[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 129 (Wednesday, September 18, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10756-S10759]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      A NATIONAL MONUMENT IN UTAH

  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, something is going to happen today in the 
State of Arizona that will have great impact on the State of Utah. I 
would like to discuss that issue in somewhat greater detail than I have 
been able to do in the press. Unfortunately, we now live in a time 
where the press looks for the 7-second sound bite or the two-sentence 
summary to print in the newspaper, and the overall issue gets lost. So 
I appreciate the opportunity to lay out the whole circumstance of what 
has happened, and is happening, for the record.
  Several weeks ago in the Washington Post there was a story about a 
leak out of the White House saying that the President was considering 
creating a national monument in the State of Utah, somewhere in the 
neighborhood of 2 million acres. That came as unexpected news to me and 
the other Members in the Utah delegation, and we raised the issue. 
``Oh, no,'' we were assured, ``nothing is really under consideration. 
These are just discussions that are taking place in the White House, 
and they probably should not have

[[Page S10757]]

been leaked. There shouldn't be any press discussion about it because 
nothing really is going to happen.''
  But the rumors persisted. The buildup continued to the point that our 
Governor decided to call Secretary Babbitt. I also called Secretary 
Babbitt and asked about this issue. Finally, last Saturday, Senator 
Hatch and I were invited to go to the Interior Department to meet with 
Secretary Babbitt and members of the White House staff to talk about 
this proposed national monument.
  When we got there, having been told in advance that the Secretary was 
going to calm our fears and lay out a full statement of what was going 
on, I got a little startled when the Secretary began the presentation 
by saying, ``We're here just to listen.'' And that was all. Well, 
Senator Hatch and I indicated that we were very concerned that 
something as significant as this was going to be done without any 
consultation with Congress, let alone Members of the Utah delegation. 
Congress as a whole, having historically played a significant role in 
the creation of national monuments, was being cut out.
  ``Well,'' said Secretary Babbitt, ``I can tell you categorically, no 
decision has been made with respect to this.'' We said, ``We read in 
the newspapers that the President is going to announce it on Wednesday, 
when he's in Arizona at the Grand Canyon.'' And Secretary Babbitt 
repeated, ``I tell you categorically, no decision has been made.''
  When we met with the press afterward, they asked us, ``What do you 
think will happen?'' I am afraid I am cynical enough, Mr. President, 
and I said, ``I believe the President will make the announcement on 
Wednesday.'' Senator Hatch--perhaps he is a little more trusting--said, 
``I can't believe that the President would do that, given the 
assurances we've just been given.''
  It is not just Republicans that are involved; the Democratic 
Congressman who represents the district in which this monument will be 
formed, uttered the same concern, expressed the same amazement on the 
fact that he had not been consulted, and came away from his interview 
with Secretary Babbitt saying ``I have been assured there is nothing 
imminent going to happen.''
  So we had the Democratic Congressman saying, ``nothing imminent.'' We 
had the senior Senator from Utah saying he was sure there would be no 
announcements. As I say, I was more cynical. I predicted that there 
would be an announcement. I went away from the meeting convinced that, 
in spite of the assurances we were given that no decision had been 
made, in fact we were on a track toward a certainty of an announcement 
on Wednesday--today.
  We then went through the weekend. And at the beginning of the week, 
the news reports started to come in, from CNN and elsewhere, that the 
President was going to announce the formation of a major national 
monument in Utah when he was at the Grand Canyon. ``Oh, no,'' said the 
White House. ``We deny these news reports. Anybody who says that is 
going to happen does not know what he is talking about. No decision has 
been made.''

