[Senate Report 114-131]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                      Calendar No. 211
114th Congress   }                                      {       Report
                                 SENATE
 1st Session     }                                      {      114-131

======================================================================



 
                     JAY S. HAMMOND WILDERNESS ACT

                                _______
                                

               September 9, 2015.--Ordered to be printed

                                _______
                                

  Ms. Murkowski, from the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, 
                        submitted the following

                              R E P O R T

                         [To accompany S. 873]

    The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, to which was 
referred the bill (S. 873) to designate the wilderness within 
the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve in the State of 
Alaska as the Jay S. Hammond Wilderness Area, having considered 
the same, reports favorably thereon with an amendment and 
recommends that the bill, as amended, do pass.
    The amendment is as follows:
    In paragraph 25 of Section 2, strike ``and Dana,'' and 
insert ``Dana, and Wendy''.

                                PURPOSE

    The purpose of S. 873 is to designate the existing 
wilderness area in Lake Clark National Park and Preserve in 
Southwest Alaska as the Jay S. Hammond Wilderness Area in honor 
of the former Governor of Alaska Jay S. Hammond.

                          BACKGROUND AND NEED

    Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, established by 
Congress in 1980 in the Alaska National Interest Lands 
Conservation Act (ANILCA, Public Law 96-487, Sec. 201(7)(a); 16 
U.S.C. 410hh(7)(a)), preserves and protects some 3,653,000 
acres of Southwest Alaska on the western shore of Cook Inlet as 
a national park and preserve. Although occupied by Alaska 
Natives for centuries, the area was first explored by Russian 
explorers after 1741. Russian fur hunters plundered villages in 
the area in 1792. Natives retaliated and destroyed a Russian 
trading post on Iliamna Lake in 1800. Relations over the next 
20 years stabilized, and Russian Orthodox missionaries began to 
visit and convert Alaska Natives in the area by the 1830s.
    After the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 
1867, Charles Leslie McKay became the first Euro-American to 
explore the area in 1881, collecting artifacts for the 
Smithsonian Institution. In 1891, a party led by explorer 
Alfred B. Schanz again traveled through the area. Included in 
the Schanz party was John W. Clark, a representative of the 
Alaska Commercial Company. The Schanz party renamed the lake 
from its native Dena'ina name, Qiz'jeh Vena--``the lake where 
many people gather''--to Lake Clark to honor John Clark.
    The first permanent non-Native resident, Brown Carlson, a 
trapper, moved to the area in 1903. With the advent of the 
float airplane in 1930, more non-Native residents moved in and 
settled around the Port Alsworth area. One early settler was 
Jay Sterner Hammond. Hammond was a former petroleum engineer 
born in New York, a U.S. Marines Corps fighter pilot serving in 
China and the South Pacific in World War II, and a settler to 
Alaska who arrived when it was a territory in 1947. After the 
war, Hammond studied biological sciences and graduated from the 
University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1949. In 1950, the part-time 
pilot, trapper, and guide became a biologist/field agent for 
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and was stationed in 
Southwest Alaska. He paddled the entire shoreline of the 45-
mile-long Lake Clark and selected a homestead where he built a 
cabin. This homestead served as his primary residence for 
nearly 55 years until his death in 2005.
    Hammond, besides being a biologist and later a game guide, 
also entered politics when Alaska became a State in 1959. He 
served three terms in the State House, two terms in the State 
Senate, and was later elected Mayor of the Bristol Bay Borough 
in 1972, after serving as its manager. He was then elected 
Governor of the State of Alaska in 1974 and was reelected in 
1978.
    During his two terms, he opposed oil leasing in the 
Kachemak Bay area of Cook Inlet, opposed construction of a 
proposed Ramparts hydroelectric dam across the Yukon River, 
supported the congressional creation of a 200-mile fisheries 
conservation zone, proposed a state limited-entry fisheries 
regime, proposed and oversaw the creation of the nation's 
largest state park, the 1.6-million-acre Wood Tikchik State 
Park to the southwest of Lake Clark, and was Governor when 
Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation 
Act in 1980. That Act added 104 million acres of land as 
national parks, preserves, refuges, monuments, wild and scenic 
rivers, and wilderness in Alaska, including creating Lake Clark 
National Park and Preserve of which 2.6 million acres were 
designated as wilderness. Hammond's homestead is located inside 
the boundary of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. The bill 
would name the 2.6 million-acre wilderness area in the Park to 
honor Hammond.
    Although within a national park it is rare to permanently 
commemorate geographic features in memory of a person, 
Hammond's contributions and connection to the Lake Clark 
National Park and Preserve are exceptionally noteworthy and 
provide a compelling justification for this recognition.

