[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 46 (Wednesday, April 12, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H2200-H2206]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




DIFFERENCES IN APPLICABILITY OF WATER USAGE IN WEST AS COMPARED TO EAST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Walden of Oregon).
  Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 1999, the 
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, this evening in my night-side chat I would 
like to take the opportunity really to talk about three subjects.
  The first subject is the subject that is very important to all of us, 
obviously. It is the only way that we can survive. But in the West 
there is a lot of differences on the applicability of it as compared to 
the East. And that is water.
  The second issue that I would like to talk about tonight is also a 
doctrine that has particular specifics in regards to the West. It is 
called the Doctrine of Multiple Use.
  The third subject I hope I get an opportunity this evening to talk 
about is on the issue of education.
  Mr. Speaker, it seems, as my colleagues know, last evening I spoke 
about education. I spoke about discipline in the classroom. I spoke 
about the fact that we need to assist our teachers out there by having 
some consequences of misbehavior in the classroom. And apparently I hit 
a soft spot with some people because I heard from some people overnight 
say, how dare you talk about discipline in the classroom.
  I could not believe it. Some of these people were very antagonistic. 
I am pleased to say I did not get many letters out of the West. I got 
them out of the East. And I am sure I got them, in my opinion, from 
some pretty liberal people that, for some reason, think that we should 
follow political correctness when we talk about classroom discipline, 
that, for some reason, classroom discipline really is not a problem in 
today's school system. So I hope I have an opportunity to come back to 
that subject because it is something I believe very firmly in.
  Education is so fundamental for the survivability of this country. It 
is so fundamental for our country to remain the superpower in this 
world that we have to give it all of the attention that we can give to 
it. But it also means that we have got to be ready to face the music. 
And when we have problems with discipline in our school system, 
sometimes we cannot be politically correct. Sometimes we have got to go 
right directly to the problem. I hope we have an opportunity to talk 
about that.
  But let us talk and begin, first of all, by talking about water. 
Water in the West is very critical. One of the concerns I have is here 
in the East. In fact, when I came to the East for the first time, I was 
amazed at the amount of rain that we get in the East. In the West, we 
are in a very arid region, and we do not have that kind of rainfall. It 
does not rain in the western United States like it rains in the eastern 
United States. As a result of that, we have different problems that we 
deal with in regards to water.
  My district is the Third Congressional District of Colorado, as my 
colleagues know. It is a mountain district. The district actually 
geographically is larger than the State of Florida. And if any of my 
colleagues here have ever skied in Colorado, if they have ever gone 
into the 14,000-foot mountains, with the exception of Pike's Peak, they 
are in my district in Colorado.
  Water is very critical, as it is everywhere else. But we are going to 
talk about some of the different aspects of water, about the spring 
runoff, about water storage, about water law in general, about how we 
came about to preserve and to store our water through water storage 
projects.
  But let us begin I think with an appropriate quote from a gentleman 
named Thomas Hornsberry Ferrell. He said, speaking about Colorado, 
``Here is a land where life is written in water. The West is where 
water was and is father and son of an old mother and daughter following 
rivers up immensities of range and desert, thirsting the sundown, ever 
crossing the hill to climb still drier, naming tonight a city by some 
river a different name from last night's camping fire. Look to the 
green within the mountain cup. Look to the prairie parched for water. 
Look to the sun that pulls the oceans up. Look to the cloud that gives 
the oceans back. Look to your heart, and may your wisdom grow to the 
power of lightning and the peace of snow.''
  Let us say a few basic facts so that we understand really some 
fundamental things about water. First of all, I have got a chart and I 
know it is somewhat small, but I hope that my colleagues are able to 
see it. Let me go through it. It talks about water usage. It is very 
interesting, very few people realize how much water it takes for life 
to exist, how much water it takes to feed a person three meals a day, 
how much water it takes to feed a city, for example, their drinking 
water or their cleaning water or their water for industrial 
purposes. But this chart kind of gives us an idea.

  The chart is called ``water usage.'' I would direct the attention of 
my colleagues to my left to the chart. Americans are fortunate, we can 
turn on the faucet and get all the clean, fresh water we need. Many of 
us take water for granted.
  Have my colleagues ever wondered how much water we use every day? 
This is direct usage of water on a daily basis, our drinking and our 
cooking water. Now, this is per person. Our drinking and our cooking 
water, two gallons of water a day. Flushing of our toilets on a daily 
basis, five to seven gallons per flush. That is on an average. We now 
have some toilets that have reduced that usage somewhat. Washing 
machines, 20 gallons per load. Now, remember, this is daily. Twenty 
gallons per load. Dishwasher, 25 gallons every time we turn on that 
dishwasher. Taking a shower, 7.9 gallons per minute. In essence, eight 
gallons every minute a person is in the shower. Eight gallons of water.
  Now, growing foods takes the most consumption of water. As I said 
earlier, water is the only natural resource that is renewable. But in 
our foods, growing foods, the actual agriculture out there is the 
largest consumer of water in the Nation. And here is why growing foods 
takes the most water.
  One loaf of bread takes 150 gallons of water. From the time they till 
the field, to watering the field, to harvest the wheat, to take care of 
the industrial production of the bread, to actually have the bread mix 
made and have

