OCR Text |
Show THE ZEPHYRNOVEMBER 1995 PAGE 14 will probably have been marked Subcommittee (with 7 members) and and Natural Resource. Committee (with 20 up and voted out ol the full Senate Energy bill awaits a float vote before the hill 100 The members) by the time this Is printed. much differently than the House, and it is more member Senate. The Senate operates can stop a bill from coming to difficult to bring legislation to the floor for a vote. Senators it comes to the floor. once bill the the floor by placing a hold- on it, or filibuster or kill it with a veto. The Asa final step, the President can either sign the bill Into law, testified it would recommend that President Clinton should Department of the Interior has Land The Canyon Country WATCHDOG M.-p- -nt -- By Scott Groene & Ken Rait veto. Bill Runs Into Trouble Utah Delegation's Wilder-LesThe Utah Senators' and Representatives' legislative attack on southern Utah's red rock wilderness has hit a road block. Well, maybe not a road block, but a least a large speed s bump. The delegation's legislation, The Utah Public Lands Management Act", denoted as H.R 1745, and S. 884, has little chance of becoming law unless the Utah politicians drop some of the extreme provisions written to appease rural county commissioners As this is written, it is likely the Senators will amend their bill to hostile to wilderness. drop language that allows new dams to be built in "wilderness" and prohibits BLM from closing ORV routes in "wilderness." Two Senate hearings already have been cancelled as the Utah Senators discover opposition. Thanks to the efforts of Skip Edwards, former Westwater River ranger, the delegation will probably also add acreage to the Westwater unit that was previously deleted to protect Grand County Commissioner Ray Pene's brother's mining claims. The latter addition reflects just one example of how the boundaries of S. 884H.R 1500 were carelessly drawn based on poor information provided by county commissioners hostile to wilderness. Even with these amendments, the bill would be devastating to southern Utah wilderness. On the House side. Representative Jim Hansen expected to rush the bill through before the congressional recess last August But now it is October, and still there has been no floor vote on H.R. 1745. Instead, Hansen is bogged down with problems created by the bill's land trade provision that would hand the State of Utah a sweetheart deaL The Congressional Budget Office would score this provision a budget buster, a result Hansen is now scrambling to avoid. After the Republicans gained control of the House and Senate in last November's election, the delegation assumed they could slide their "Utah Public Lands Management Act" through Congress like a greased pig carcass on an icy incline, no matter how much the majority of Utahns opposed it. The delegation was wrong. They got greedy with their zeal and wrote a bill so bad that grassroots activists across the country are their telling representatives to oppose S. 884H.R 1500. Newspapers from coast to coast have editorialized against the bill. Also, moderate Republicans are afraid of getting shackled to wacky positions, as the Republican party struggles to ward off the reputation as a collection of extremists. I lansen has already learned that it is difficult to transform his attacks on public lands into law. His bill to create a commission to close National Parks was voted down in the House. His offer to give BLM lands back to the States has been refused by the State of Utah. are not as full moon tilt crazy on the issue as The Utah Senators, while Hansen. Representative Waldholtz is struggling to cover her rear end with her Salt Lake City constituents. Cracks are no doubt forming in delegation's alliance. There is still a major fight ahead, and Utah Wilderness is definitely not safe. The bill is likely to pass in the House eventually, and the Senate vote will be tough. But citizen outrage can kill this bill anti-wilderne- ss Utah's Senators and Representatives Start to Fight Back. have started With H.R 1745 S. 884 in trouble, the Utah Senators and Representatives a collection for Bennett arranged a defensive propaganda campaign. In October, Senator Utahns want of Utah rural county commissioners to come to D.C. to convince congress that the who unknown costs). would S. 884 (it's paid bring the devastation H.R 1745 and Senator Hatch contacted rural papers to ask for letters to support the bilL Representative Hansen and Waldholtz sent each I louse member a letter to undermine the letters and calls the other representatives have received from their constituents back home. The Utah Representative's letter mentions the enormous amount of comment ILR 1745 received in Utah. They neglect to mention that the comment was overwhelmingly against ss the bill. , ,TrflWmW Unbelievable, but true. Our very own Scott Groene goes to Washington, posing as Wally Cleaver. ss ss Please Help Stop The Attack on Utah Wilderness You can help stop the Utah delegation's ugly attack on the Redrock by writing the Utah Senators and asking them to drop the nasty provisions in S.884. Other Republican Senators have expressed concern about the rotten bill (as well as Democrats). Please write Senators Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch and ask them to support amendments to S. 884 that would strip out the "hard