Senate Approves Omnibus Again,
Setting Up House Test
Price, UT (3/20/2009)
- After months of bouncing back and forth between
the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives,
the Omnibus Public Lands Act of 2009 is tied up
in the House and ready to be booted on to President
Obama's desk for his signature.
The Senate was near approval at press time of
an omnibus lands bill (S 22) that is, in turn,
expected to induce the House to approve the measure.
The Senate attached S 22 to a bill (S 146) to
protect Revolutionary War and War of 1812 battlefields.
The House had rejected a previous version of S
22 March 11 in a 282-to-144 vote, or a couple
of votes short of the margin needed to pass under
the procedure the House was using to consider
the bill.
The Senate made one important change to S 22 designed
to garner more House support: It made clear the
bill would not hinder hunting, fishing or other
recreational activities on public lands.
Said Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman
(D-N.M.), "I understand that some members
in the House of Representatives expressed concern
that the portion of the bill pertaining to Wild
and Scenic Rivers and National Trails and National
Heritage Areas might somehow be construed to limit
access for authorized hunting, fishing, and trapping
activities."
So the Senate adopted this language, "Nothing
in this title shall be construed as affecting
access for recreational activities otherwise allowed
by law or regulation, including hunting, fishing,
or trapping."
Under a Senate floor arrangement Majority Leader
Harry Reid (D-Nev.) allowed chief bill critic
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) to offer six amendments.
None are expected to pass. Coburn sought to:
* Prohibit the use of eminent domain to acquire
land.
* Require an annual report detailing total size
and cost of federal property.
* Remove provisions restricting renewable energy
development on public lands.
* Bar new construction in general.
* Eliminate criminal penalties "for taking
stones that may contain insignificant fossils."
* Strike out "frivolous waste" in the
bill (five bills.)
Once the Senate finishes S 22, as attached to
S 146, it will go back to the House where it is
expected to be addressed either under expedited
procedures or under regular procedures where only
a simple majority would be needed.
Either way, bill opponent John J. Duncan (R-Tenn.)
said he expects S 22 to pass eventually. "All
this (March 11 vote) really means is that it will
now be taken up under regular order, where it
should have been in the first place and which
requires only a majority vote," he said.
"Thus there is no question this bill will
pass the next time it's taken up."
Some supporters are optimistic. "The bill
is likely to come up again in the House and we
expect it to be enacted into law this year,"
said The Wilderness Society.
Bingaman, the lead sponsor of S 22, laid out this
strategy on the Senate floor: "In an effort
to facilitate consideration of this package of
bills in the other body, it is my hope that we
will be able to attach the omnibus lands package
to another bill that has already passed the House
of Representatives and send it back where, hopefully,
it can be quickly approved."
But some Republican critics, even though they
lost a key filibuster vote by a margin of 73-to-21,
hammered at the bill for withdrawing key energy
resources from development. Coburn focused on
a statement from Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid (D-Nev.) that S 22 was a "noncontroversial"
bill.
Said Coburn, "We are going to have on the
floor what the majority leader calls a 'noncontroversial'
bill; a noncontroversial bill, in that we are
going to take 3 million acres and deem it untouchable
for further energy for this country; noncontroversial
in that we are going to spend - in mandatory spending
yearly from now on out - $900 million a year on
things you will never see the benefit of; noncontroversial
in terms of taking specific areas with known,
proven oil and gas reserves - to the tune of 300
million barrels of oil and 13 trillion cubic feet
of natural gas. Yet it is noncontroversial."
But Coburn's fellow Republican, ranking minority
Senate Energy Committee member Lisa Murkowski
(Alaska), took issue with him on the impact of
the bill on energy development. First, she said,
"In fact, the Department of the Interior
and the U.S. Forest Service have certified in
testimony, in response to questions, that none
of the wilderness proposed in this legislation
will negatively impact on the
availability of oil, gas, or national energy corridors."
Then she addressed a key provision of the bill
that would authorize non-federal interests to
buy out oil and gas leases on 1.2 million acres
of the Wyoming Range of the Bridger-Teton National
Forest in Wyoming. She said the provision "is
fully supported by their State delegation and
their Governor."
Despite the new Senate strategy, some senators
and House members who had sponsored some of the
161 individual bills in the omnibus measure were
looking to move their bills by themselves. For
instance, Sens. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and James
E. Risch (R-Idaho) intend to move an Owyhee lands
bill that would designate 517,000 acres of BLM-managed
wilderness.