[[Page H2201]]

it delivered, 150 gallons of water for one loaf of bread.
  One egg. To produce one egg through the agriculture market, it takes 
120 gallons of water. One quart of milk, 223 gallons of water. One 
pound of tomatoes. One pound of tomatoes takes 125 gallons of water. 
One pound of oranges, 47 gallons of water. One pound of potatoes, 23 
gallons of water. Those are pretty startling statistics.
  We go down a little further. Did my colleagues know it takes more 
than a thousand gallons of water a day to produce three balanced meals 
for one person? So, in one day, for one person to have three balanced 
meals, when we total up all the water necessary to provide for that, it 
is a thousand gallons of water a day.
  What happens to 50 glasses of water? On the chart here on my left 
that I direct my colleagues to, we have 50 glasses of water. Forty-four 
glasses of water are used for agriculture. Two glasses are used by the 
cities for domestic water. And a half a glass is used for rural 
housing. But we can see, out of the 50, 44 glasses of water are used 
just for agriculture.
  Now, there is some very interesting things about water in the world. 
Keep in mind these statistics. Ninety-seven percent of the water supply 
in this world is salt water. And today's technology, although we have a 
very expensive process for desalinization of plants, essentially, we 
really do not have an economical process to take salt water and convert 
it to drinking water. Ninety-seven percent of the water in the world 
today is salt water. Of the remaining three percent, we have three 
percent left, 75 percent of that remaining three percent is water tied 
up in the ice caps. Of all the water we have, only .05 percent of that 
water is in our streams and in our lakes. So it gives us an idea of the 
challenge that we face.
  Now, in the United States, when we take a look at what is the lay of 
the water, we find that 73 percent of the stream flow in the United 
States is claimed by States east of the line drawn north to southeast 
of Kansas.

                              {time}  2015

  So 73 percent of the water in the United States lies in this part of 
the Nation. Now, when we take a look at the Pacific Northwest, in the 
Pacific Northwest there is about 12 percent of the water. Over here we 
have 73 percent of the water essentially in the East. Up in the Pacific 
Northwest, we have about 12, 13 percent of the water. The balance of 
the water which is about 14 percent, is water that is shared by 14 
States in the West. This is the arid region of the United States, those 
14 States. They include States like Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, 
Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada. Those are the dry States in our 
country.
  Now, Colorado is the highest State in the Nation. In fact, the Third 
Congressional District which I represent in Colorado is the highest 
congressional district in the Nation. So as a result of that, we have a 
lot of variance over, say, a lower elevation. For example, our 
evaporation. We have about an 85 percent factor of evaporation at that 
kind of altitude; and we have a lot of water, as Members know. We have 
a lot of snow that comes down, but we have to deal with evaporation at 
a very high percentage.
  When we talk about Colorado, what I am going to do instead of talking 
about all of the States of the West, I thought I would focus 
specifically, obviously, on the area I know the best, and that is 
Colorado. Let us talk about the characteristics of Colorado and the 
different problems and issues that we deal with water in Colorado.
  On average in Colorado, we get about 16, 16\1/2\ inches of water 
every year. We do not have much rainfall. If Members have been out to 
the mountains of Colorado, which as I said earlier is the district that 
I represent, they know that in the springtime and throughout the summer 
we have rains, but those rains are very brief. Our typical rainstorm 
comes in, lasts 20 minutes, and it goes away, comes back the next day 
and generally in the mountains.
  Out in the plains we may not see it for a long time. We do not have 
heavy rains as you do here in the East. But we have a lot of variances. 
For example, in my particular district, in the region of the mountains, 
we have 80 percent of the water. Eighty percent of the population in 
Colorado lives outside those mountains, in cities like Denver and 
Colorado Springs and Fort Collins and Pueblo. Now, in Colorado because 
we do not have much rainfall, we depend very heavily on the snows 
during the wintertime and for a period of about 60 to 90 days called 
the spring runoff when the snow melts off our highest peaks and comes 
down, for that period of time we have all the water we can handle. But 
after that period of time in Colorado, if we do not have the capability 
to store our water, to dam our water, we lose the opportunity to 
utilize that water.
  Now, the rivers and streams throughout this Nation have a lot of 
history to them. When we take a look at the frontiersmen that went out 
into the West, for example, to settle the West, remember the old 
saying, go West, young man, go West. When we take a look at it through 
these wilderness areas, and everything was wilderness in the West, 
really your path, your highway through the wilderness were the rivers 
and the streams. It is where life really centered around, the 
communities were built around it, the trappers. The trappers trapped by 
the rivers and the streams. Even the miners and the minerals when they 
discovered minerals in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, for example, it 
centered around streams. That is why when you go through Colorado, most 
of your communities are built there near the streams.
  But what is unique about Colorado is we are the only State in the 
union where all of our free-flowing water goes out of the State. 
Colorado is the only State in the union that has no free-flowing water 
coming into the State that we are able to utilize. So as you can guess, 
as they say, water runs thicker than blood in Colorado and that applies 
to the other mountain States and the West in general.
  Now, Colorado is called the mother of rivers. Why? Because we have 
four major rivers that have their headwaters in the State of Colorado. 
We have the Colorado River, and I will come back to the Colorado River 
in a moment. We have the South Platte River, and the South Platte River 
drains the most populous section of the State and serves the area with 
the greatest concentration of irrigated agricultural lands in Colorado. 
That is the South Platte.
  We have the Arkansas River. That begins up near Ledville, Colorado. 
It flows south and then east through southern Colorado and then down 
towards the Kansas border. We also have the Rio Grande River. That Rio 
Grande drainage basin is located in south central Colorado. It is 
comparatively small compared to the other rivers and has less than 10 
percent of the State's land area in it.
  Let us talk about the Colorado River. That is a very important river 
for the entire Nation. Twenty-five million people get their drinking 
water out of the Colorado River. The Colorado River drains over one-
third of the State's area. And although only about 20 percent of the 
Colorado River basin exists in the State of Colorado, the State of 
Colorado puts about 75 percent of the water into that basin.

