nomination. I have met with Mr. Ray Clark, Associate Director of the CEQ as well as the chairman of American Heritage Rivers, on three different occasions. Mr. Clark keeps insisting that the American Heritage Rivers is the greatest thing since motherhood and apple pie. He expressed that lies are being told about American Heritage Rivers. He insisted that there are no new regulations, no new money, and this is truly a bottom up program. It is community based, and there will be no impact on private property. He stated that money was already in place. The purpose of this program would be to just manage the rivers, and to administer the funds where needed. This is why I have a grave concern over this executive order.
If a ''river community'' is designated for this iniative, there are potentially serious negative implications for local governments. Depending on the direction the project takes, local land use zoning boards could be negated, or completely bypassed. There is nothing in the language that would allow a designated community, or individual land owners, the ability to opt out of this program. Without the right to opt out, a private land owner or local government, should be concerned about losing any power of income or development of assets, as well as its sovereignty.
The idea of using a ''river navigator'' to coordinate the river communities efforts in itself is somewhat a disturbing idea. When the person selected can be a Federal or non-Federal employee selected jointly by the river community and Federal agencies, the potential for conflict of interest exist. Many agencies, such as the Department of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Army Corps of Engineers have become more and more active in reducing or restricting the use of our natural resources. If the ''river navigator'' is chosen from an agency that has a definite preservationist slant, the chances of the ''river communities'' choosing a plan to the detriment of private property rights and industrial development would be greatly increased.
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Whenever tourism, economic security, environmental protection, and protecting/preserving our heritage are mixed into one iniat1ve, the American public becomes skeptical. This mixture in the past has meant the decrease in high paying industrial jobs. Even when there are tourism jobs created, the employees are not paid well, and in many cases are seasonal jobs.
I urge you Mr. Chairman, and this Committee, to stop the American Heritage Rivers Initiative. If this program is as great as we are told, then the office of the CEQ would not mind it having congressional oversight. We do not need 16 different governmental agencies and a river navigator to manage our rivers, or to regulate our private lands that borders these rivers.
Any proposal that is set up under the premise of streamlining government, but yet would still include at least 9 different cabinet positions, as well as countless other government agencies, hardly make this initiative more user friendly. Instead, it would just lead to another level of bureaucracy that the American public is already weary of.
If you have any questions concerning how too many levels of government bureaucracy affects the jobs in resource based industries, you could ask any one of the over one hundred thousand workers from the Pacific Northwest who lost their job over a spotted owl.
STATEMENT OF JACK RICHARDSON, VAL VERDE COUNTY COMMISSIONER
Thank you for the opportunity to testify before the Natural Resources Committee on the American Heritage Rivers Initiative and the pending application for the Rio Grande. I am Jack Richardson, the County Administrator in Val Verde County Texas, which is located on the Rio Grande. Val Verde County has an estimated population of 48,590, borders the Rio Grande River for the entire length of the county and encompasses 3,171 square miles and 62 square miles of water. I believe that these facts qualify Val Verde County to have a voice in any initiative that imposes additional Federal regulations upon the county. I have lived there for more than 25 years. I know many families that have lived and worked there for generations. We do not need a Federal initiative to tell us how important the Rio Grande is and to recognize the rich culture and heritage that exists along the river. We honor our culture and heritage every day as we go to work, raise our families and simply live life along the river.
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I worked for the U.S. Border Patrol for 32 years. While I will not claim to be an expert on the Rio Grande, I have a lifetime of experience of working in this region and the Rio Grande played a significant role in that work. I would like to know how many members of the Blue Ribbon Panel have even seen the Rio Grande, perhaps one at the most.
Now, I understand the Rio Grande is on a list along with several other rivers as a potential candidate to be named an American Heritage River. Exactly what that would mean for the communities and the people who must live and work along the river is still not fully known. I know the full impact will not be known until the initiative is being implemented. At that time, I am afraid it would be too late to stop the initiative. The AHRI is another unfunded mandate, of which the true costs to the local communities and the impacts on income, property rights, production and competitiveness are still unknown. I am here today to make sure that the concerns of all those who live and work along the river are heard.
I want it to be fully understood, that non support for the Rio Grande nomination flows up and down the river. Many communities in my region do not want the strings that come attached to Federal programs. I have with me today resolutions and letters of non support from counties that are located along the Rio Grande or within its watershed. One of those county resolutions is from my home county of Val Verde. I have letters of opposition from many agriculture organizations and property rights organizations. All total I have 77 resolutions and letters of non support for the designation of the Rio Grande as an American Heritage River. This represents thousands of Texas citizens that do not want the AHRI in Texas. Mr. Desmond Smith, President of the Trans Texas Heritage Association, also traveled to Washington, D.C. to testify on the behalf of the membership that represents 15.5 million acres of private land in Texas, against the AHRI and a designation for the Rio Grande. The San Antonio Express News recently quoted Governor Bush as stating ''So when it comes to the ONRW or the American Heritage Rivers, whatever it is, I'm against. I will not, so long as I'm governor, concede the sovereign rights of Texas.'' Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Congressman Henry Bonilla (R-TX-23) have both sent letters to the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) in opposition to the Rio Grande designation. Congressman Bonilla requested his Congressional District not be included in the initiative and seven other members of the Texas delegation also requested their districts not be included in the initiative. There are 800 miles of the Rio Grande that run through the Congressman's district. For some reason CEQ ignored Congressman Bonilla's opt out letter and further misrepresented his position by stating in a letter to Senator Hutchison that Congressman Bonilla supported a designation for the Rio Grande. Congressman Bonilla had to send another letter to CEQ restating his position.
