[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 186 (Monday, November 20, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S17505-S17506]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              IMPROVING THE MANAGEMENT OF THE PUBLIC LANDS

  Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, I rise today to address an issue that has 
been highly controversial in the State of Montana, and throughout the 
West, for that matter. As we speak, there has been a campaign of 
disinformation aimed at confusing and scaring residents of Montana into 
believing that we in Congress are about to sell or give away all of the 
public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management and sell those 
lands to big corporations and, of course, to the rich. Of course, 
nothing could be further from the truth.
  I want to take this opportunity to clear the air on some 
misapprehensions about the issue and where we stand on it, or where I 
stand. First, let me say I do believe we have to make some changes in 
the management of public lands because of all the conflict and the 
controversy that surrounds them. The real issue here is letting local 
citizens have an effective voice in the management of those lands which 
have such a direct and important bearing on their lives and their 
livelihood.
  I have cosponsored S. 1031. It was drafted by my good friend, Senator 
Thomas, of Wyoming. That bill, if passed, will provide the opportunity 
to transfer public lands now managed by the Bureau of Land Management, 
a Federal agency, to those States which wish to have them. This has 
been proposed by State and local governments, among others, for some 
time.
  The States believe that being closer to the land, they are more 
capable of managing those lands for the public than ones who were, say, 
from a State that has no large concentration of public lands or even us 
here in Washington, DC. And that is probably true. I believe it is time 
to take a serious look at the alternatives and to decide whether it is 
an option we want to use in some situations.

  As I said, I think some changes should be made in this bill before 
final passage. But, nonetheless, I want to give the States and their 
citizens an opportunity to make a decision about local control 
themselves. Through the public hearing process and committee and floor 
debates and amendments, we can decide if, and how, we use this concept 
to better serve the public's needs.
  We face many problems in the management of public land resources 
today and all those natural resources found on those lands. We have a 
host of laws which have been developed over more than a century. In 
many cases they conflict. They are often interpreted differently by 
agencies responsible for implementing them, so they have different 
requirements for complying with the law. The result for the average 
citizens trying to use these lands is conflict, confusion and, of 
course, frustration. Just like the Federal regulatory process in 
general, the public land regulations are, in a sense, a mess. Of 
course, we have to start this process of reforming them.
  We had testimony from the head ranger of the Forest Service. He tells 
us, just about the time they try to make a decision with regard to 
natural resources found on those lands--we have a lot of laws, and when 
they get down to the small end of the funnel to where the decision 
could be made, all at once they are in conflict and therefore no 
decision is made. Therefore, the inefficiency of running these lands 
comes to the forefront.
  To illustrate what I mean, I have made up these charts. The first 
shows the BLM permitting process. Those would be those permits required 
by Federal agencies under law now. The red spots represent all of those 
other agencies which can deny a permittee the use of BLM land.
  When we talk about permittee, that is, if you want to do anything on 
public land, before you can do anything--and I mean that is from 
grazing to recreation--it has to jump through the hoops.
  I just want to point out, the red dots are Federal agencies that have 
control over the decisions made on permitting on BLM land. Also, the 
yellow diamonds are places of conflict which could derail the process 
and deny access or deny the permittee the use of those lands. Of 
course, the X's mean that is where it stops; everything stops, the 
permit is denied.
  Whatever it costs, what you want to do is get from here to here and 
still have money enough to do what you want to do on public lands. 
Sometimes that gets to be a big race. You start off when the project is 
proposed. It goes through documents and plan conformance. If they say 
no, it does not do it, so you start through the process. You amend it, 
there is public comment, there is a protest. If there is protest by 
anybody with a 32-cent stamp--a letter from anybody in the country can 
protest that particular permittee--then it has to go through conflict 
resolution, through an appeal process again, back to the district 
manager, and that can be appealed.

