[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 14]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 19574]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 
                                  2004

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                          HON. JAMES P. MORAN

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 17, 2003

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 2691) making 
     appropriations for the Department of the Interior and related 
     agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2004, and 
     for other purposes:

  Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this 
amendment offered by my friend from Colorado, Mark Udall.
  My colleagues, the reason we have so many funding limitation 
amendments to this bill is not because of the actions of Chairman 
Taylor and the Appropriations Committee in general. It's because the 
congressional leadership has abdicated its institutional obligations to 
carry out its oversight responsibilities. And, nowhere is this 
abdication of responsibility more prominent than in the arena of the 
environment.
  I can understand from some in the west that the federal government 
owns too much land and that these states should have the first right of 
refusal. But let's redefine who exactly the federal government is. It's 
the people of the United States and it's their land. The stewardship 
responsibilities for these lands, these national parks, wildlife 
refuges, national forests, monuments and wilderness areas are the 
federal government's in accordance with the laws this institution has 
adopted in the name of all Americans and with their support. But when 
an administration disregards a moratorium directed by Congress and 
proceeds to use an obscure reinterpretation of an arcane mining law to 
carve up by roads some of America's great treasured landscapes and 
scenic lands, it has gone too far.
  Earlier this year, the Department of Interior amended an existing 
rule to facilitate right-of-way claims under Revised Statute 2477 (RS 
2477), a long ago repealed provision of the Mining Law of 1866. The new 
regulation will allow any entity to file claims against federal lands, 
yet the new rule lacks any standard for determining the legitimacy of 
these claims. As a result of this and other changes, the amended 
disclaimer rule is being used to establish thousands of new roads 
potentially through National Parks, Refuges, Forests and Monuments or 
candidate wilderness sites without even proving any actual need.
  You've seen the pictures. Find a footpath, a donkey trail and you can 
undermine the people's and this nation's expressed desire to protect 
this land from development and the extraction industry. You say it is 
not happening, or maybe it is just limited to Utah. Think again.
  San Bernardino County in California has actively begun surveying 
specific routes and mapping claims. This process is 80 percent complete 
and the county has thus far claimed 4,986 miles, 2,567 of which are in 
the Mojave National Preserve. The county has requested the Department 
of Interior waive the $100 filing fee because they have so many RS 2477 
claims the cost to the county to file all of these claims would be 
prohibitive. I am puzzled how they may lack the money to file these 
claims, but will somehow find the money to build all these roads?
  I doubt more than a fraction of these claims will ever give rise to a 
road, but the claims will prove sufficient to block federal, state and 
local efforts to protect the land these road claims bisect. Mr. 
Chairman, what the public would never support through legislation, the 
administration is doing by stealth. And, while these actions may 
succeed at removing these lands from federal protection, they will 
create a host of new liabilities and unfunded costs.
  In some states, including California and New Mexico, state law makes 
the local jurisdictions liable for failure to maintain a roadway. I 
wonder what future lawsuits we may be inviting when these localities 
will be sued for injuries caused by hazardous conditions on roads that 
were never built?
  Given the tens of thousands of claims that have been received, I fail 
to see corresponding increases in the Bureau of Land Management's 
budget to process them. Will the granting of rights-of-way, create any 
new financial obligations for the federal government? What costs, 
including environmental assessments and litigation might be involved?
  Mr. Chairman, this policy is an abomination. The administration needs 
to be reigned in and the purse strings are all that we have available. 
Support the Udall amendment.

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