[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 55 (Wednesday, April 21, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4025-S4026]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    IN CELEBRATION OF EARTH DAY 1999

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I came here today to talk about the work 
we are doing to protect our environment, but first I would just like to 
express my deep sorrow over yesterday's tragic shooting in Littleton, 
Colorado and to tell the students, teachers and their families that 
they are in our thoughts and our hearts.
  Mr. President, we are here to celebrate the last Earth Day before the 
21st century. As a nation, we have made great strides in the last three 
decades in protecting important ecosystems, cleaning up past mistakes 
and improving the environmental records of industry and agriculture. I 
am confident that as we move into the 21st century, our Nation will 
continue to be a leader in both environmental protection and economic 
strength.
  In the Pacific Northwest, one of our most pressing challenges is to 
restore our dwindling wild salmon stocks. This year, the Puget Sound 
chinook salmon

[[Page S4026]]

was listed on the endangered species list, making it one of the first 
species in the Nation to require protection efforts in an intensely 
developed metropolitan area.
  This will give our region an opportunity to highlight again how we 
can both thrive economically and provide critical protection to other 
species. Already we have seen examples across our State. Farmers have 
modified irrigation systems to make them more salmon-friendly. Forest 
landowners have foregone timber harvest in sensitive areas and 
replanted along streams with vegetation particularly beneficial to 
fish. Citizens of our urban areas have taken the first steps toward a 
comprehensive plan to restore urban salmon and have joined forces to 
restore devastated wetlands and streams.
  One of the important lessons we should have learned about 
environmental protection is it is much easier--and far less costly--to 
preserve an ecosystem rather than try to repair it once it has been 
destroyed. That is one of the reasons I am pushing my colleagues so 
hard to pass my legislation to create a Wild and Scenic River on the 
Hanford Reach of the Columbia River. These are the last free-flowing 51 
miles of this mighty river and they contain some of the most productive 
and important fish spawning habitat in the lower 48 States. The reach 
produces 80 percent of the Columbia Basin's fall chinook salmon, as 
well as thriving runs of steelhead trout and sturgeon. While most of 
the Columbia River Basin were being developed during the middle of this 
century, the Hanford Reach and other buffer areas within the Hanford 
Nuclear Reservation were kept pristine by the same veil of secrecy and 
security that lead to the contamination of the central Hanford Site.
  Mr. President, we have been offered an opportunity to continue to 
grow the rural economy of central Washington while protecting this 
vital source of our economic strength that the Columbia River provides. 
Creating a Wild and Scenic River could help us avoid drastic protection 
measures, like breaching the dams along the Columbia Snake River 
systems to save salmon. This simple step will demonstrate our 
commitment both to protecting wild salmon and to the economic and 
social structure of the inland West.
  Today, we also celebrate the introduction of legislation to protect 
another national treasure: the wilderness of the Arctic National 
Wildlife Refuge. Senator Roth will again introduce, and I will 
cosponsor, his bill to protect one of the only remaining complete and 
undisturbed arctic ecosystems in the world. It is home to an abundance 
of wildlife, including grizzly and polar bears, musk-oxen, wolves, and 
a host of migratory bird species. It is also home to the magnificent 
porcupine caribou herd, whose 160,000 members rely on this coastal 
plain for their calving grounds.
  This bill will prohibit development of oil within the fragile 
wilderness of the refuge. Oil development would likely disrupt the 
porcupine caribou and force them to change their calving grounds and 
migratory routes. This, in turn, will adversely impact the lifestyle 
and culture of their neighbors, the Gwich'in people.
  Proponents of development claim that only 13,000 acres of the refuge 
will be impacted. While this may be true, that development will take 
place in the biological heart of ANWR and have a devastating impact on 
the wilderness values of the area. In this biological heart, developers 
will create a major industrial complex. They will build hundreds of 
miles of roads and pipelines, erect housing for thousands of workers, 
and construct two sea ports and one airport. These developments will 
lead to mining of enormous amounts of gravel, will require diversion of 
streams and will result in pollution of fragile tundra.
  Mr. President, as we celebrate the last earth day before the 21st 
century, I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come 
together to support both of these bills in order to hand down to our 
children and grandchildren a part of America's great natural legacy.

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