[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 57 (Wednesday, May 8, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4068-S4069]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. CRAIG:
  S. 2474. A bill to provide to the Federal land management agencies 
the authority and capability to manage effectively the Federal lands, 
and for other purposes; to the Committee on Energy and Natural 
Resources.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, the bill I am introducing today represents 
a significant modification to S. 1320, which I introduced in the last 
Congress. This modification represents a large body of work that 
reflects my belief that forest planning and public land management 
continues to evolve and that underlaying law needs to be updated. It is 
also represents thousands of hours of hearings and working with a 
variety of interests to modernize the laws governing our stewardship 
over federally-managed, multiple-use lands.
  I first undertook an effort to improve our National Forest lands' 
forest planning process in the 104th Congress with the introduction of 
S. 1253. I then refined that effort when I reintroduced the legislation 
in S. 1320. Today, I am introducing legislation that represents a 
refinement of earlier efforts in S. 1253 and S. 1320.
  For those of you who have just tuned in, this bill is the result of 
15 oversight hearings that my Subcommittee on Forests and Public Land 
Management held during the 104th Congress. These hearings involved more 
than 200 witnesses, representing all points of view, and reviewing all 
aspects of the management of the Forest Service and Bureau of Land 
Management lands. The overwhelming conclusion from all of these 
witnesses, developers and environmentalists alike, public and private 
sector employees alike, was that the statutes governing federal land 
management, the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act and the 
1976 National Forest Management Act, are antiquated, and in need of 
updating. These statutes were passed by Congress in the mid-1970s to 
help solve land management problems. Today, they are a large part of 
the problem.
  It also represents my continued frustration with the process 
paralysis that grips the planning and implementation of much needed 
land management activities on our National Forests. Our new Chief of 
the Forest Service, Dale Bosworth, tells me that it now takes up to ten 
years to produce a forest plan that has a life expectancy of 15 years. 
We have seen example after example of projects that require three to 
five years to plan. In the case of many fire rehabilitation projects, 
the financial viability of the project demands that NEPA be completed 
in a matter of months, not years.
  More importantly, we are spending months and sometimes years planning 
and documenting the need for the rehabilitation of these burned areas, 
and then failing to get the land management underway before natural 
events over take the health of our forests. This is occurring to the 
detriment of the environment.
  While our current forest planning and project planning processes 
stumble along, delaying important rehabilitation work, these burned 
areas are assailed by the elements of wind and rain. Almost every 
single person heard from agrees that the planning and environmental 
documentation process are broken. If we leave the agency in utter 
gridlock, we have done nothing to protect the environment. If during 
all of our careful planning and environmental documentation, an area 
suffers a series of thunder storms that washes thousands of tons of 
soil into critical fish habitats, as occurred after the 1990 fires on 
the Bitteroot National Forest, we and our system have failed the 
forests, the environment, and the American Public.
  By imposing a cumbersome, if not impossible, planning process on our 
federal land managers we guarantee more fires, more destruction of 
critical wildlife habitats, more water and air pollution, and the 
increased likelihood of dangerous and destructive catastrophic fires.
  We do nothing good for the environment by spending two or three years 
to design, document, and plan salvage operations to halt the spread of 
insects or disease as they rampage through our forests. We can see this 
today in the Red River drainage of the Nez Perce National Forest.
  I look at laws as ``tools'' for use by professional land managers and 
resource scientists that help them to establish priorities and make 
management decisions. These tools are as antiquated as the slide-rule 
and computer punch cards that were the tools used by land managers at 
the time that these statutes were passed.
  As a consequence of oversight review during the 104th Congress, and 
subsequent oversight hearings, I drafted and circulated S. 1253 at the 
outset of the 105th Congress. That draft, and the subsequently-
introduced bill were, in turn, the subject of six informal workshops 
and another eight legislative hearings to review the concepts embodied 
in both the first draft and the introduced version of S. 1253. The 
ideas that emanated from the oversight hearings were modified to 
reflect the suggestions of witnesses, and in recognition of how 
resource management problems have subsequently evolved. A similar 
review was conducted upon the introduction of S. 1320 which has helped 
me improve upon my previous efforts.
  As you know I continued to hold hearings during both the 106th and 
the beginning of the 107th Congress and enjoyed additional dialogue 
about how to best modify the 1976 statutes. For instance, at one 
hearing all four of the former Chiefs of the Forest Service and one 
former Bureau of Land Management Director shared their views about the 
current state of Federal land management, and where legislative action 
could assist their successors in discharging the public trust more 
effectively.
  During that time period there was at least one seminal decision from 
the Supreme Court. In Ohio Forestry Association versus Glickman, the 
Supreme Court, in my view, clarified the interrelationship between 
forest plans and project level decisions. In that decision, the Court 
denied standing to challenge resource management plans, essentially on 
the basis that no real decisions were made. We now have several years 
of court rulings that reflect that ruling. And we believe that the 
Forest Service will soon be proposing forest planning regulations that 
will reflect

