[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 37 (Monday, April 11, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 11, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                CALIFORNIA DESERT PROTECTION ACT OF 1993


                           Motion to Proceed

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
now proceed to the consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 21, 
which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to consideration of Calendar 248, S. 21, 
     a bill to designate certain lands in the California desert as 
     wilderness, to establish Death Valley, Joshua Tree, and 
     Mojave National Parks, and for other purposes.

  The Senate proceeded to consider the motion to proceed.
  Mr. WALLOP addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Dorgan). The Chair recognizes the Senator 
from Wyoming.
  Mr. WALLOP. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, the majority leader, for reasons best known to 
himself, has already framed this debate as another Republican 
filibuster. I have no idea where he received his information or how he 
arrived at such a conclusion. Obviously, they do not either, because 
there have now been inquiries as to whether or not we could vitiate the 
vote. I never asked for a vote and, as far as this Senator is 
concerned, there is no reason not to vitiate it, because there never 
was a threat of a filibuster. I am unaware of any Senator on this side 
who was intending to filibuster the motion to proceed.
  It is true that I had a hold on the bill. I did so only to ensure 
that I and other Members on this side of the aisle had some 
notification and time to prepare their respective amendments and to 
make certain that we all knew what other amendments may be offered. Had 
I been afforded the courtesy of an inquiry as to my intentions, I would 
have been more than pleased to respond and would have explained that, 
while I have concerns about the legislation--and they are genuine--it 
is not my intention to filibuster this bill.
  It is, however, Mr. President, my intention to amend it and to not 
agree to any time limitations until we know the universe of amendments 
about to be placed on the bill. That is fairly standard practice. The 
supposition that protecting the rights of Members as well as our 
committee rights constitutes a filibuster is dead wrong.
  Mr. President, the debate on the status of the lands in the 
California Desert has been with the Committee on Energy and Natural 
Resources for many years.
  Clearly, the Senate elections in California redefined and, to some 
degree, clarified the debate on this contentious issue. Conventional 
wisdom and agreeable custom would suggest that because the two Senators 
from California now agree on this legislation, the rest of us should 
simply pass the bill and go on about other matters.
  We have long, and I have long, respected the prerogatives of two 
Senators from a State that have the predominant control over public 
land matters within their State. And this is a tradition that should, 
by all means, carry great weight in this body. After all, those 
Senators are accountable to the people who are most affected by 
``our,'' as is often the want of the people elsewhere to say, public 
lands decisions, and their opinions are important.
  But, Mr. President, it is also prudent, before we approve any public 
lands legislation, to ask ourselves two equally important questions. 
First, does this legislation have a significant impact on areas outside 
the State of California and, if so, what are they and what are the 
views of the Senators from those States?
  Second, does the legislation set important precedents that will 
influence subsequent legislation in other States?
  If the answer to either of these questions is yes, then the Senate is 
entitled to, indeed obligated to, decide independently whether the 
threat to those lands, in this case the California Desert, is so great 
that we should proceed anyway or if we should amend the legislation in 
order to minimize the significant impacts on areas outside the State of 
California.
  Mr. President, let me first say that any objective study of this 
issue would reveal that the Park System, the National Park System, the 
Park System that is the envy of the world, the Park System to which all 
Senators from every State pay great and legitimate attention, that Park 
System will suffer, and suffer greatly should this legislation be 
enacted. The impact of S. 21 on the integrity of the National Park 
System is, make no mistake, substantial.
  Systemwide, throughout the National Park System, the Park Service has 
been deferring maintenance for so long that now entire road, sewage, 
and water systems in many of our parks need to be replaced. The cost, 
Mr. President, just to bring the road system in Yellowstone National 
Park up to standard--not improve the roads, not improve their carrying 
capacity, just to bring them back--is over $300 million.
  The General Accounting Office has adequately documented the state of 
the park employee housing in more than one report. In short, Mr. 
President, through the actions of Congress and the lack of care, we 
have become slum landlords to the employees of the National Park 
System.
  I would say to the Senate that our priorities are in disarray. I 
cannot fathom how we can imagine adding a new park of this magnitude to 
the system when, in the Senator's own State, we still have a ranger 
living in a cargo container in the Channel Islands National Park and 
who, when he comes to Santa Barbara, cannot afford to live there, and 
lives in the back of his car.
  We have substandard housing in every single national park in America 
where housing is provided.
  If Congress were to make a wise choice today and demand that there 
would be no new additions to the Park System until housing was repaired 
and replaced and the maintenance backlog was adequately addressed, it 
would be literally decades, with expenditures in the billions of 
dollars, before we would consider adding even one additional unit to 
the System.
  Most Americans are very proud of the National Park System. They love 
it and they visit it and they utilize it and they bring friends from 
abroad to it. But most Americans do not really know what it consists of 
and do not really know the state of disrepair into which we have 
allowed it to lapse.