release" language, the provisions that allow new development in wilderness, and that would add acreage to be protected as true wilderness. Both Senators can be reached at: The Honorable (full name) (the salutation is generally offered without regard to merit), United States Senate, Washington, D.G, 20510. The Delegation's Bill is Just Plain AwfuL The Public Lands Management Act," would doom 20 million acres of Utah BLM land, including 4 million acres of wilderness, with "hard release", AKA death penalty, language. "Hard release" prohibits the BLM from protecting "wilderness characteristics" of these areas. That means the BLM would be foreclosed from stopping ORV use, oil and gas drilling, and other development in order to protect roadless areas or opportunities for primitive recreation (or more realistically, would foreclose citizens from stopping the BLM from allowing ORV use, oil and gas drilling and other development). The bill purports to protect the remaining 1.8 million acres of Utah BLM land as "wilderness", but in fact allows ORV use, and the construction of dams, roads and transmission lines in these areas. Under the bill, these "wilderness" areas would receive less protection than plain old multiple use lands. The Delegation's road map for S.884H.R. 1745, the "Wilder-less- " bill: There are three steps required to turn a bill into law. It must pass in the House of Representatives, the Semite, and then be signed by the President. In the House, a bill generally is given a hearing in the relevant subcommittee (in this case, National Parks, Forests and Lands Subcommittee, chaired by Representative I lansen from Utah, and with 25 members) and then is "marked up." At the "mark up", amendments are offered on the bill. It then moves to the full committee (here, the Resources Committee, chaired by Alaskan Don Young, with 46 members) for another hearing and mark up. Then, generally the bill is referred to the Congressional Budget Office which evaluates the cost of the bill, committee reports are written, and it passes through the rules committee. That committee determines how the bill will be handled at the floor vote before the full 435 member House of Representatives. As this is written, 1LR 1745 has passed full committee and awaits action by the rules County Commissioners Shade the Truth in D.G When Utah rural commissioners came to D.C. to lobby for the "wilder-less- " bill, they a bound included book that be to booklet claims The misstatements, spiral dropped polite. that H.R 1500, America's Red rock Wilderness Act, which would protect 5.7 million acres of wilderness, threatens to close "500 miles" of class B roads in San Juan County alone. The document then claims this loss of class B roads would cost San Juan County $450,000 pier year in State money. The troth is there is not a single class B road included within the wilderness in HR 1500. A color map included in the booklet shows that areas of San Juan County would be made wilderness under H.R 1500 which are in fact not included in the bill But then the map also erroneously shows that a huge chunk of land east of Blending is owned by the State of Utah. At least the authors (who kept themselves anonymous) were consistently Unknown is the whether errors were made wrong deliberately, or whether the responsible officials are to unable read county simply maps. Jim Parken Cone, but Still Hating Wilderness. Jim Parker, as former Utah BLM state director, oversaw the agency when it seemed to tiy every trick to trash Utah wilderness. Representative Hansen and Waldholtz used Parker's quotes in a recent letter to other Congressional Representatives to show that the Utah citizen's proposal to protect 5.7 million acres of Utah wilderness was full of "hundreds of miles of roads" These "roads" are actually dubious RS. 2477 claims the counties have asserted for jeep routes and livestock trails (I'd love to see Mr. Parker try to drive those "roads). Mr. Parker's credibility on the issue can be measured against statements he made to a committee of the Utah State Legislature, where he said "when I'm asked why northern Utah has all the hazardous waste sites and southern Utah has all the wilderness, I reply that northern Utah had first choice." right-of-w- ay Custom and Culture Loses In Court. On September 1, 1995, Butch Jensen, a Price cattle rancher, pled guilty in U.S. District Court to one count of misuse of public lands and with lawful users of puiblic interfering lands, according to the Southern Utah News. Jensen admitted he placed sheep parts laced with the pesticide Carbofuran to lull predators on his public land grazing allotment near Arehcs National Park. An investigation into the poisoning began when a family camping on public land found their golden retriever dead. An investigator on the case told me that whenever he hears someone is missing a dog he assumes it has been poisoned in a similar fashion. A personal thanks to that individual for his persistence in this matter. Times Are Tough for Trees In tho wake of Praiden. Clinton', signature on a bill that allow, iho Foretf service to cxen.pt salvage Umber sale, tom environmental law. and citizen appeals, come, more U'ah Chalro" I ( Ihe N.1iZf pJSTSS. and fousesubcummltteo on lands, ust hired Anne I Iclssenbuttel, former director R.nB,and rarcr an industry bade greup, to nffic-handle forest matters for T? o A'ion. |