  The Colorado River provides a lot of things besides water. It 
provides clean hydropower, for example. Just out of the Colorado River 
alone, we irrigate over 2 million acres of agricultural land throughout 
that river basin. Now, the river is very unique. As Members know as I 
described earlier in the West, everybody is trying to grab for water. 
And so as a result of that, there are a lot of what we call 
``compacts.'' They are in essence treaties, how do we agree how the 
water is going to be shared.
  And, of course, we also have to remember there are some basic things 
about water. Remember I said earlier that water is the only natural 
resource that renews itself. In other words, what logically follows is 
one person's water waste could be another person's water. For example, 
some people have said in Colorado, why don't you go and line your 
ditches, let's put concrete on the bottom of your ditches and therefore 
you avoid seepage; the water doesn't seep out of the ditch. Well, you 
have to be careful about that because that water seepage may be the 
very water that provides water for the spring or the well or the 
aquifer many, many miles away.
  Someday technologically, I hope in our lifetime, we will be able to 
pull up

[[Page H2202]]

on a computer screen the map, the water map as, for example, in the 
State of Colorado where all of those little fingers of water, where 
they all begin, where they all move, how they move, at what speed they 
move, and what kind of cleansing process they go through. It is very 
interesting if you really want to get into it.
  But water on its face is a pretty tough product to sell an interest 
in. Why? I do not mean property interest. I mean, people do not worry 
much about water as long as they turn on the faucet and the water is 
there, number one, and, number two, the water is clean. Therefore, it 
is an obligation of the leaders of our country, leaders such as you and 
myself, it is our obligation to assure that we have quantity of water 
and that we have clean water for the future.
  Let us go back to the Colorado River basin for a moment. The Colorado 
River basin really has compacts on it, and because the Colorado River 
goes down throughout and actually ends up in the Gulf of Mexico, the 
Colorado River really goes to Mexico, ends up in the Gulf of Mexico, we 
have several compacts. The major compact, the Colorado River compact, 
is between the upper basin States and the lower basin States. The upper 
basin States, for example, would be Colorado, Utah, New Mexico. Lower 
basin States would be like Arizona, California, Nevada. And we have an 
agreement on the Colorado River on this Colorado River compact which 
says that the upper basin States and the lower basin States are each 
entitled to 7\1/2\ million acre/feet per year. An acre/foot is enough 
to feed a family of four. It would be about a foot of water over a 
football field, enough water that should feed a family of four for a 
year. 7\1/2\ million acre/feet per year is how that is divided.
  I am going to get into a little more about that, but first of all let 
us talk a little about Colorado water law. I am just going to summarize 
and give some very basics to it, Mr. Speaker, because the law here in 
the East is really based on the riparian doctrine. Our doctrine is 
based on what is called the Colorado doctrine in the State of Colorado. 
The history of the doctrine came about in the California gold rush 
days, when all of a sudden we had a lot of settlers going out to the 
mountains about 1849. And because the water in Colorado, because of the 
aridness of the Colorado, we came up with the doctrine that no matter 
how far away you are from the river, our doctrine is first in use, 
first in rights. So the first one to go to the river and use the water, 
no matter how far away they live from the river, if they are first to 
use it, they get first right. If they are second to use it, they fall 
in priority to second place; if they are third to use it, they fall in 
priority to third place. That is basically known as the doctrine of 
prior appropriation.
  Now, as I said, the eastern States primarily follow the riparian 
doctrine. Now, the Colorado constitution, in addition to having the 
doctrine of prior appropriation, also recognizes uses in priority. The 
highest priority or the preference of water use with the highest 
priority in Colorado is domestic use for your home, the second use is 
agricultural use in priority, and the third use is industrial use.
  In Colorado, we also have a unique situation. We are pretty proud of 
this because we are very conscious of the environment out there. 
Obviously, if you have been out to the district, you have been out to 
Colorado, you have a deep appreciation of why we are proud of 
our environment out there, what we have to protect out there. One of 
the things that we have discovered throughout the years is there is a 
lot of damage to an environment if you run the creek dry. So what we 
have done in Colorado is we have appropriated in-stream rights, minimum 
stream flows over thousands of miles of stream beds so that we 
guarantee that a minimum amount of water will remain in those streams 
so that we can mitigate and minimize the environmental impact.