"Despite falling just two votes short in
the House, we will continue to press ahead with
efforts to pass the Owyhee Initiative legislation,"
Crapo said. "The process of collaboration
is succeeding in solving long-standing issues
in Idaho and that process is too important to
be cut short by one vote in the U.S. Congress."
The House took up S 22 the first time March 11
under a Suspension of the Rules procedure that
required a three-fifths majority to pass. The
Senate had first passed the bill January 15. Senate
leaders told the House it had to pass S 22 without
modification, further limiting flexibility in
the House.
House critics of S 22, particularly western Republicans,
objected
most vociferously to a provision that would certify
a 27 million-acre
National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS)
managed by BLM.
But Rep. Rep. Ra£l M Grijalva (Ariz.), chairman
of the House subcommittee on National Parks, Forests
and Public Lands, defended the provision. "I
am particularly proud of the inclusion of my legislation,
the National Landscape Conservation System within
the Bureau of Land Management," he said.
In approving S 22 the first time the Senate clarified
that all conservation areas within the California
Desert Conservation Area (CDCA) would be considered
part of the NLCS. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)
had said last year she would offer an amendment
to ensure the entire 10 million-acre CDCA was
in the system.
The bill language says that the NLCS includes
"Any area designated by Congress to be administered
for conservation purposes, including public land
within the California Desert Conservation Area
administered by BLM for conservation purposes."
According to BLM the NLCS contains 27 million
acres, including 4.8 million acres of national
monuments, 14 million areas of conservation areas,
1.4 million acres of "similar designations,"
7.7 million acres of wilderness areas, 13.8 million
acres of wilderness study areas, and one million
acres of wild and scenic rivers.
The omnibus bill is opposed by a wide range of
interests, beginning with western House Republicans
and including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, private
property rights advocates, powered recreation
advocates, and conservative think tanks.
The Senate Energy Committee developed the omnibus
lands package based on committee-passed bills.
Not all committee-passed bills made the cut because
both Democratic and Republican committee leaders
enjoyed a veto. The idea was to produce a bill
that provides something for everyone on both sides
of the aisle. Bingaman said Republicans and Democrats
sponsored almost equal numbers of bills in the
package.
In addition to the NLCS measure, S 22 contains
these initiatives:
* WYOMING RANGE: the bill from Sen. John Barrasso
(R-Wyo.) would
authorize non-federal interests to buy out oil
and gas leases on 1.2 million acres of the Wyoming
Range of the Bridger-Teton National Forest.
* OWYHEE LANDS (IDAHO): the bill from Sen. Crapo
would designate 517,000 acres of BLM-managed wilderness.
An alliance of retired BLM employees, the Public
Lands Foundation, objects to the bill and says
that before designating wilderness sponsors should
work with BLM to identify precise boundaries.
* WILDERNESS (NINE OTHER BILLS): several individual
wilderness bills would protect up to 2 million
acres, including: Wild Monongahela Wilderness
(West Va.), Virginia Ridge and Valley Wilderness
(Va.), Mt. Hood Wilderness (Ore.), Copper Salmon
Wilderness (Ore.), Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument
(Ore.), Owyhee (Idaho), Sabinoso Wilderness (N.M.),
Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore Wilderness (Mich.),
Oregon Badlands Wilderness (Ore.), Spring Basin
Wilderness (Ore.), Eastern Sierra and Northern
San Gabriel Wilderness (Calif.), Riverside County
Wilderness (Calif.), Sequoia and Kings Canyon
National Parks Wilderness (Calif.), and Rocky
Mountain National Park Wilderness (Colo.)
* OTHER MEASURES: individual bills that would
designate three new National Park System units,
authorize additions to nine existing National
Park System units; authorize by our count a dozen
land exchanges and conveyances; designate four
national trails; authorize studies of additions
to four National Historic Trails (all in the West:
Oregon National Historic Trail, Pony Express National
Historic Trail, California National Historic Trail,
and The Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail);
add three wild and scenic rivers including the
Snake River Headwaters in Wyoming; and designate
a Snowy River Cave National Conservation Area
of about 3.5 miles of cave passages in Lincoln
County, N.M.
Brian Hawthorne
BlueRibbon Coalition
brbrian@sharetrails.org
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