[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 93 (Friday, June 19, 2009)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1508-E1509]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION LAND CONSERVATION ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. JAMES P. MORAN

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, June 19, 2009

  Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be joined today 
with Representatives Eleanor Holmes Norton, Gerald Connolly, Rob 
Wittman, Donna Edwards, Chris Van Hollen, Frank Wolf and Steny Hoyer to 
introduce legislation National Capital Region Land Conservation Act of 
2009. The legislation amends the Capper-Cramton Act of 1930, 
authorizing appropriations of up to $50 million per year for cost share 
grants to State, regional and local governments to acquire land in the 
greater Washington Metropolitan area (as defined by the U.S. Census) 
for a variety of conservation, environmental and recreational purposes. 
The program would be administered by the U.S. National Park Service.
  Few cannot help but notice the green spaces that make up the central 
core of our nation's capital. Were it not for some visionaries at the 
turn of the 19th Century, however, our nation's capital would be a 
different place today. There would be no Mall, monument core, Rock 
Creek Parkway, Union Station, Lincoln Memorial or Tidal Basin. These 
icons that define the city today were part of the 1902 McMillan plan, 
named after Senator James McMillan of Michigan, who chaired the Senate 
Committee on the District of Columbia. The commission Senator McMillan 
established to draft the master plan included some of the greatest 
American architects, landscape architects and urban planners of the day 
including such luminaries as Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. 
and Charles McKim and sculptor August Saint-Gaudens. The commission's 
plan, in many respects, was an early form of urban renewal that removed 
many of the slums that surrounded the Capitol, replacing them with new 
public monuments, open spaces and government buildings.
  As visionary as the plan was, it also took some vision and political 
muscle to make it a reality. That credit falls largely to two Members 
of Congress: Senator Arthur Capper of Kansas and Rep. Louis Cramton of 
Michigan. Both Members embraced the vision and worked over a period of 
years to enact legislation to advance the McMillan plan. Best known 
among these laws is the Capper-Cramton law of 1930 authorizing land 
purchases and creating today's the National Capital Park and Planning 
Commission.
  Today, more than a century since the McMillan plan and more than 70 
years since the enactment of Capper-Cramton, the time is now for a new 
plan, one that is responsive to the development patterns and 
demographics that were never envisioned at the turn of the last 
century. In 1902, the population of the District of Columbia was 
278,000. Outside a few dirt roads and a few railroad junctions that ran 
into Northern Virginia and Maryland, the suburbs didn't exist. Dairies 
and farming hamlets populated Northern Virginia and Montgomery and 
Prince Georges County, Maryland.
  Today, the District is home to 600,000 residents and swells to more 
than 1,000,000 during the workday. A network of roads and heavy rail 
radiate out from the city, like spokes on a wheel, linking more than 
5,300,000 people who are spread out into the suburbs and fringe 
communities that consider themselves part of the greater metropolitan 
Washington, D.C. region. Today, we need a program for the greater 
metropolitan region.
  We also need a program that helps lead the way in public investments 
to preserve the green infrastructure of parklands, fresh drinking water 
sources, steep slopes, stream valleys, forests, wetlands, wildlife 
corridors, scenic view sheds, historic sites and land buffering 
national monuments, battlefields that surround the national capital 
region and are endangered of being lost to development. Safeguarding 
these green assets is critical to this region's economy, quality of 
life, and environmental protection. Green infrastructure have been long 
recognized as essential elements of urban design and critical to 
safeguarding our region's drinking water supplies and restoration of 
the nationally important Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River, truly 
our ``Nation's River.''
  Unless we act now to protect the remaining green infrastructure 
around our Nation's Capital, we run the risk of permanently degrading 
the environment in and around Washington, D.C. Between 1990 and now, 
the region's population grew by about 10 percent but the amount of 
impermeable surface grew about 40 percent. Forecasts predict that by 
the year 2030, the Greater Washington, D.C. region will grow by an 
additional 2 million persons.
  I believe Congress can and should help the nation's capital address 
this growing need to preserve this region's green infrastructure by 
amending the time honored and visionary CapperCramton Act. The original 
Act gave life to many of the elements that we appreciate and consider 
invaluable today. It is time once again to act and preserve our source 
of fresh drinking water, connect this region's network of nonmotorized 
trails, provide buffers to protect scenic vistas along the Potomac 
particularly above Great Falls, and in Charles and Saint Mary's 
Counties in Maryland, and pocket parks in the more urbanized parts of 
the region.
  I encourage you to support this act.

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