  Now, clearly we are always going to have some impact. If you are 
going to take water out and drink it, you are going to have less water 
in the stream or in the creek. So you are going to have an impact. We 
have to have a balance there. We think in Colorado we reach a pretty 
good balance. Now, clearly we have some people that object to that. We 
have some people, especially located in the East, things like Ancient 
Forests and some of the Earth First and some of those type of people, 
the National Sierra Club, those people that want all of our dams taken 
down.
  In fact, the National Sierra Club, their number one priority is to 
take down Lake Powell. Lake Powell has more shoreline than the entire 
Pacific West Coast. Lake Powell is a major power producer, hydropower, 
clean power. Lake Powell is the major flood control dam we have in the 
West. Lake Powell is the main family recreational area for many States 
around it. Now, the only people that would want to take down Lake 
Powell are people that do not have, in my opinion, a lot of, one, 
appreciation for the uniqueness of the West and the needs of the West; 
two, do not have a lot of appreciation for human needs; and, three, 
frankly maybe they do not care about the needs of the West.
  But let us go back to our subject here at hand. We have given a brief 
outline of the prior appropriation. Now, let us talk about water 
storage. As I mentioned to you earlier, we just talked a little about 
Lake Powell, but water storage is critical for us in the West. We have 
to have these dams. The Federal Government recognized this many years 
ago. Great governmental leaders like Wayne Aspinall, a Congressman from 
the State of Colorado, helped authorize these projects. And we had 
support frankly from Congresspeople, colleagues of ours that preceded 
us, colleagues from the East, colleagues from across the Nation that 
recognized that out in the West we had to have water storage.
  I hope that many of my colleagues, while tonight you may not be 
particularly interested in Western water problems, I hope that 
tonight's comments give you an opportunity that when some questions 
arise, for example, about Lake Powell or water storage projects, you 
remember the reason that these were put up. In the West, we did not 
just go out willy-nilly and say, let's put a dam here and let's put a 
dam there. That did not happen. There are reasons that those dams are 
there. There are reasons that we have to store that water. And so I 
urge my colleagues, as the issues of water and storage of water in the 
West come in front of you, take a deep look at why those projects were 
built in the first place, why those projects are important for the 
West.

                              {time}  2030

  We have a project we are going to talk about this year, the Animas 
La-Plata project, a very interesting project. I am going to spend a 
couple minutes with you right now talking about that.
  Years ago, when the population in the East and our leaders back here 
in the East wanted to settle the West, they ran into a number of 
different problems. One of the problems were the Indians. My gosh, 
there are people on this land that we want.
  Well, the response to it was, we will push them off it. What do we do 
with them? Essentially what they did when they got to Colorado is they 
took the Indians and said, look, we are going to shove you into the 
mountains. We want the plains. We want the large herds of buffalo. We 
want the agricultural lands out there. So sorry, Indians, there is not 
room for you. We are going to shove you into the mountains. So they 
shoved them into the mountains.
  Then what happened was they began to discover minerals in the 
mountains. The white men found there were gold in the streams, in the 
creeks. There were massive mineral deposits in those mountains. Those 
mountains all of a sudden became valuable.
  So, what did they do? Time for the Indians to move again. They took 
the Indians and they moved them down to the southwestern part of 
Colorado, down into the desert. And, mercifully, somebody in the 
administration or in the leadership back then said, look, there is no 
water down there. There is not water for those people in those desert 
lands. We need to provide some water for them.
  So that is exactly what they did. The government provided water 
rights, and promised the Native Americans, the Indians, as they were 
called back then, promised water rights for their lands.
  Well, years ago when the water projects for the West were authorized,

[[Page H2203]]

the government agreed with the Native Americans to go ahead and help 
develop those water rights. Those were water rights owned by the Native 
Americans pursuant to treaty.
  So as a part of the development of those water rights so the Native 
Americans could utilize the water they had been promised, that they had 
contracted for, in order to help them develop it, they promised certain 
water storage projects, one of them being the Animas La-Plata.
  Then what happened was the government began to stall, so the Native 
Americans decided to sue the Federal Government in the courts, because, 
as they said, rightfully so, wait a minute, United States Government, 
we made a deal in Washington. We made a deal. You gave us these water 
rights in exchange for our lands. You signed a contract. You made a 
treaty with us to build our water storage project, yet you continue to 
delay and delay and delay.
  So the best government lawyers came in and advised the government 
leaders at the time, you are going to lose this case. You need to do 
what you said you were going to do with the Native Americans. You need 
to build that project.
  So the government went to the Native Americans and said let's settle 
the case. So they settled it. The Native Americans accepted less than 
they were entitled to, but they were willing to live with that 
compromise, because they wanted the wet water. They did not want cash, 
they did not want trinkets, they wanted wet water, water they could put 
their hands in and feel the wetness.
  Well, lo and behold, pretty soon some environmental organizations 
started suing, and pretty soon there is an effort to stop the building 
of the Animas La-Plata water project down in Southwestern Colorado.
  Once again, who loses? The Native Americans. So the Native Americans 
come back again, and once again they make an agreement to get even less 
than what they got the first time they made the agreement and the 
second time they made the agreement.
  Now what do we see in the last couple of years? Once again the United 
States is continuing to stall and delay. In fact, there have been 
proposals by some organizations out there, do not give them any water 
at all. Let us just pay them with some cash. Give them some trinkets. 
Give them cash.
  They do not want cash, they want their water. Fortunately, I think we 
have come to agreement with the administration this year to move the 
Animas La-Plata project into reality. It has taken a lot of effort, and 
I must compliment my colleague, Senator Nighthorse Campbell. This is a 
big issue out in the West. A lot of effort has been put into it, and 
hopefully we can get this storage project in the west put together.
  Now, when we speak about water it leads us to another issue that I 
think is important to understand about the West, and that is the 
concept of use. If you were ever in Colorado, and there are still a few 
signs, or actually out in the mountains, out in the West, you still see 
some of these signs on national lands, and the sign might say, for 
example, ``Welcome, you are entering the White River National Forest.'' 
But underneath that sign is another little sign, and it says ``The land 
of many uses.'' ``The land of many uses.''