  Once again, I continued to believe that the President was going to do 
it.
  Today I received a phone call from Leon Panetta. He told me, to my 
great surprise, that today the President will announce the creation of 
a new national monument in the State of Utah in the neighborhood of 2 
million acres. Among the other things Mr. Panetta told me was that 
there will be a 3-year period for the development of a management plan 
for this land. In that 3-year period, he said, all of the issues will 
be dealt with and sorted out.
  That is, frankly, Mr. President, a ``trust us'' kind of statement on 
the part of the administration. ``We are going to turn the process 
completely around. Instead of going through the development of the plan 
and then creating the monument, we will create the monument, and 
develop the plan after the fact,'' but ``trust us, we will take care of 
all of your concerns.'' Given the history leading up to this 
announcement, Mr. President, it is fairly difficult for many people in 
Utah to trust the administration on this one.
  That having been said, I want to take the balance of the time to talk 
about the misconceptions surrounding this entire circumstance. I cannot 
find a better place to summarize most of those misconceptions than 
today's New York Times. They have an editorial entitled ``A New and 
Needed National Monument.'' Once again, Mr. President, the fact that 
this appears in the New York Times the day the President is making his 
announcement says to me that they knew far in advance of Leon Panetta's 
call to me that the President was going to do this, their protestations 
to the contrary notwithstanding. Based on the New York Times editorial, 
there are several misconceptions about western land use which continue 
to perpetuate myths, at least in Manhattan, if not all of the Eastern 
States that are unfamiliar with the realities in the West.
  The editorial starts out praising the President for placing an area 
off limits to development. Now, I am sure that to the people in the New 
York area, development means hotels, condominiums, and other commercial 
activities. But this land is already developed in many areas by western 
definition; that is, there are grazing activities going on in this 
land.
  Mr. Panetta assured me that the grazing would be allowed to continue. 
There is hunting that goes on in this area. Mr. Panetta assured me that 
the hunting would be allowed to continue. There are State parks already 
in this land, which means tourism. Mr. Panetta assured me the State 
parks would be excluded from the designation and tourism would be 
allowed to continue. Finally, there are thousands of people who live 
within the boundaries of this national monument. I assume they will be 
allowed to continue to live there under the same circumstances. We will 
not find out until we go through this 3-year process.
  All these activities constitutes, in western terms, development, Mr. 
President, and I was assured by the Chief of Staff in the White House 
that that kind of development will be allowed to continue. So when the 
New York Times says the President is setting the area ``off limits to 
development,'' the New York Times is at odds with the statement of the 
President's Chief of Staff.
  It goes on to say:

       The President's move is also virtually certain to block 
     plans by a Dutch company, Andalex Resources, to develop a 
     coal reserve twice the size of Manhattan that sits right in 
     the middle of the wilderness area. The administration has 
     tried to persuade the company to swap these lands for an 
     equivalent amount of coal in less vulnerable parts of the 
     State, but the company has said no.

  Two items, Mr. President. No. 1, the suggestion that the coal reserve 
is right in the middle of the wilderness area--``wilderness,'' by 
definition in the law, means land where there is no evidence of the 
presence of humans and, very specifically, land where there are no 
roads. I have, myself, driven over the existing road to the mine site. 
You cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, say that an area where 
there is an existing, used road, constitutes wilderness. The mine site 
is not smack in the middle of the wilderness area. The mine site is 
miles away from the wilderness area.

  Second, the New York Times says the administration has tried to 
persuade the company to swap out for lands of equal value. That is a 
very interesting statement to make in the newspaper. Here are some of 
the facts, if you take the Bruce Babbitt method of appraisal of value.
  The market value of the coal in this area is $1.2 trillion. There are 
some who say, why, that is an inflated figure. You cannot expect to get 
that much out. They are right. But that is the way Bruce Babbitt 
appraises minerals in the ground when he wants to make press release 
statements about how valuable a developing gold mine is. So we will use 
the Bruce Babbitt method of appraisal here and say we have 1.2 trillion 
dollars' worth of coal. I do not know of any other coalfield in the 
State, or the Nation or the world that comes to $1.2 trillion in 
projected value. How can they say ``we are going to swap out equal 
value, but you, nasty coal company, are not willing to cooperate?'' I 
would say to the administration, find me another coalfield with an 
estimated value of $1.2 trillion before you start talking about swaps. 
The New York Times conveniently does not mention that when they talk 
about the swap.
  The New York Times goes on to talk about the way the President has 
done

[[Page S10758]]

this. He is doing it under the Antiquities Act. He says that is what 
gives him the right to act without consulting Congress, and the New 
York Times obviously agrees. It says:

       The Antiquities Act, inspired by the discovery of 
     archaeological treasures in the Southwest at the turn of the 
     century, has served as a useful mechanism for Presidents to 
     preserve valuable public lands without congressional consent. 
     The act has been invoked 66 times, and many of the Nation's 
     most treasured sites, including the Grand Canyon, where Mr. 
     Clinton will make his announcement, began as protected 
     monuments and ended up as national parks by act of Congress.