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Regardless of our expressed opposition against the designation of the Rio Grande as an American Heritage River, the nomination has continued to proceed. How many more resolutions do we need to pass, how many more letters do we need to write and how many more times do we need to testify before Congress that we do not want the Rio Grande designated as an American Heritage River? When is CEQ and the Blue Ribbon Panel going to listen to us?
From the beginning there has been a back door attempt to get the Rio Grande listed as an American Heritage River, regardless of the views of those who live and work along the river. There have been secret meetings, attempts to prevent the public from having a voice at so called ''public hearings'' and an unwillingness to accept the fact that the AHRI is not wanted for the Rio Grande.
I would like to quote an excerpt from the letter sent to Senator Hutchison by the CEQ. It was dated May 7, 1998, and signed by Kathleen McGinty. It states ''The American Heritage Rivers initiative is one hundred percent locally-driven.'' I ask this Committee, if CEQ was really listening to the local communities, would the Rio Grande still be in consideration for nomination?
Not only is the AHRI in the process of being imposed on the local communities against their wishes, but this is another layer of bureaucracy that is not necessary. Do you have any idea how many Federal agencies already have their toes dipped in the Rio Grande and are controlling every action involving that river? I can assure you that we have enough problems working with the EPA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Army Corps of Engineers and the International Boundary and Water Commission, under the current authority and programs they have. These Federal agencies do not need to have their authority expanded under any program, especially a program that still does not have standards for evaluation and guidelines for establishing priorities.
Those of us who live along the Rio Grande understand better than anyone the need to clean it up. We all want to live in a clean environment, but creating another layer of government to work through is not the way to go about it.
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This is an international river and it will take international cooperation to clean it up. Just take a few minutes to visit with any one who works or lives along the river and you will soon come to realize that the Rio Grande cannot be treated like any other river. The culture and heritage that makes the river so special also creates many unique problems we must address. I do not see that this initiative will address our unique situation, which will just serve to create more problems.
From the very beginning there has been a cloud of questions hanging over this initiative. What would a designation mean for river communities? What benefits or drawbacks would this hold for those who live along the river? And if it is such a good deal for the communities, why have the supporters felt the need to meet in secret and misrepresent the views of those who oppose the AHRI? These questions have never been answered and I suspect that they will not be answered.
The American Heritage Rivers Initiative has been imposed from the top down from the very beginning. Well, I am here today to speak on behalf of the many counties, communities, citizens, and organizations who are represented by these letters and resolutions of non support. They send a loud and clear message that we are opposed to the Rio Grande being designated as an American Heritage River. Thank You. I would be pleased to answer any questions at this time.
STATEMENT OF HON. BARBARA CUBIN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WYOMING
Thank you Mr. Chairman for holding this important oversight hearing. Although there are many issues that I could speak to today, I want to concentrate on one that is on the minds of my constituents. That is the Clinton Administration's proposal to reform the 25 percent timber payments to counties.
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As far as I am concerned the proposal is merely an attempt of this Administration to conform to the extreme environmental agenda of the Sierra Club: to stop all logging in the lower 48 states!
For nearly 100 years Congress has honored its compact with people living in and around national forests. The compact calls for the Federal Government to share 25 percent of the gross receipts it generates from timber production on forest service lands. To counties which are heavily federalized, the compact also infers that the Federal lands will be managed to help drive the economic engines of rural communities.
Taking away the 25 percent fund and replacing it with this entitlement program may benefit some counties, but only for the short term. What we must do is look at the big picture. By adopting the entitlement program timber production would drop significantly, much more than we've seen in the past 12 years, saw mills would close, and those in my state that have depended on the timber would be out of work.
Through this proposal the Clinton Administration is asking Congress to walk away from that compact and to replace the existing relationship with an entitlement program which would be subject to the whims of the congressional appropriations committees.
Like I said before, this proposal is a precursor to ending Federal timber harvesting! Federal 25 percent and PILT payments are only a small fraction of the total economic impact generated through the sale of Federal timber.
Even if Congress fully funds this wrongheaded proposal, many communities will suffer irreparable damage due to the loss of the basic industries which are the core of the local economies in these communities.
Congress must not walk away from its compact with the school children of rural America! We must not turn our backs on rural communities that depend on timber production to put food on their tables and clothes on their backs!
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Again, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate you holding this hearing. I look forward to hearing from the witnesses.
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