  So, if the appeal is upheld, the project is not OK'd. If the project 
is not appealed, if everything goes right and they say no, that appeal 
should not be in here, then we start up here and we start through this 
process. And then, if they allow a resolution, then we have to go back 
down through here again. We have to jump on.
  Remember, I would remind the Chair, remember when we were debating 
the health care situation of a year ago, a proposal by the 
administration on all the hoops you would have to jump through and all 
the new agencies it would create in order to take care of just health 
care in this country under the plan proposed by the administration? I 
guess they just love hoops.
  Anyway, when you get over it all, walk it all the way through, when 
you get to here--and remember this all costs a little bit of money 
along the way--this is the area where you try to work out if you have 
jumped through all of, or some of, your conflicts. If you get all those 
done--if you do not get them done you can kill the project here. Here 
is another stop sign, another place for the project to die. If you get 
through this--and all this takes time and time is money--before it can 
be finalized, then something else enters into the project and that is 
other agencies.
  Other agencies now come into play because you have just about done 
everything required by the agency that really has the responsibility of 
managing the land, it has pretty much said, OK, so far, so good. Now we 
have to go to other agencies. For water quality, you have to go through 
EPA. If EPA says yes, then the permit is approved. Then it goes from 
there, you have to have public comment on that. When the EPA says OK, 
still there is an area where the public has access, they can make 
comment. If they say no, then we are back doing another EIS or another 
dead end, a stop sign, and the project can die. But say they approve it 
and say we get along pretty good.
  The EPA--and we get down here. So far so good. There is also another 
section, section 401. That is the Clean Water Act. The State has to 
sign off on it. The State of Montana does. So does the EPA. There are 
two different steps in there. It takes time. You have to have a 
bureaucrat in every one of those stages. Somebody has to push the 
paper. Somebody has to lick the stamp to get it to go on.
  Then you get down here. The permit is approved. You have another 
comment area. If somebody with that 32-cent stamp is handy again, he 
can protest it, and it goes into conflict. So now you have to go 
through another process that kicks it back through the process of the 
EIS.
  There might be some wetlands on it. If you think the Corps of 
Engineers only does business around the navigable rivers and around our 
coastlines of this country, you are wrong. The Corps of Engineers does 
business where you could not float a stick.
  So you have to go to the Corps of Engineers. You have to file the 
application because you have wetlands on 