  All true. What they do not tell us, however, Mr. President--and, 
indeed, what they may not know--is that the Antiquities Act has never 
been used by a President since the passage of the two landmark land 
usage acts by Congress, NEPA and FLMPA. For the C-SPAN junkies, NEPA is 
the National Environment Policy Act; FLMPA, the Federal Land Management 
Policy Act. NEPA and FLMPA were Congress' attempt to bring order to the 
process. NEPA and FLMPA have clear procedures for moving ahead on a 
matter of this kind, and no President has ever ignored NEPA and FLMPA 
to create a national monument until now. Citing the precedence of 
Theodore Roosevelt and his use of the Antiquities Act, as the New York 
Times by implication does, does not excuse Mr. Clinton from violating 
appropriate processes.
  Enough about the misconceptions in the editorial. There are other 
things that need to be brought to our attention that we should 
understand about this proposal. One thing I hope the editorial writers 
in the New York Times will realize, if they do not already, is that 
there is a great difference between a national monument and wilderness. 
Wilderness, as defined by the law, is a territory that is set aside 
because there is no evidence that human beings have ever been there.
  Although there is clear evidence of human activity in most of this 
area, there are about 350,000 acres that qualify as wilderness, under 
the most strict definition of that term. The Utah delegation wanted to 
set aside those 350,000 acres as wilderness. We were prevented from 
doing so by a filibuster on this floor. We had enough votes to pass it, 
but we did not have enough votes to shut off debate.
  Those 350,000 acres of pristine wilderness will now be included in 
the national monument. What does that mean? That means that tourists 
can go there; that means people can camp there; that means people can 
take mechanized vehicles there, because all of that is permitted at a 
national monument. It is not permitted in a wilderness area, but it is 
permitted in a national monument.
  Ironically, when you create a national monument, you must, of 
necessity, create visitor centers. There are buildings within a 
national monument, which would not be allowed in a wilderness area. You 
must pave the roads because the tourists don't go over Jeep trails. We 
have plenty of national monuments in Utah, with miles and miles of 
paved roads. Ironically, we are now going to see the road, which they 
are trying to stop the coal company from using, paved, so that tourist 
buses can go over it.
  And then we must have concessions. If you have a 2 million acre area 
set apart for tourism, you have to have a place for them to relieve 
themselves, a place to refresh themselves. And you are going to see 
refreshment stands, hot dog stands; and you are going to maybe even 
see, in as in the big national parks, hotels, cafeterias, and movie 
theaters--all set up to meet the demands of the tourists. Do you do 
this to protect the wilderness? I am not sure that the people who are 
applauding this set-aside as being a way to protect the wilderness 
understand that a national monument is not a road to wilderness. A 
national monument is a road to a national park, and a national park is 
a major tourist attraction with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, 
of people coming to an area that is now completely desolate. This is 
what the New York Times thinks is a really good way to protect the 
wilderness and the pristine nature of this land.
  Going on to further misconceptions, one thing that the folks in 
Manhattan have probably never heard of, because it is unheard of in the 
East, is something we in the West call school trust lands. When the 
Western States were created, the Congress, in addition to holding most 
of the land in Federal ownership, created a series of alternate 
sections every so often along the land. Almost thrown across the face 
of the land like smallpox eruptions, these sections would be owned by 
the State and held in trust for the value of the school children in 
that State. There are over 200,000 acres of school trust lands in the 
area that the President will set apart as a national monument. Oh, we 
are assured that the money that would come to the school children, if 
these lands were used for mineral development, will be made up some 
other way. If you go, again, to the Bruce Babbitt method of appraisal, 
at $1.2 trillion, the amount the schoolchildren would get out of it 
would be on the billions of dollars. Are we prepared in this Congress 
to appropriate billions of dollars to make the Utah schoolchildren 
whole? Of course, we are not. And, of course, that number is too high. 
But whatever the appropriate number is, the President is asking us to 
trust him that Utah schoolchildren will be made whole. I can tell you 
how Utah's schoolchildren have reacted. In Kane County, the county 
where the majority of this monument will lie, the city of Kanab has, 
today, shut down in protest. The schoolchildren have been let out of 
school and they are walking the streets of Kanab wearing black armbands 
and carrying posters protesting the administration's decision. The 
president of the Utah Education Association--a group not known for its 
Republican proclivities--has publicly said that the administration has 
committed ``felonious assault on Utah schoolchildren'' by the way they 
are approaching this.
  That may come as news to the New York Times, who has never heard of 
school trust lands, but those are the reactions of the education 
leaders--not the Utah congressional delegation, not the Republican 
establishment--but the education leaders in the State of Utah.

