[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 38 (Tuesday, April 12, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 12, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                CALIFORNIA DESERT PROTECTION ACT OF 1993

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I think we are ready for third reading 
at this point.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The bill is open to further amendment. If 
there be no further amendment to be proposed, the question is on 
agreeing to the committee amendment in the nature of a substitute, as 
amended.
  The committee amendment in the nature of a substitute, as amended, 
was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on the engrossment and third 
reading of the bill.
  The bill was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading and was read 
the third time.


                           Order of Procedure

  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a vote on 
final passage of this bill occur at 10 a.m. tomorrow.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, there will be additional debate on the 
bill with Senator Reid finishing his statement. I appreciate his 
allowing me to interject. Also, Senator Byrd will have a statement.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, this was a unique place, Paiute Springs. You 
could throw a rock down in the gully where the trees were, and it would 
sound like an airplane taking off because there were so many birds.
  Well, I pictured in my mind all the time I was away going to school 
this paradise in the desert, Paiute Springs. I used to tell my wife 
about it. She did not really believe it, I think, because she had just 
been to Searchlight and saw what an arid, remote place that was. So 
after we had been married and I had been to school and we had a couple 
of children, I decided to return to the place of my youth, Paiute 
Springs, Fort Paiute.
  We traveled there with anticipation, my wife in a sense of nonbelief, 
I am sure. We came to Paiute Springs. Mr. President, it was not there 
anymore. All the rock walls had been taken down by people coming there 
to look at it, I guess. This wash, this stream was not like it used to 
be. The trees were down. It had just been destroyed.
  Mr. President, that is one reason, if not the primary reason, I have 
been concerned about the environmental degradation. This happened to 
Paiute Springs.
  In the Senate bill, the word ``Paiute'' was taken from the bill. That 
is the white area here. It is not in the bill. It is in the House bill. 
I hope in the conference it will be restored. I wish I were on the 
conference. I hope the conferees will capitulate and concede to the 
wishes of the House, because if there is any place in here that should 
be part of this national park, it should be Paiute Springs. It is a 
wonderful place of nature that needs to be protected. One of the things 
that I am disappointed in is that it is not in the bill.
  I am not going to dwell on Paiute Springs, Mr. President, other than 
repeat that it should be in the final version of this bill. This whole 
area is wonderful. The New York Mountains--I can picture in my mind's 
eye the New York Mountains. I could see them from where I was raised. I 
could see it when they were called the New York Mountains because you 
look out there and it looks like the Empire State Building, a beautiful 
place maybe 9 or 10 miles from where I was born. That is what the New 
York Mountains are all about. It is a picturesque place.
  I have heard a lot of talk on this bill about hunting. There is 
nothing to hunt. You could shoot a jack rabbit, you could shoot a 
cottontail in some of the areas near Paiute Springs where the water 
gathers there. There will be some dove and some quail. But the desert 
is, generally speaking, quite a sparsely populated area for animals. 
There are no deer. I have never seen a deer. All the time I have been 
in Nevada I have never seen a deer in this part of the State.
  There are mountain sheep, but I have never seen one. I have never 
seen one. I have been in these hills a lot.
  All the time I have been in Nevada I have seen one wildcat even 
though they are there. But they are stealthy. You just do not see much 
of them.
  We do not need to dwell on the hunting. There are lots of other 
places in Nevada to hunt. In Nevada we have over a dozen wilderness 
areas. California has lots of places to hunt. This arid area need not 
be hunted.
  So I would say that I am very grateful to the Senator from 
California, Senator Feinstein, for the tremendous work that she has 
done on this legislation. The people of the State of California should 
recognize even though we are spending a few hours of debate on this 
bill what a remarkable job she has done. She has been in the Senate not 
even 2 years. On a comparable bill in Nevada I spent 5 years trying to 
get that passed to get a national park created and my wilderness areas 
created.
  She has done remarkable work and is to be commended. The people of 
the State of California--if the Senator never does another thing 
legislatively in this body, she should be forever patted on the back. 
Forever she will always be remembered for this legislation. What she 
has done is exciting.
  Mr. President, I have been to Yellowstone and to the national parks 
around the country. I am ill at ease, frankly, near pine trees and lots 
of water and green things. But here, this is home. This is where a 
national park should be. I would compare the beauty of this area to 
Yellowstone, to Yosemite, to the Grand Canyon. There is no place on the 
Earth that has better scenery than this. To walk out as a little boy--
we would go into where the legislation of the Senator from California 
created this park. We would go out with my brother, who was a mining 
engineer, and ``geos.'' We would walk, break open these rocks, these 
volcanic rocks and these beautiful crystalline formations. Now you pay 
for one of those hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. For us, they 
were just there.
  This area is as unique as any place in the world. People that think 
the desert is ugly because there is not a lot of wildlife or a lot of 
greenery do not appreciate nature.
  I recognize I am bragging about California, but I really claim this 
as being part of Nevada anyway.
  Mr. President, we talk about endangered species. Here is how it goes: 
Hawaii, Florida, and Nevada. We have the third largest number of 
endangered species any place in the United States even though we do not 
have a lot of rivers and lakes and grass.
  So this bill is a compromise, and I recognize that. I hope, I repeat, 
that in the Lanfair Valley area, except for the private holdings, that 
we can at least look closely at Paiute Springs.
  This is a compromise, and I understand that. I again compliment the 
Senator, who is in the Chamber, Senator Feinstein, and Senator Boxer, 
for their work on this.
  This bill, as has been indicated, has management for 6.3 million 
acres of Federal land in southern California. Only 6.3 percent of this 