  Let us talk a little history. What does multiple use mean? Multiple 
use means exactly what it says, that the lands out there are not 
intended for one singular use, that the survivability of many different 
things, of humans, of animal species, of the environment, it depends on 
a balanced approach on how to use those lands, and the balanced 
approach is what is called multiple use.
  Now, how did multiple use come about and how is it that the Federal 
land ownership is so massive out in the West and almost minimal, and 
``minimal'' would be a pretty generous description, in the East?
  In order to have an accurate reflection of what I am talking about, I 
have got a map for you here which shows the United States, obviously. 
You will see, I ask my colleagues to divert their attention over to the 
map for a moment, if you really go down this line, which is down the 
Colorado border, down the Wyoming border, down to Montana, you go down 
that line, through eastern Colorado, clear down and go along the border 
there over to New Mexico and around the border of Texas, you will see 
that practically from this point to the east, from that point to the 
Atlantic Ocean, Federal Government ownership of land is minimal.
  Now, you have got some blocks of land out here in the Appalachians, 
the Catskill Mountains, some down in the Everglades and some up here in 
the northeastern section. But take a look at the eastern United States 
and land ownership there by the government, and compare it with land 
ownership in the West. In the West, as you can see, most of the land is 
owned by the Federal Government. In fact, in 11 states here in the 
West, in 11 states, 47 percent of that land is owned by the Federal 
Government.
  Now, remember, that is not all the government owns, because you have 
state government lands, you have municipal land, you have special 
district lands. So there is a lot besides that 47 percent. But because 
of the fact that you have such massive ownership of public lands, or 
they call it public lands, such massive ownership by the Federal 
Government, it creates by its own consequence a lot of differences 
between the West land uses and land uses in the East.
  Now, how did this come about? Why did our leaders not many many years 
ago who preceded us many, many generations ago, why did they not spread 
this land ownership out throughout the country more evenly?
  Here is what happened. In the West, when they were settling the rest 
of the country, and I say the West, really anything West of, you get 
out here of New York, of South Carolina, Kentucky, out into this 
country, they decided in those days ownership of land was not simply 
just a deed. The fact you owned a deed to the land did not mean a lot 
out here in the wilderness, out in the wild areas of the country. In 
fact, back then possession really was nine-tenths of the law. You have 
heard that quote many time. ``Well, possession is nine-tenths of the 
law.'' That is where it came from.
  In the early days of the settlement by the white man out here in the 
West, possession was nine-tenths of the law. So the leaders in the East 
decided hey, we have got to provide some kind of incentive, we have got 
to give an incentive for people to move into the West, to settle this 
land. We have got to get our citizens in possession of that land, the 
land they had purchased, for example, through the Louisiana purchase. 
We have got to get people on the land. How do we do it? Because, 
frankly, life in the city is fairly comfortable. Life in the West is 
pretty rough. They have to go on horseback, a wagon. It is pretty 
rough.

  Somebody came up with the idea, well, let us do this. Let us tell 
these settlers that if they go out there, we will give them land. And 
the American dream has always been to own your own piece of land. 
Today, for our constituents, the young people, the old people, the 
middle age people, we all dream of owning our own little piece of land. 
Ownership of land is American.
  So what they said was hey, what stronger incentive can we give to 
these people to encourage them to become settlers and move to the West 
than to offer to give them land?
  So they said all right, what kind of land should we give? Let us call 
it, they said, the Homestead Act or any number of other acts, and let 
us give them 160 or 320 acres. And if they go out and they possess that 
land and they work that land for a period of time, say 3 years or 5 
years, depending on the act, we will let them have the land free. It is 
their land. It is their land forever.
  Well, that worked okay, until you hit the mountains, until you hit 
the arid areas of the West. When you got into the states like Kansas 
and Nebraska and Ohio and the Dakotas, you know, you could take 160 
acres in that rich farmland of Ohio or Nebraska and you could raise a 
family on it. That is very fertile ground.
  But what was happening was the settlers were coming out here, and all 
of a sudden they stopped. They were not going into the mountains. Maybe 
some would go around the mountains and try to find gold in the 
California area, out here where you do not see much government land 
ownership in California. They were going around it.
  So the problem came back to Washington. Hey, we are doing okay, again

[[Page H2204]]