  So, Mr. President, I summarize this way. We have a proposal from the 
President to create a massive, new national monument in my State. Am I 
opposed to a new national monument in Utah? I can't be opposed in 
principle. A new national monument will indeed mean many tourists and 
great activity in my State. But we have been given this proposal after 
assurances that it was not going to happen, at a time when we were told 
it wasn't going to happen, with a presentation that we should now trust 
the administration to work out all of the details.
  If, indeed, the whole thing is done in proper good faith, I believe 
we could end up with a national monument that makes sense in one area, 
wilderness that made sense in another area, and mineral activity that 
made sense, environmentally, in the third area.
  The President's actions do not lead me to believe that that will be 
the result. On the contrary, the way he has proceeded leads me to 
believe that we are in for a protracted period of controversy and 
difficulty over this issue. I wish the President had followed the 
procedures laid down by the Congress in NEPA and FLPMA and had given us 
an orderly process to produce a worthwhile result. Instead, he has 
chosen a photo op that will undoubtedly be gorgeous. As we look at the 
evening news, we will see the President with the Grand Canyon in the 
background, with Vice President Gore standing at one side and Carol 
Browner at the other side, proclaiming his protection of the beauties 
of nature from the plunderers. Then when the photo op has passed and 
the television images have faded from our screen, the realities of what 
he has done will leave us with 3 years of hard slogging trying to sort 
this out and come up with the proper kind of result.
  I don't wish to say that I do not trust the administration. They say, 
``Trust us in this circumstance,'' but I conclude with the advice that 
was left by Ronald Reagan: ``Trust but verify.''
  I intend to do whatever I can through this process to see that the 
administration keeps its initial pledges of guaranteeing that existing 
rights will not be trampled, and that the schoolchildren of Utah will 
be taken care of. ``Trust but verify'' should become our watchword.
  Mr. President, there is one other thing about the coal mine that 
people should understand and is not outlined in most of the press 
reports dealing

[[Page S10759]]

with this land. We have images of coal mining that are very, very 
hurtful. We see strip mines in Kentucky and West Virginia. We see 
smokestacks belching out black smoke and blaming it on coal. When the 
administration talks about stopping coal mining in this area, there is 
an immediate emotional reaction that this is a good thing to do. I have 
personally been to the proposed location of this mine. We are not 
talking about strip mining here, Mr. President, we are talking about 
mining below the surface of the ground. The only impact on the ground 
would be a mine opening smaller than one of the walls here on the side 
of the Senate --an opening just wide enough to bring out the trams 
carrying the coal, and that is it. With long-wall mining technology, 
you can go into the mine and produce the coal with no more impact on 
the surface than that.

  Second, we are not talking about the kind of coal that comes out of 
West Virginia and Kentucky, a high-sulfur coal which when burned 
produces dramatic damage to the atmosphere. We are talking about the 
low-sulfur coal that the environmentalists are hoping we can find to 
burn in this country. We are talking about coal that will produce the 
right kind of environmental impact when it ultimately ends up in a 
furnace somewhere.
  So, by saying we are going to stop the production of low-sulfur coal 
in Utah, people are in fact admitting they are going to increase or at 
least maintain the burning of high-sulfur coal that comes from 
elsewhere with the appropriate damage to the environment.
  Finally, all of this talk about a Dutch company implies that you are 
going to see a giant come from overseas to somehow fasten itself on 
Utah and suck things out of Utah's ground. The company may indeed have 
its shareholders as citizens of a European country. I do not know 
exactly where they live. I do know the company has been a responsible, 
tax-paying, job-producing corporate citizen of the State of Utah for 
decades. It is already mining coal in an environmentally sensitive way 
in central Utah. It has demonstrated that it knows how to do it, 
minimizing any kind of environmental impact. If there ever was a 
company I would want to proceed with the development of these coal 
resources, it would be one with the experience and the track record of 
good corporate citizenship which this company has shown in the years it 
has operated in Utah. So it is true to say that their shareholders 
don't live in Utah or maybe in the United States. But that I find is 
irrelevant when one recognizes what they have done for our State and 
how important the economic activity that they have generated for our 
State has been.
  I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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