acreage is not Federal land. There has been a great deal of talk about 
alleviating the problems that we anticipate with the non-Federal lands. 
This protects important historical and cultural sites. I have only 
mentioned a few. It protects an environmentally sensitive land. There 
is no land more environmentally sensitive than this arid desert. If you 
drive a vehicle across some of this land, the tracks can be seen 
decades from the time you first drove the vehicle across it. With Las 
Vegas now having over a million people, they flock to areas like this, 
and these areas need protection.
  Under this bill, there is a provision for multiple use of the Mojave 
Desert, and that is the way it should be. Under this bill, no currently 
maintained roads used for touring and sightseeing will be closed. One 
of the bugaboos people talk about is: Do not do this; you are going to 
close a lot of roads. I repeat, no currently maintained roads used for 
touring or sightseeing will be closed.
  Some 30,000 miles of paved and dirt roads will remain open for use. 
Ten million acres of Federal public land will remain open as BLM 
wilderness under this act. Grazing will continue for 25 years. Off-road 
vehicle use will be allowed in 14 of the wilderness areas. It ensures 
the military continued access to California desert lands. Tourism and 
business opportunities will be created, Mr. President.
  When I was working so hard on my Forest Service wilderness in Nevada, 
we came to the realization that an elk hunter coming to Nevada spends 
an average of $3,500 in Nevada. This legislation is going to do a lot 
for economic development for the State of California, and also for the 
State of Nevada. Why? Because, as we have learned from the Great Basin 
National Park, which was the last national park created before this 
legislation came into effect, it does a lot for economic development. 
It puts a new area on the map of our National Park System. We have a 
group of people who travel every year to the national parks. This will 
be placed on the map, and there will be people coming, just like they 
come to the Great Basin National Park in Nevada.
  It allows for continued development of modern mining operations in 
the California and Nevada deserts, employing hundreds and hundreds of 
people. I appreciate some difficult negotiations that I had with 
Senator Cranston, and thereafter with Senator Feinstein. But I think 
the negotiations paid off in making this a better bill. This bill 
helped create one of the world's--I would not say one of them; I would 
say the world's--foremost environmentally sensitive mining operation, 
the Viceroy Gold Castle Mountain project. The Senator from California 
is assured that she can look the world over and she will not find a 
more environmentally sensitive mining operation than Viceroy Gold. 
Viceroy has spent tens of millions of dollars in developing and 
implementing its environmental programs.
  For example, Mr. President--and this again is an area where this mine 
headquarters is located, where the main mine is--there is an old mine 
that my dad pointed out to me years ago called The Big Chief. The Big 
Chief has now been taken because that is where some of the rich ore 
was, and you cannot find where it was anymore because they have done a 
pit operation. But they have done wonderful work here. They have done a 
weed vegetation program. As soon as the mining process started, the 
trees that they pulled up so they could do their mining, they had to 
move and keep alive, and they have replanted them. You could go to the 
desert right through here, and you will find hundreds and hundreds of 
Joshua and Yucca trees that have been replanted. The purpose of that is 
when they complete the mining operation, they move the trees back.
  Additionally, the heat bleach process is one of the rare areas in any 
of these mining properties in Nevada and the West that does not create 
ponds that might otherwise be harmful to migratory birds. They are 
covered. This mining operation is truly an example other companies 
should follow.
  Mr. President, one of the things this mining company did is, right 
over the California border in Nevada, 7 miles from where I was born, is 
the famous ``Rex Bell/Clara Bow Ranch.'' Clara Bow, whom most everybody 
in this Chamber will know, is the most famous movie actress of all 
time, in the sense that she received more fan mail than anybody in the 
history of movies. Even though there were far less people in the 1920's 
and early 1930's, she received more fan mail than any of them, whoever 
the big stars are today. She wanted to get away from the movie business 
and she wanted to find a paradise, and she found it in Nevada, in the 
middle of a Joshua forest.
  What the mining company has done is purchased that mine, the whole 
area, and they have restored that unique ranch to the way it was when 
Rex Bell and Clara Bow built it in the early 1930's. I invite my friend 
from California to come there sometime and see the product of her work. 
This would not have happened had it not been for this legislation. At 
nighttime on this beautiful ranch, you would think you were in the 
middle of a pine forest. This is part of the most densely populated 
Joshua forest in the world. At nighttime, you cannot tell what these 
trees are. It is unique and beautiful. It has been restored to the way 
it was by the mining company. It is on the historical register. They 
also use it for the headquarters of the mining operation, where they 
have the corporate board meetings and things of that nature.
  So, I repeat, the Viceroy Gold Castle Mountain project is truly an 
example for other companies to follow. The company developed these 
procedures anticipating that this California Desert Protection Act 
would pass--and it will, within the foreseeable future.
  Finally, this bill has focused our attention on the fact that the 
desert is a fragile and diverse environment. I repeat, the beauty of 
the desert is not surpassed by anyplace in the world. The vistas are 
breathtaking. The desert is truly a land of many uses--conservation, 
natural resource development, and recreation. It accommodates multiple 
uses of the California desert, while protecting this desert for 
generations to come.
  There are other pieces of legislation that I have been interested in, 
but there are no pieces of legislation that I feel more strongly about 
than protecting this desert that is next door to my home.
  I repeat here for the third time on this Senate floor how grateful I 
am to the Senator from California for the back-breaking work that she 
has gone through to make this legislation become a reality. The people 
of the State of California and the people of Nevada will not be able to 
repay the legislative genius of being able to get this bill through the 
Senate and out of conference in the House, as I know it will come.
  Mr. MITCHELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kerry). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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