[[Page S 17506]]
this. Maybe the EIS showed a wetlands. The Corps of Engineers has to 
check off on it. This process is a little bit longer. They approve the 
permit. It goes to public comment. Then it can be appealed. If the 
appeal is successful, that kills the project. If it does not, it still 
has to go to the EPA through another appeal, and finally it has to go 
down to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
  All of these are Federal agencies. I do not know how your history has 
been in dealing with Federal agencies. But you can see there are a lot 
of things to take into consideration in this line right here when you 
start talking about wetlands.
  Say you are successful at that. You want to count the time. In this 
line right here it is probably quite a lot.
  The next is air quality. You have to take that into consideration. It 
goes to the EPA, or to the State. It can go to either one. But I would 
guess, if I was a guessing person--which I am--it would probably go to 
both. They get notice. There is a comment period. And there is also an 
area down here where, if there is a conflict on the air quality--if you 
get down here and see there is no conflict, we move on. If there is 
conflict, then we go back through the process again. And also here is 
another area, one more area where the permit could be denied.
  Then you have another law called the Endangered Species Act. Some 
folks have said the act is really not working, and it will be, I think, 
amended and reauthorized this year. So then you have to take your 
permit and go to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They are in 
consultation. Here again is another area for public comment, and a 
place where a 32-cent stamp comes in that says you can file an appeal, 
and there is a conflict noted. Then you have to go through that 
decision process.
  The only thing we are trying to do is get from here to here. But it 
looks like a regular steeplechase.
  I am going to have this chart made up smaller and pass it out to my 
colleagues. I am wondering as we put laws into effect and try to 
develop some kind of rules and regulations for the protection of the 
people's property. Sometimes we actually destroy the people's property 
while we are doing it. Of course, this process is expensive. You hope 
by the time you start the process up here and by the time you get down 
here that you have money enough to implement the proposed action.
  Mining--the editorial for mining the other day in the Washington Post 
said, Who is minding the mint? It takes 10 to 15 years to permit mining 
of a metal, or a trace metal, or whatever you want to mine on that 
property. Right now the property has doubtless value. Before you can 
give it value there has to be something to make it valuable. I am not 
sure the Government wants to spend money on its own land or speculate 
with that money to give that land value before the mine is sited--10 to 
15 years. If you are thinking about running out West and starting a 
mine, you want to be ready because all of this is just for you. In 
mining it becomes a little more. There are a few more things that you 
have to talk about.
  The difference? Here is what we are trying to do. We are trying to 
simplify and still gather the same information on the activities of 
BLM. Under the State permitting system, in the State of Montana we have 
a board of land managers which is made up of the Governor, the 
Lieutenant Governor, and it manages those school sections under the 
school trust. They manage for a benefactor which is the schools. That 
is the way we fund our schools. On every range there are a couple of 
sections that are set aside and managed, whether it is farmland, or 
woods, or timber, or whether it is mining for whatever. Any time you 
have to do business on State land, they do not have as many hoops to 
jump through. According to a white paper that was done by a woman out 
of the University of California at Berkeley, it showed that State lands 
are managed 25 percent more efficiently than Federal lands because of a 
benefactor, which are the schools.
  Basically what we are doing is we have a request for an activity. It 
goes through MEPA, which is the environmental act in the State of 
Montana, and it also has public and Federal comment only. It goes into 
a field evaluation. There is a notice of competitive bidding. In other 
words, if something is going to happen on that land, notice is given to 
everybody if they want to participate. That goes out to all interested 
parties. There is a bid acceptance, and the lease is issued. They 
derive an improvement settlement. That can be appealed. Then 
arbitration, and maybe another appeal. It goes to the State director. 
Maybe there is another appeal. And then it goes to the district court. 
That all happens pretty fast. But, nonetheless, to get from here to 
here is the time saved, the expense saved, and it also provides as much 
opportunity for public comment as any other process and with very few 
conflicting laws as we can have.
  I will have a chart of this also done for my colleagues so they 
understand what we are trying to do.
  Basically, the bill that was crafted by Senator Thomas says this. 
They are going to offer the BLM's to the State. If the States do not 
want them, then they will continue to be managed by the Bureau of Land 
Management. If they do, then there is a 10-year transition period.
  I would say before it is over that we will not know what the final 
form of this bill will take because there are some people who would 
like something to happen, and some people would not. It is big 
Government. They all want to sit here in Washington, DC, and the 
decisions made here in Washington. I happen to think that people who 
live next to the land, basically those people who live in the State of 
Montana, can make those decisions probably better about the resources 
and the resource management on those lands.
  So the laws and regulations of public land ownership have been 
developed over the years. We have areas in Montana that are 
checkerboard. This gives them an opportunity for land exchanges, and to 
block it and make it more efficient. The land management agencies 
complain that most of their resources are dedicated to paperwork and 
paperwork exercises, and they are stymied with conflicting 
requirements. We are trying to take some of that out of that, and also 
to take out some of those areas where there are conflicts caused by 
nuisance more than they are by substance.
  There is a lot of funding and manpower in the United States. I know 
from just dealing with the State of Montana. When I went to the State 
of Montana as a young man, I think the BLM probably did not have 50 
people that managed all of the BLM land in the last 30 years. They 
probably did not have 50 people when I first went to Montana managing 
around 8 million acres. I will stand corrected on that. Now there are 
over 300 in one sector and 500 in another all paid by the taxpayers of 
America of which they are getting no return for those people working 
out there. No return unless it is from resource management, and, of 
course, some of that resource management is held up because of the 
first chart.

  So, Mr. President, that sort of clears the air. There is also another 
bill that would set up a commission, a commission to take a look at our 
laws and how they apply to our public lands, how to manage them, and 
also the resources found on them and to make some recommendations back 
to Congress. I think both of those pieces of legislation should move.

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