  Today, it is composed of 367 areas, encompassing more than 80 million 
acres in 49 States, the District of Columbia, the islands of Guam, 
Saipan, American Samoa, and the Virgin Islands.
  Mr. President, today I will speak to two of the amendments which I 
intend to offer tomorrow or at some such time as it becomes 
appropriate. One of the amendments will direct the Bureau of Land 
Management to continue to manage the East Mojave as a national 
monument. This is not without precedent. It is within the budget 
already of the Bureau of Land Management.
  My second amendment will provide for the continuation of law 
enforcement activities in a critical area along the United States-
Mexico border.
  Our Government has already spent over $8 million and thousands and 
thousands of manhours developing a comprehensive desert management 
plan, which was composed of the thought processes of environmentalists 
in the Bureau of Land Management and others in the State of California. 
The plan won rave reviews just 12 years ago when it passed, when it was 
put into place and implemented. The plan is in place today and working 
well under the direction of the Bureau of Land Management and its 
multiple-use program.
  Unfortunately, a very small, but very vocal, group of individuals has 
alleged that the BLM has mismanaged the desert. Nothing could be 
further from the truth.
  There is a double standard of the worst sort in play by these groups. 
When resource damage is found on BLM lands is characterized as bad 
management. When the same sort of resource damage occurs in a unit of 
the National Park Service it is excused as lack of funds.
  The sponsor of this legislation, my friend, Senator Feinstein, from 
California, was kind enough to share several lovely photographs of the 
California desert with me. These photographs of areas currently managed 
by the Bureau of Land Management only reinforce my belief that the men 
and women working for the BLM are doing an excellent job in the area of 
resource management. The photographs offer compelling evidence that a 
change in management is not required to protect the California Desert.
  The BLM is and can continue to be perfectly capable of operating the 
East Mojave Scenic Area as a national monument.
  One of my amendments will address this very issue. The bill as 
currently drafted would direct the National Park Service to manage the 
East Mojave Scenic Area as a national park.
  S. 21 creates the Mojave National Park and expands the boundaries of 
Death Valley National Monument and Joshua Tree National Monument. Hear 
these words: ``It increases the National Park System by approximately 4 
million acres.''
  Put in simple terms, this is the equivalent of adding two new 
Yellowstone National Parks to the System. And we will pay for it by 
taking something away from each of the other 367 units of the National 
Park System.
  Somewhere along the line every park in every Senator's State is going 
to suffer because of a diminished amount of resource available to it, 
if we put these into the National Park System.
  Mr. President, the only way to operate the proposed Mojave National 
Park is to take something away from existing parks. Prior to last 
summer--and mark my words, we will hear it again this summer--we all 
had the opportunity to read newspaper reports and editorials and to 
view television programs which explained that visitors centers in our 
parks would be opening later and closing earlier. Certain trails, 
campgrounds, and other facilities would be closed to park visitors. 
Interpretive programs would be curtailed and several vital and needed 
maintenance projects would be deferred as cost-savings measures.
  Simply put, the National Park Service and system is out of money. 
There cannot be a clearer statement of what is going on than that. And 
those who have looked at the budget and voted on it and other things, 
would be wise to note that there is no new source of revenue to pay for 
the costs of managing, maintaining, developing, or purchasing lands 
within the proposed new Mojave National Park. Our colleagues on the 
Interior Appropriations, for example, including the distinguished 
chairman of this committee, increased the operations account to the 
National Park Service for fiscal year 1994 by 9 percent above the 1993 
level in an effort to improve conditions of the existing parks. 
However, park personnel know that even that is not enough for them to 
keep up with just the recent increases in pay and retirement costs for 
employees, or to make up for the across-the-board decreases, 
maintenance deferrals, and cutbacks in seasonal personnel. It will not 
take care of pay increases and retirement costs. So the Park System is 
declining and we in the Congress continue, annually, for whatever 
reasons, without a thought, to continue to add to the decline of the 
National Park System.
  While all of us are saying what a wonderful thing--everybody pays lip 
service to it. Senators ask to have parks put in in the last days of a 
session so they can assure their reelection. All of us think the 
National Park Service and the National Park System is something worthy 
of America. But we do not pay for it. We do not buy the land from 
Americans. We are allowing the infrastructure to degrade. We are 
executing takings. And we are allowing the condition of these parks to 
degrade significantly.
  Funds that have been appropriated, including that 9 percent increase, 
have had to be absorbed from existing areas to finance the 27 new areas 
that the Congress added to the system during the last 5 congressional 
sessions. Think of it, 27 new areas in the last 5 sessions, without any 
increase in personnel, or operating funds.
  Within the National Park Service, under the Clinton administration, 
an estimated 3,700 positions will be eliminated over the next 5 years. 
So, not only are we in this instance asking to add a park the size of 
two new Yellowstones, but we are doing it in the face of knowing that 
there are 3,700 personnel fewer going to be in the System when it is 
over. It is not responsible, especially when this park area, this so-
called area of consideration, has been, is now in the management of the 
Bureau of Land Management, under a desert management plan that, just a 
few years ago, was being widely praised as the model of management and 
the model of an arrangement between the environmental community and the 
operating community.

