[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 46 (Tuesday, April 23, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3162-S3164]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



  CLINTON ADMINISTRATION ROAD- LESS POLICY: STILL AND ALWAYS A BAD IDEA
 Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the issue of 
roadless areas in our national forests and to discuss the manner in 
which the last administration developed their roadless area 
conservation rule. Recently, the OMB released a draft report on the 
costs and benefits of Federal regulations. In this report, the Clinton 
roadless rule is estimated at costing $164 million and saving only 
$219,000. I find these numbers outrageous and add this to the extensive 
list of reasons why this rule would hinder our rural economies. With 
this, I would like to again express my objections to the Clinton 
roadless rule and explain why I feel it is still a bad idea.
  As chairman of the Subcommittee on Forests and Public Lands of the 
Energy and Natural Resource Committee I held a series of five hearings 
between November 1999 and March 2001 to examine the development and 
potential consequences of the Clinton administration's roadless area 
conservation rulemaking. Our hearing record details numerous questions 
about the process and data used to develop the roadless area 
conservation rule. While I will not recite the entire history of this 
controversy, I do want to highlight some of the key dates and events to 
help my colleagues better understand this issue.
  To begin, the issue of roadless has been around for more than 30 
years. In 1972, the Forest Service began Roadless Area Review and 
Evaluation One, RARE I, to examine how much land should be set aside 
and recommended for potential Wilderness.
  A more comprehensive RARE II inventory was undertaken in 1982. That 
review examined a little more than 62 million acres. A variety of 
wilderness bills passed by Congress allocated 24 percent of the RARE II 
lands to Wilderness. The forest plans completed by the Forest Service 
between 1983 and 1998 recommended--10 percent of the 62 million acres 
for wilderness; 17 percent of the land for future wilderness study; 38 
percent of the land for other multiple-uses that excludes timber 
harvesting; and 14 percent of the 62 million acres to be considered as 
potentially available for timber harvesting.
  It is important to know that from the time RARE I was completed, 
through 1998, that less than 1.1 million acres of the original 62 
million RARE II acres were utilized for timber harvesting. Thus, less 
than 2 percent of the entire 62 million acres had been entered, or 
would be entered in the next 5 years, for timber harvesting.
  In 1998, after an Interior Appropriations vote on funding for Forest 
Service road construction, I invited then chief of the Forest Service 
Mike Dombeck to my office to discuss the roadless issue. I offered the 
chief my help in working to legislatively resolve this thorny issue. I 
was politely informed by Chief Dombeck that they would rather resolve 
the issue administratively.
  In May of 1999, then Vice President Al Gore, during a speech to the 
League of Conservation Voters stated that not only would he eliminate 
all road building, but he would prohibit all timber harvesting in 
roadless areas. In effect he announced the selection of the final 
alternative for the Clinton roadless area conservation rule before the 
draft rulemaking had even begun.
  On October 13, 1999, President Clinton, speaking at Reddish Knob, VA, 
directed the Forest Service to develop regulations to end road 
construction and to protect inventoried and un-inventoried roadless 
areas across the National Forest System.
  On October 19, 1999, the Forest Service published a notice of intent 
to prepare an environmental impact statement to propose protection of 
certain roadless areas.
  In June of 2000, Chief Dombeck, in a letter to his employees on the 
roadless issue, stated that ``Collaboration does not alleviate our 
responsibility to make decisions that we believe are in the best long-
term interests of the land or the people who depend on and enjoy it.'' 
Mr. Dombeck made it very clear to me that Mr. Gore's desires would be 
carried out.
  In the 2000 State of the Union Address, nearly 11 months before the 
final roadless area conservation plan was published, President Clinton 
said that together, the Vice President and he had ``in the last three 
months alone helped preserve 40 million acres of roadless in the 
national forests.''
  On November 13, 2000, the final EIS for the roadless rrea 
conservation plan was published. And on January 12, 2001 the final 
roadless area conservation rule was published in the Federal Register. 
This meant that over the Christmas holiday the agency read, absorbed 
and responded to more than 1.2 million public comments in a little less 
than 2 months.
  The Public Lands and Forest Subcommittee hearings that were held, 
made it clear to me that the decision on what to do about the roadless 
issue was sealed on October 13, 1999 when the President spoke at 
Reddish Knob and the rest of this effort was little more than window 
dressing.
