[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 110 (Wednesday, September 15, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9263-S9264]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    LAND AND WATER CONSERVATION FUND

  Mr. ALEXANDER. The Senator from Louisiana also mentioned the 40th 
anniversary of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. She and I intended 
today to speak together about that. She spoke about it and she will 
have more to say. She has worked very hard on it for the last several 
years.
  I take a few minutes in honor of the 40th anniversary of what we call 
the Land and Water Conservation Fund, or the LWCF in this country. 
Forty years ago, in September of 1964, President Johnson signed 
legislation establishing the fund. It has been an important factor in 
preserving open spaces in our country ever since.
  The idea began under a Republican President, President Eisenhower, 
who signed legislation creating a commission to determine what should 
be done to preserve outdoor space for recreation. Then a Democratic 
President, President Kennedy, submitted legislation to Congress 
creating the Land and Water Conservation Fund. In submitting the draft 
legislation, President Kennedy wrote:

       The Nation needs a land acquisition program to preserve 
     both prime Federal and State areas for outdoor recreation 
     purposes. . . . In addition to the enhancement of spiritual, 
     cultural, and physical values resulting from the preservation 
     of those resources, the expenditure for their preservation 
     are a sound financial investment.

  Shortly thereafter, it passed the House by a vote voice and the 
Senate with only one vote in opposition. Then President Johnson signed 
it into law. This is an idea that has had bipartisan support from the 
very beginning.
  Since that time, 40 years ago, 37,300 Land and Water Conservation 
Fund State grants, totalling more than $3 billion, have been 
instrumental in preserving 2.3 million acres and building 27,000 
recreational facilities. For example, one park that was preserved by 
grants from the LWCF is Fall Creek Falls in Tennessee. Grants from the 
fund totalling $376,000 helped acquire land and built facilities at 
this spectacular park, which I have visited many times, boasts the 
highest waterfall in North America east of the Rocky Mountains. Chances 
are pretty good many parks we have hiked would not even exist if it 
were not for the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
  Yet since the early 1980s, the Land and Water Conservation Fund has 
been consistently shortchanged of funding. During most of the 1980s and 
1990s, funding levels were kept to about one-third of the authorized 
level--$300 million of $900 million authorized, for example. By the 
late 1990s, funding for State grants under the Land and Water 
Conservation Fund was cut to zero.
  In recent years, we have seen some improvements. Funding for State 
grants averaged about $100 million since 2001, but it is not hard to do 
better when you are doing nothing.
  While funding has declined, demand for conserved areas has 
dramatically increased. Since the Land and Water Conservation Fund was 
first established, the population of the United

[[Page S9264]]

States has grown by more than 40 percent. A growing population puts 
pressure on open spaces in two ways: First, more people want to enjoy 
the great outdoors so they need more space for it; second, more land is 
being used for other purposes--such as new subdivisions, shopping 
malls, office buildings, and more--which makes open space more scarce, 
especially in areas where most of us live. The demand for parks and 
open space is higher than ever before, especially for city parks, the 
parks down the street in which we walk, run and enjoy the outdoors.
  How can we fund conservation efforts in the time of tight budgets? 
The Americans Outdoors Act of 2004, which Senator Mary Landrieu and I 
introduced in the Senate earlier this year, provides the answer.
  The act provides a reliable stream of funding by collecting what we 
call a conservation royalty on revenues from drilling for oil and gas 
on offshore Federal lands. It uses this conservation royalty to fully 
fund three existing Federal programs. First, the State side of the Land 
and Water Conservation Fund is $450 million annually. Second, the 
Wildlife Conservation Fund is $350 million annually. And third, Urban 
Parks Initiatives is $125 million annually. It also provides 500 
million additional dollars each year for coastal impact assistance 
including wetlands protection.
  This new conservation royalty is not such a new idea at all. It is 
modeled after the existing State royalty for onshore oil and gas 
drilling created in the Mineral Lands Leasing Act of 1920. The act 
gives 50 cents of every dollar from drilling onshore--and in the case 
of Alaska, 90 cents out of every dollar--as a royalty to the State in 
which the drilling occurs.
  In a similar way, our Americans Outdoors Act of 2004 would create a 
conservation royalty of about 25 percent for revenues of the funds 
collected from offshore drilling on Federal lands. Some of the royalty 
would go to States such as Texas where the drilling occurs. More would 
go to all States for parks, game and fish commissions, and projects 
funded by the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

  The premise of this legislation is simple. If drilling for oil and 
gas creates an environmental impact, it makes sense to use some of the 
proceeds to create an environmental benefit. In 2001, the Federal 
Government received $7.5 billion in oil and gas revenues from Federal 
offshore leases. This revenue comes from the Outer Continental Shelf 
which supplies more oil to the United States than any other country, 
including Saudi Arabia.
  I mentioned at the beginning this was a bipartisan idea. I should 
mention one other President who was involved in this idea. His name was 
Ronald Reagan. In 1985, President Reagan asked me to chair the 
President's Commission on Americans Outdoors which looked ahead for a 
generation to try to see what we could do now to help us--today, as it 
turns out, nearly 20 years later--to enjoy the great American outdoors. 
One of the major recommendations from President Reagan's Commission on 
Americans Outdoors was that we take some of the money from offshore oil 
drilling and devote it to wildlife preservation, to city parks, and to 
the State and Federal sides of the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
  Senator Landrieu and I intend to add an amendment that includes the 
Federal side of the Land and Water Conservation Fund to our proposal.
  Today, we celebrate 40 years of a good idea with a new suggestion for 
how to improve it: a conservation royalty on offshore revenues that we 
treat exactly the same way we have treated onshore revenues for 50 
years. We give it to the States and to the Federal side of the Land and 
Water Conservation Fund for wildlife preservation and city parks.
  Someone once said Italy has its art, England has its history, and the 
United States has the great American outdoors. Our magnificent land, as 
much as our love of liberty, is at the core of our character. It has 
inspired our pioneer spirit, our resourcefulness, and our generosity. 
Its greatness has fueled our individualism and our optimism and made us 
believe anything is possible. It has influenced our music, our 
literature, our science, and our language. It has served as our 
training ground for athletes and philosophers, of poets and defenders 
of American ideas.
  So let us come together to conserve the great open spaces of our 
country for generations to come. That is why the generation before us--
Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson and Reagan--worked to 
establish the Land and Water Conservation Fund 40 years ago. That is 
why we should make sure it is fully funded today. The Americans 
Outdoors Act will do just that.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.

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