referring to this map, doing okay in the eastern United States, 
everything east, let us say of Denver, Colorado. People are settling, 
were possessing the land. But where the Colorado Rockies start, from 
north to south, west, the people are not going in there. What do we do?
  The problem came up, well, you know, to raise a family in Nebraska, 
for example, on the rich fertile land out there, it is 160 acres. To do 
the equivalent in the Colorado Rockies, for example, and I keep 
referring to Colorado, obviously other states share the Rockies, so I 
am really referring to the mountain West, but to do the equivalent in 
the mountains, instead of 160 acres, you may need 1,600 acres, or 2,000 
acres, or 3,000 acres. The leaders in Washington said wow, we cannot 
give away that kind of land. We cannot go out there and tell people we 
are going to give thousand and thousands of acres to one person if they 
go out and live on and work that land. What do we do?
  That is where the birth of the concept of multiple use came about. 
The Federal Government decided the answer to this, to encourage 
settlers to go out, is, look, the Federal Government will retain 
ownership. The Federal Government will continue to own these lands out 
here, but you are going to be allowed to go out there and use them. You 
can go out there and use them for ranching, you can go out there and 
use them for minerals. As time went on, you can go out there and use 
them to build your communities and your towns and later on your cities. 
Now, today we can use these lands to help protect our environment, to 
help preserve a lot of these lands.
  Multiple use means a lot of things. To give you an idea of what the 
multiple use concept is and why Federal ownership differs here in the 
West than in the East, in the East, for example, let us think about it. 
If you wanted to build something in your local community here in, let 
us say Kentucky or out here in Illinois or some of these states more 
towards the East, you wanted to build something, what do you do? You 
have to get a permit. And if you get a permit, where do you go? You go 
to your local planning and zoning. You go down to the city hall, or 
maybe the county offices, and you go to your local planning and zoning.
  Well, here in the West, where the Federal Government owns so much 
land, if we want to build, for example, a water canal, we do not go to 
our local planning and zoning. We have to have our planning and zoning 
done in Washington, D.C., 1,500 miles away, in an area where it rains. 
It does not rain very much in the West.

                              {time}  2045

  It does not rain much in the West. In an area where they have very 
little Federal ownership of lands, in an area where a lot of people do 
not even know what the term ``use'' means, yet they are the ones who 
dictate, they are the ones who dictate our planning and zoning in the 
West. That is a big difference. That is why we have sensitivities out 
there in the West. That is why it is important that we protect the 
concept of multiple use.
  Let me read just a couple of things. The Federal government owns, as 
I said earlier, 47 percent of the land in the 11 public lands States 
all located in the western United States. In four States, the Federal 
government owns more than half of the land: In Idaho, in Nevada, in 
Oregon, and Utah. In Colorado, more than one-third of the land is owned 
by the Federal government.
  Are we dependent on these lands? We are absolutely dependent on these 
lands. Humans could not live out in the West without the permission of 
the Federal government to use those lands.
  Some would say, well, is that not kind of an exaggerated statement? 
The fact is that it is not exaggerated at all. Think about it. Take any 
community in my district. Glenwood Springs, Colorado. If you have not 
been there, go visit; a beautiful community, my hometown. In Glenwood 
Springs, or a town more that my colleagues might be acquainted with, 
Aspen, Colorado, take Aspen, Colorado, every road into Aspen, Colorado, 
comes across government lands. Every drop of water in Aspen, Colorado, 
either comes across, originates, or is stored on Federal lands unless 
it is a spring, and then it still originates somewhere on Federal 
lands. All of their cable, all of their power lines, all of their 
transportation needs, their airport, their air corridors, all of that 
comes across Federal lands.
  If we begin to shut down the access across Federal lands, we lock out 
these communities. Many, many of the communities, not only in my 
district but throughout the U.S., throughout the West, are locked in by 
Federal lands.
  Now, ``locked in'' is not too harsh a word if we are allowed access 
to utilize these lands. We take a lot of pride in those lands. That is 
our birthplace. A lot of us have many, many generations of family 
history out there. We care about that land. We have worked that land. 
We know that land.
  There are some sensitivities when we deal with people, for example, 
out of Washington, D.C., some think tank, that thinks they ought to be 
able to or that they know a little more about the dictates of living in 
the West, about the issues of these lands.
  Multiple use is a very, very important concept for us. That is why we 
are so ardent in our protection of the right to use these lands. I 
think this map is a good reflection. Again, I would direct my 
colleagues to take a look at it.
  One thing they will notice down here, it is not in proportion, 
obviously, is the State of Alaska. I think the State of Alaska is 
somewhere around 96 percent owned by the government. Ninety-six percent 
of that land is owned by the government. Think of the impact that that 
has on the everyday lifestyles of people; of the resources that they 
use, of the transportation that they use.
  So multiple use is a very, very important concept for us, and I hope 
that my comments tonight have given Members a little idea about this. 
There are a lots of exciting things that go on in the West in regard to 
our land use.
  Over the last 25 or 30 years, we have recognized the technology that 
allows us to utilize our lands in such a way that they can become more 
environmentally friendly. We have figured out how to use water in a 
more environmentally sensitive form. There is a lot of progressive 
movement in the West on these lands to help preserve our environment, 
because many of those communities out there are almost totally 
dependent on a clean, healthy environment.

  If Aspen, Colorado, for example, or Beaver Creek or Telluride or Vail 
or Glenwood Springs or Durango, if they had a dirty environment, would 
Members go out to visit it? Of course not. We have lots to lose out 
there. We have a lot at risk with our environment out there. That is 
why we take no shame in the positions that we advocate for the 
protection of our lands out there, for the protection of the water out 
there.
  I hope my colleagues here recognize that. I hope as the different 
issues come up, whether they relate to Alaska or whether they relate to 
the western United States, remember, especially if Members are from the 
East, that the issues are different. The issues will require that we 
look into the history. They will require that we study the differences 
of a State without much Federal land and a State with Federal land, 
that we study how dependent we are on the resources of those Federal 
lands, and why the doctrine of multiple use is a well-thought-out and 
now a well-practiced historical use of those lands. Multiple use should 
be protected.
  There are some areas where we have set aside what we call wilderness 
areas. I am a sponsor of a wilderness called the Spanish Peaks 
Wilderness. That is my bill passed out of this House. We expect to put 
a wilderness out there. We have other wilderness. Senator Armstrong, 
Hank Brown from years ago, they put in the Flat Tops Wilderness bill.
  In some of these areas we take away multiple use, but it is a 
focused, well-thought-out move. It is a move that allows some lands to 
be set aside as if humans had never touched them. So in some areas we 
have actually surrendered the doctrine of multiple use for protection, 
for the maximum possible, with little flexibility, protection.
  But before, and I say this to my colleagues, before Members jump on 
the bandwagon and take a paintbrush and paint in all of this wilderness 
designation, please understand the impact that it has to the local 
people, to the people who live off those lands, to the people who 
depend on those lands. Frankly, anybody that lives in the