  It was also no surprise to me when U.S. Federal District Court Judge 
Edward Lodge stayed the implementation of this rule in May of 2001. 
While Judge Lodge's stay has been appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court 
of Appeals, the fact remains that no administration, not the Bush 
administration, not the Clinton administration, nor any future 
administration can ignore Judge Lodge's ruling.
  I know that many in the environmental community, proponents of the 
Roadless Rule, would like to convince us that the Bush administration 
is somehow skirting the law by refusing to fully implement the roadless 
area conservation rule. But, the simple fact is that Judge Lodge 
ENJOINED all aspects of the roadless area conservation rule.
  Some have decried the fact that the Bush administration chose not to 
contest Judge Lodge's decision in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. 
They claim this action by the Bush administration is an attempt to 
rollback a much-needed environmental rule. I think we would be wrong to 
draw this conclusion. The fact is that every administration faced with 
defending agency decisions in court examines each case on its merit and 
then decides which course of action is best for the government.

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  In April of 2001 the Washington Legal Foundation provided an analysis 
of the Clinton administration's failure to defend or appeal cases that 
went against its natural resource agencies during its 8 long years in 
office.
  They found ``13 occasions when the Clinton administration refused to 
defend resource management decisions of its predecessors, choosing to 
accept an injunction or remand from a U.S. District Court rather than 
defend those decisions in a U.S. court of appeals.'' [There are] ``at 
least 28 other occasions, when the Clinton administration refused to 
defend its own resource management decisions in a court of appeals 
after receiving an injunction or remand from a U.S. district court.'' 
In the past, many of the last-minute rules promulgated by a variety of 
departments and agencies have been pulled-back and reviewed. We must 
realize that this is normal and rational behavior when the White House 
changes hands.
  So when it came to the roadless area conservation rule, the Bush 
administration faced a rule that was rushed through the process, that 
impacted a tremendous amount of land and people, which had been, at 
least temporarily, struck down by the courts.
  I want to shift gears here and help my colleagues better understand 
what makes this issue so contentious. Beyond the obvious questions of 
whether or not the process used to develop this rule was honest and 
fair, we have to remember that every rule and regulation any 
administration undertakes impacts individuals in some local community 
in our great country. As we have taken the time to learn more about how 
the Clinton roadless conservation rule was developed, it has become 
increasingly clear to me how rushed the process was and how completely 
the Forest Service failed to include a level of detail needed by local 
people to assess how the policy might affect them on an individual 
basis.
  While one might be tempted to think the Forest Service was knowingly 
hiding the details of its proposal, I think we all must understand the 
enormity of the task they undertook. They had a policy that covered 
over 60 million acres of our Nation. The last time they attempted a 
similar policy, in RARE II, the environmentalists successfully sued and 
the courts found that the policy failed to examine the proposal at the 
local level and sent the Forest Service back to the drawing board.
  Last summer, my staff took time to better understand why people are 
so upset over the roadless area conservation rule. We found nearly 
43,500 acres of State lands within the RARE II roadless areas and more 
than 421,500 acres of privately owned lands within these areas. This is 
important because, like any neighborhood, how your neighbor manages his 
or her lands greatly impacts how and when you can manage your land.
  If implemented, the roadless area conservation rule would convey a 
wilderness like management regime on these lands. Think about States 
that have one or more roadless areas that the Federal Government is 
managing as a quasi-wilderness.
  Imagine for a moment that the State has a constitution that directs 
State lands be managed to produce revenue to pay for the operation and 
building of the schools in that State. Such as my home, the State of 
Idaho happens to have. Don't you think that the State will, in the face 
of this new roadless area conservation rule, experience a new public 
expectation that they will manage the State lands in a manner similar 
to the surrounding Forest Service roadless area.
  Let me take this scenario just one more step. Imagine that when Sally 
and Joe come to Idaho to visit the Panhandle National Forest to hike in 
the wilderness and roadless areas on that forest. They have absolutely 
no idea, nor do they care, that the State of Idaho has State lands in 
the Panhandle National Forest that are surrounded by Roadless lands. 