[[Page S4069]]

the process certified by the Supreme Court.
  The bill I am introducing today would refine current planning law, 
rather than rewrite the law to alter our course. I believe this bill is 
more of a refinement than a revision and that it will be complementary 
to what we hope to see in the Forest Service's new forest planning 
rules, rather than in conflict with those rules. In various other ways 
of a less significant nature, the bill I am introducing today also 
reflects the product of court decisions that have been rendered during 
the period that we were reviewing these issues.

  In many ways my frustration with the forest planning and project 
planning process that our Federal land managers are saddled with, is a 
lot like the Hubble Telescope when it was first launched into space in 
1990. You'll recall that initially the Hubble telescope didn't work. 
The pictures it sent back were fuzzy and useless. It had a design flaw, 
a mirror was not ground correctly and as a result its images were 
unclear. NASA has spent millions of dollars to design and launch this 
marvel of technology and it didn't work.
  Our National Forest planning process, the result of the 1979 Federal 
Land Policy and Management Act, the 1976 National Forest Management Act 
and subsequent Federal regulations, is broken. It has cost the public 
several hundred million dollars, and we continue to get fuzzy images of 
what the solution should be. The problem is that the public and land 
managers do not believe or trust the results. Now we learn we are 
spending up to ten years to complete plans that will remain in place 
for only 15 years.
  In the case of the Hubble Telescope, NASA identified the problem, 
designed a fix, and went into space and corrected the problem, all 
within a very short 3 year time period. In the case of the forest 
planning process, most undertook the regulations would need periodic 
updating. During the late 1980's and early 1990's the Forest Service 
worked to develop and propose new forest planning regulations. Election 
year politics prevented the agency from finalizing those regulations.
  In the last two years of the Clinton years, the Forest Service again 
made an effort to make changes to its planning regulations. Again 
election year politics intervened and now the current Administration is 
working toward some changes.
  The bottom line here is that we can repolish the regulations over and 
over again but it still produces fuzzy pictures. It is my estimation 
that it is time to make some changes to the underlying law, so to speak 
the design of our telescope. It is time to make the changes our Federal 
managers need to assure reasonable, environmentally sound, and timely 
land management.
  It is my hope that we will now move forward with additional hearings 
on this proposal, confident that we are on the correct path to improve 
the quality of Federal land management, and through a variety of means, 
increase public support for the future management of our Federal forest 
lands.
  I look forward to working with Senator Wyden, the chairman for the 
Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests, and to hold hearings to 
further refine this regulation. It is my hope that Senator Wyden and I 
can build on our efforts to end the Federal forest grid-lock that we 
started with the passage of Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-
Determination Act of 1999.
  I invite both the administration and Members on both sides of the 
aisle to join us in this effort. We will move forward knowing that this 
proposal, like any other, is a working draft that will by necessity 
change, probably significantly.
  We also move forward knowing that legislative change in this arena is 
both inevitable and vital. It is clear to me that this area of public 
discourse vitally needs a vibrant legislative debate and a new 
legislative charter so that our Federal land managers can be provided 
with tools a little more modern that the slide-rule and maniframe 
computer punch cards.
                                 ______