[[Page H2205]]

West is dependent upon those Federal lands.


                               Education

  Enough for issues about water and lands. Now I want to move to an 
issue that is very important to me. It is important to my colleagues 
here. I want to talk for a few minutes about some areas of education.
  I do not know anyone who is anti-education. I find with interest in a 
political season how political layouts are made saying one person is 
anti-education. Granted, in this room of 435 Congress people, we have 
435 different ideas, and many of them are uniform, but we have 435 
different ideas about education: How do we improve education? How do we 
get the biggest bang for our buck out of education? How do we get the 
best teachers, the most qualified teachers we can into the field of 
education? How do we make the profession of teaching one of the highest 
professions in our country?
  There is lots of debate about that, but I have not found anybody on 
the Democratic side and I certainly have not found anybody on the 
Republican side that is anti-education.
  So I urge my colleagues, as this election year gets into a very 
heated process very rapidly, that they not buy into that argument that 
their opponent or somebody else out there is anti-education. I do not 
know one person, I have never met a person in my political career, I 
have never met one person that is anti-education. In fact, I have met 
very few people, I could probably count them on one hand, the people, 
if I were to ask them the five or ten most important things in our 
society, that they would not list education among the very top.
  We all recognize that education is fundamental for the strength of 
this country. Now that we all can come to the agreement that we all 
agree that education is important, let us talk about different 
subjects.
  There are lots of areas we could talk about. We could talk about the 
budget on education, about how much more money is needed, how do we 
have accountability for the money, how do we test, what kind of 
testing, and should we track scores and the money spent, whether the 
money should be local money, whether the money should be State money, 
whether the money should be Federal money; and if it is Federal or 
State money for a local school, what kind of flexibility should be 
given to the Federal government or the State government to determine 
what programs are offered in the local school?
  We can talk about the issues of sex education in schools: What level 
do we offer sex education, should we have it in the schools? We can 
talk about the school facilities. We can talk about bonding issues. 
There are lots of things in education that many in this room have much 
more expertise than I do. We could have lengthy discussions about it. 
There is a lot of money, billions and billions of dollars spent in this 
country every year to try and figure out how we have a better 
educational product.
  But one of the areas I like to talk about in education is personal 
responsibility, consequences for behavior that is classified as 
misbehavior. I think throughout the years, and this is where I got some 
negative calls, and I would love to have some of those people to 
debate, Mr. Speaker, who in my opinion seem to think that the 
discipline, the direction we are going in discipline is the right 
direction to take.
  I do not think it is. I think one of the problems that we have today 
in turning out a better educational product is responsibility in the 
classroom. We find responsibility in the classroom not only through 
accountability of measurement, and whether a student is learning, and 
the responsibility of a student if they want to participate in the 
class, they have to do their assignments. But I am talking about 
classroom discipline.
  It is interesting, if we take a look at the discipline problems, and 
I think there is a book out there called It All Happened in 
Kindergarten or something like that. I will actually have it next week. 
But in that particular book, as my memory serves me, if it is correct, 
they did some comparisons about discipline problems 40 years ago in our 
classrooms and the discipline problems today in our classrooms.
  Part of the difference in those discipline problems, back then, for 
example, chewing gum was a discipline problem, or talking out of turn, 
interrupting your teacher, being tardy. Today it is drugs, violence. We 
go down the list and there is a dramatic difference.
  Part of it is the shift in society. Part of it, and we can track it 
to a lot of different things, the lack of two-parent families, a number 
of different things. But one of those elements that I think we need to 
look at is we have got to give our teachers the ability and the tools 
to have discipline in their classroom.
  Not too many years ago I think it was 60 Minutes went in and did a 
secret filming I think in one of the major cities of a classroom and 
the discipline, and the frustrated teacher who could not control those 
students.
  Can most teachers control most students? The answer is yes. Are most 
students responsible young people, young adults? The answer is yes. In 
the past, were teachers able to have much more control for those few 
students who became discipline problems? The answer was yes.
  Has that authority had handcuffs placed on it? Has that authority 
been kind of cornered or reduced in today's classroom? The answer is 
yes. We need to take a serious look at allowing discipline back into 
the classroom.
  Think about it. I have a sister who is a counsellor. Her name is 
Kathleen. She has spent her career in teaching and she is now a 
counselor. Several years ago when I was in the State legislature, and 
in Colorado most of the money provided for schools is provided at the 
State level, back then about 63 cents out of every dollar of the 
general fund of the State of Colorado's budget was provided for 
education, but we consistently heard complaints about, we need more 
money for education.
  We hear it from every department, by the way. The military says it 
needs more money. In fact, I have never found a department yet 
throughout my years of public service that says, whoa, we have enough 
money. We can do the job for what you have given us. We have enough 
money. So that is a pretty common complaint.
  Anyway, back to my sister, Kathy. I asked her one day, I said, Kathy, 
if I could do one thing politically as a leader, if I could do just one 
thing to help improve the education product for you as a schoolteacher, 
what would it be? I expected her to say, we need more money.
  She did not say that. She said, if you could do just one thing, allow 
me to have discipline back in my classroom. Allow me to have discipline 
back in my classroom.
  That is where I really begin. That answer caught me a little off 
guard. That is where I began to really focus on discipline in the 
classroom and tolerance in our schools. Clearly, when we speak of 
tolerance, there are many different applications that that term can 
have. There are a lot of things that we have taught, good behavior 
through more tolerance of certain behaviors.
  However, we also need to take a look at misbehavior that we are 
ignoring because it is not politically correct, perhaps, to stand up to 
it, or you are going to get criticism for drawing a line in the sand 
and saying, if your behavior crosses that line, you are out of school.
  At some point we have to go back and cater to the majority of 
students, the students that are behaving. I am not talking about ethnic 
issues and so on, I am talking about the majority of students that 
behave. We have to meet their needs. Those needs, in my opinion, take a 
higher priority than a student who on a consistent basis, not a one- or 
two-time basis where we have correctable attitudes, but on a consistent 
basis continues to defy the teacher and continues to defy the rules of 
the classroom.
  For example, not too many months ago I saw some film footage, and 
some of my colleagues may have seen it, where there was a fight in the 
school and the students were disciplined.
  This school board, I wanted to pat each one of them on the back. It 
is about time somebody stood up to these students and kicked them out 
of school; good for you. Teach them a lesson. Of course there was a lot 
of argument and debate about whether this was too harsh a punishment 
for kicking these students out of school. Then they begin to look into 
the background