They have no idea, nor do they care, that the State of Idaho by law 
must manage those lands to generate a revenue stream to support its 
educational system. They arrive in the area knowing they are going into 
a roadless area where no timber harvesting, or mining, or any other 
activities are allowed, and they stumble upon a timber harvesting 
operation on State lands. Most likely they don't even take the time to 
find out who's land they are looking at. And why should they, they came 
to the Panhandle National Forest to hike in the wilderness.
  If they are like most Americans they don't know that national forests 
have a different set of rules than National Parks. Then we are off to 
the races. They go home to New Jersey or California knowing in their 
hearts that the U.S. Forest Service is carrying out a secret timber 
sale program to circumvent the hard fought roadless area conservation 
rule that they have read so much about in their monthly Sierra Club 
magazine.
  They then mount a campaign to end all commodity management on any 
lands within the bounds of roadless areas, no matter who owns those 
lands and no matter what the legitimate goals of that State or private 
landowner might be.
  If a local government were going to change the zoning around your 
home and failed to notify you of the change or what it might mean, I 
imagine you would be skeptical about the process used to develop the 
zoning rule. This is no different. The Forest Service developed this 
rule in a very compressed time frame, with little or no description of 
the potential impacts of the rule at the local level. As a result a 
number of local communities and States became so upset that they have 
gone to court to get this rule overturned. To date there are at least 
nine cases that have been brought to challenge the Clinton 
administration's roadless area conservation rule.
  I want to finish up with a series of examples of the types of land 
and infrastructure we have found in some of the national forest 
roadless areas that we examined. Interestingly, we found little or no 
evidence in the Forest Service EIS to suggest that State, private, and 
other Federal landowners were notified by either national or local 
Forest Service officials that this policy could affect the National 
Forests that surround their lands.
  Our staff analysis found some very disturbing information. For 
instance, on the Boise National Forest we found five roadless areas 
with forest development roads within them. We also found a fire tower 
and an FAA radar site in a RARE II roadless area, and as a result road 
maintenance and reconstruction will no longer be allowed.
  On the Panhandle National Forest in Idaho, we found 13 roadless areas 
with National Forest System Roads within them, along with at least 
three mines, one Forest Service campground and one power line in one or 
more of the roadless areas.
  On the Superior National Forest in the State of Minnesota, we found 
three roadless areas with National Forest System roads in them, along 
with four public boat ramps, three Forest Service campgrounds, and one 
mine in the roadless areas.
  On the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forests in northern Wisconsin we 
found 1,317 acres of private land and 2,886 acres of State lands within 
the RARE II roadless areas.
  On the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia we found 10 RARE 
II roadless areas that contain national forest system roads, along with 
a pipeline and parts of a railroad right-of-way within the roadless 
areas. One roadless area that we examined was made up of 75 percent 
private property.
  On the Dixie National Forest in the State of Utah we found 14 RARE II 
roadless areas with national forest system roads within them, as well 
as one reservoir and one water pipeline in a roadless area.
  On the Gila National Forest, in the State of New Mexico, 11 of the 
RARE II roadless areas on that forest have national forest system roads 
within them, as well as one that had a water pipeline within it.
  I will finish with the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina, 
where we found five areas with one or more national forest system roads 
within them, and one roadless area with a Federal Aviation Agency, FAA, 
microwave tower site in it.
  The point of going through this litany is to help my Senate 
colleagues better understand why national policy, such as this, can be 
better developed at the local level, and to help put Judge Edward 
Lodge's decision, to stay the implementation of this wrongheaded rule, 
in a better context.
  We can, and will, continue to argue over the environmental policies 
of this

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country in this body. There is room in this debate for opposing views. 
But in the case of the environmentalist concerns on the Bush 
administrations new look at the roadless area conservation rule and 
their efforts to gain political support to ignore the courts on this 
issue, I would hope that none of us would want this, or any future 
administration to ignore decisions made by the Federal courts.
  In closing, I applaud the efforts undertaken by this administration 
to take a careful look at this wrongheaded rule. I hope they listen to 
Judge Lodge and any other court rulings that result from the other 
cases. I am happy to see that the new chief of the Forest Service is 
more sensitive to local communities and the private and State 
landowners who will be affected by this or any new roadless area 
policy.

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