  In addition, this summer in each of our States we will witness 
additional facility closures, elimination of additional interpretive 
and visitor service programs, maintenance projects will be deferred 
within the existing parks. Hundreds of temporary and seasonal personnel 
will not be hired this summer--all to the detriment of park visitors.
  All of this will occur before we add the Mojave to the already ever-
burdened System. Remember, the budget targets are set for the next 5 
years. There is no possibility to keep up with existing obligations, 
let alone fund this massive proposal.
  There are 20 national park units within the State of California with 
22,192 acres of authorized but unacquired lands--22,000 acres of 
private citizens' lands that has been authorized by Congress to be 
national parks but which this Congress and the preceding ones will not 
pay those Americans for. We execute takings in this Congress with the 
blithe supposition that, somehow or another, nobody will notice. And, 
after all, if it is for a national park we ought to be able to take it 
out of the hides of Americans. They ought to be grateful to have it 
stolen from them--because that is what we have done. So you have 22,000 
acres now in the State of California--let alone the hundreds of 
thousands of acres that exist around the rest of America--that belong 
to private American citizens which this Congress will not pay for. And 
the preceding Congresses have not paid for.
  Estimates vary, but land acquisition for Santa Monica Mountains 
National Recreation Area, alone, has been estimated at $500 million and 
is climbing everyday.
  To put this in national perspective, Congress appropriates between 
$80 to $100 million a year for land acquisition throughout the entire 
National Park System to deal with a backlog of unacquired lands which 
is in the multiple billions of dollars. Some of us have been using the 
figure of $2 billion since I came here.
  We have added substantial acreage since that time, and the cost of 
land has not declined in that time. So the figure has to be well in 
excess of $5 billion, and it is so much that the National Park Service, 
despite the law, refuses to provide the information to the Senate.
  Mr. President, in addition to this park, Congress has directed that 
the Presidio in San Francisco will become a national park when the 
Sixth Army turns it over to the National Park Service to operate. The 
operation budget there will be an additional $60 million. Just 
operations; not to bring it up. You saw the television program the 
other day showing that it was going to cost hundreds of millions of 
dollars to bring the infrastructure back up to standard. But $60 
million a year to operate that park; 60 million bucks. That is more 
than it costs us to operate Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, Great 
Smokeys, Blue Ridge--all of these parks together--for the one little 
one at the Presidio. Now you are talking about putting in a national 
park that is approximately the size of two Yellowstones to a system 
that is overburdened and unable to live with the obligations that 
Congress continually thrusts upon it.
  In addition to that, additional legislation introduced by Members of 
the California delegation before this Congress includes the Bodie Bowl 
Protection Act for 6,000 new acres; another 40,000 acres at Point Reyes 
National Seashore, and God only knows the cost of those two 
acquisitions or where that money will come from.
  I do not know how to gain the attention of the Senate or the 
Congress, but we desperately need to deal with this reality. There is 
no money for this proposal without taking it from existing parks in 
other States, including the State of California.
  So my first amendment would leave the management of the Mojave area 
under the Bureau of Land Management as it is now. It would create a 
national monument, a land status similar to Death Valley National 
Monument, before we will have changed it to a national park under this 
legislation.
  This is not about not protecting the desert. The desert is today 
protected, and we can enhance and add to that protection. But we do not 
have to do it at the cost of the degradation of the National Park 
Service. That is what the choice is going to be for Senators.
  The only difference when you visit Death Valley National Park after 
this legislation is enacted versus Death Valley National Monument 
before it was enacted is that you will see the men and women dressed in 
gray and green uniforms, if there are any of them left; while on the 
Mojave National Monument, the men and women would be wearing brown and 
tan uniforms. I am serious. That is going to be the distinction. We 
have the ability to write in protections if we do not feel they are 
adequate, but we do not have any sense of responsibility if we add this 
to the National Park System.
  By amending the legislation and leaving the Mojave under the 
management of the Bureau of Land Management, we would be helping to 
maintain the integrity of the National Park System rather than 
participating in its eventual destruction.
  In so doing, we would also enhance the integrity of the Bureau of 
Land Management by allowing them to manage a national monument just as 
we did with the Forest Service when we and this Congress established 
the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. Nobody has suggested 
that the Forest Service has badly managed that. Nobody, to date, has 
suggested that the Bureau of Land Management is incapable of managing a 
national monument.
  For a moment, let me address one other issue that I will attempt to 
repair by amendment tomorrow, and that concerns the designation of 
Jacumba Coyote Mountains and Fish Creek Mountains as wilderness areas.
  These are three areas of the California Desert where illegal 
immigration and drug activities abound. The Senator from California is 
expected to offer an amendment which would allow law enforcement 
agencies to have aerial or motor vehicle access to these three 
wilderness areas in hot pursuit, in search and rescue operations, or 
other emergency response situations. However, all of these responses 
must be in accordance with the provisions of the Wilderness Act, which 
prohibits them.
  The Wilderness Act states, in part--let me quote it:

       There shall be no permanent road within any wilderness area 
     designated by this act and, except as necessary to meet 
     minimum requirements for the administration of the area for 
     the purposes of this act, including measures required in 
     emergencies involving the health and safety of the persons 
     within the area, there shall be no temporary road, no use of 
     motor vehicles, motorized equipment, motor boats, no landing 
     of aircraft, no other form of mechanical transport, and no 
     structure or installation within any such area.

  Mr. President, the provisions of the Wilderness Act are specific and 
clear. There is no motor vehicle access. Even a helicopter will never 
land on wilderness except in emergency situations. The Senate will have 
a clear choice: Either we are serious about turning the tide of illegal 
immigration and stemming the flow of illegal drugs into this country 
out of Mexico or we are not serious. We cannot play games by 
authorizing things in accordance with the provisions of the Wilderness 
Act which the Wilderness Act prohibits. That is a game the public may 
listen to for the moment, but not for long.
  These three areas represent a major sieve through which illegal 
immigration and drug transportation flow, and it is not always the case 
of hot pursuit, search and rescue, or other emergency responses. It is 
a 24-hour-a-day presence by various law enforcement personnel, Federal 
and State. It is an area of major, ongoing activity 24 hours a day. In 
addition to the regular patrol through these areas, there exists 
various on-the-ground sensor units, and other detection devices which 
require continued maintenance, rehabilitation, and upgrading, and which 
would not be permitted to be there anyway if they are made wilderness.
  This is a unique area along the border, and it requires the full time 
and attention of law enforcement officials. It requires more than hot 
pursuit limitation. The amendment which I will offer tomorrow will 
leave the areas as wilderness, but it allows for ongoing law 
enforcement activities to continue uninterrupted.
  Let me say again, this is not a quarrel between the California 
Senators and me about protecting the desert. I assure the Senators of 
that. It is a quarrel about protecting the National Park System and the 
National Park Service, and it is a quarrel about the integrity of the 
law enforcement activities for illegal immigration and drugs that are 
coming into this country.
  It is not my intent to stand in the way and stop this bill, but it is 
my intent to try in every way I know to defend the National Park 
Service from the Congress, which continues to pile obligations on it 
without in any way intending to provide them with resources to deal 
with those obligations.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. JOHNSTON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from 
Louisiana.

                          ____________________