[[Page H2206]]

of the students, and it was the first time I had ever heard the term 
``third year freshman.'' So I asked my sister Kathy, what is a third 
year freshman?
  Oh, a third year freshman, she says, that is somebody who has been in 
high school for 3 years and has yet to get enough credits to get out of 
the freshman class.
  In this particular case that I was referring to, they had some 
students there who did not have any credits and had been in school for 
2 or 3 years; no credits. Then they went and they took a look and 
investigated and revealed how many days they had been absent from 
school, and the fundamental question that came to me was not whether or 
not they still are in school; the fundamental question came to me is 
why did you not kick them out earlier? How much time and how much 
effort and how many resources have you spent taking care of these 
students who are not willing to accept responsibility, who have 
behavioral problems that are not able to be corrected on a short-term 
basis and you have kowtowed to them, so to speak, been politically 
correct to them, at the expense of the students who are following the 
rules, at the expense of the students, and it is clearly, clearly the 
strong majority of students who want to learn, who want to get 
something out of their education, what is wrong out there?
  Well, I can say this, that I think as government officials we need to 
pledge to our local teachers, to our school administrators that, look, 
within the bounds, within legitimate bounds, and I can say I think the 
legitimate bounds have a historical basis, I think we can find them, 
that within those bounds you are going to receive support from us. It 
may be that you are having to discipline the most popular kid in the 
town. We have to promise support to these people. These teachers have 
tough jobs. These administrators have tough jobs. But we cannot really 
expect them to stand up to this discipline problem if we, starting on 
this House Floor, do not back them up. There are times where discipline 
cannot be politically correct. There are times where discipline can be 
absolutely correct. In my opinion, if we can get discipline back to the 
classroom, Mr. Speaker, if we can do something to help our local 
districts, give them the support and to watch very carefully any 
legislation we pass out of the U.S. House of Representatives to make 
sure that we are not infringing on the right for a schoolteacher to 
have discipline in their classroom, it is worth it. That is how we can 
get a better product. That is how we can give more opportunities to our 
students.
  As I said earlier, in my opinion education is the most fundamental 
pillar that we can have that holds this great country together. Now, 
there are other strong pillars. We have to have a strong military. We 
have to have a strong economy. We have to have a strong health care 
delivery system. There are other pillars that help hold this building 
up but education is one that gets a lot of attention, deserves a lot of 
attention and it is going to get a lot more attention.
  Now teachers, I think, themselves want accountability. I read an 
article in USA Today, December 1999, and it was issued by the Albert 
Shanker Institute. They found that teachers support standards. Teachers 
support accountability. Even in low income neighborhoods, teachers 
believe that standards and accountability are important.

  I think most teachers believe in personal responsibilities. I think 
most teachers want us to give them the tools that create consequences 
for misbehavior in the classroom, that allow the teachers to reward 
good behavior because there are two ways to take care of misbehavior. 
One is punish the misbehavior and have consequences for the misbehavior 
and two is to reward the good behavior, take the positive drive.
  The study shows that the longer teachers work with standards the 
happier they are to have them. Accountability measures can include 
repeating a grade or having to pass a test to graduate. Accountability 
measures can include discipline in the classroom. For school officials, 
accountability could come in the form of removing teachers and 
principals from schools that do not meet those standards.
  Seventy-three percent of the teachers and 92 percent of the 
principals favor the standards movement.
  Mr. Speaker, let me just conclude by saying that we all want better 
education. Let us bring discipline back to the classroom.

                          ____________________