                          LEGISLATIVE HISTORY

    Senator Murkowski introduced S. 873 on March 26, 2015. The 
bill was co-sponsored by Senator Sullivan of Alaska. The 
Subcommittee on National Parks held a hearing on S. 873 on June 
10, 2015.
    The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources met in open 
business session on July 30, 2015, and ordered S. 873 favorably 
reported, as amended.

                        COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATION

    The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, in 
open business session on July 30, 2015, by a majority voice 
vote of a quorum present, recommends that the Senate pass S. 
873, if amended as described herein.

                      SECTION-BY-SECTION ANALYSIS

    Section 1 contains the short title, the ``Jay S. Hammond 
Wilderness Act.''
    Section 2 contains the findings.
    Section 3 designates the approximately 2,600,000 acres of 
existing wilderness in Lake Clark National Park and Preserve as 
the Jay S. Hammond Wilderness Area and deems any reference to 
the wilderness area in any law, map, regulation, document, 
paper, or other record to be a reference to the Jay S. Hammond 
Wilderness Area. On a going-forward basis, the National Park 
Service will amend maps, regulations, documents, papers or any 
other record to reflect its designation as the Jay S. Hammond 
Wilderness Area.

                   COST AND BUDGETARY CONSIDERATIONS

    The following estimate of costs of this measure has been 
provided by the Congressional Budget Office:

S. 873--Jay S. Hammond Wilderness Act

    S. 873 would designate the 2.6 million acres of wilderness 
in the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve as the Jay S. 
Hammond Wilderness in honor of Alaska's fourth governor. The 
wilderness represents about 65 percent of Lake Clark's 4 
million acres.
    Based on information from the National Park Service on the 
cost of changing the name of a wilderness area, CBO estimates 
that S. 873 would have no significant effect on discretionary 
spending because revising federal maps and signs to reflect the 
new name would be done in conjunction with scheduled reprinting 
and other routine maintenance.
    Enacting S. 873 would not affect direct spending or 
revenues; therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures do not apply.
    S. 873 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector 
mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act and 
would not affect the budgets of state, local, or tribal 
governments.
    The CBO staff contact for this estimate is Marin Burnett. 
The estimate was approved by H. Samuel Papenfuss, Deputy 
Assistant Director for Budget Analysis.

                      REGULATORY IMPACT EVALUATION

    In compliance with paragraph 11(b) of rule XXVI of the 
Standing Rules of the Senate, the Committee makes the following 
evaluation of the regulatory impact which would be incurred in 
carrying out S. 873.
    The bill is not a regulatory measure in the sense of 
imposing Government-established standards or significant 
economic responsibilities on private individuals and 
businesses.
    No personal information would be collected in administering 
the provision. Therefore, there would be no impact on personal 
privacy.
    Little, if any, additional paperwork would result from the 
enactment of S. 873, as ordered reported.

                   CONGRESSIONALLY DIRECTED SPENDING

    S. 873, as ordered reported, does not contain any 
congressionally directed spending items, limited tax benefits, 
or limited tariff benefits as defined in rule XLIV of the 
Standing Rules of the Senate.

                        EXECUTIVE COMMUNICATIONS

    The testimony provided by the Department of Interior at the 
June 10, 2015, National Parks Subcommittee hearing on S. 873 
follows:

Statement of Victor Knox, Associate Director, Park Planning, Facilities 
      and Lands, National Park Service, Department of the Interior

    Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to present the 
Department of the Interior's views on S. 873, a bill to 
designate the wilderness within the Lake Clark National Park 
and Preserve in the State of Alaska as the Jay S. Hammond 
Wilderness Area.
    The Department supports S. 873, which would designate the 
approximately 2.6 million acres of National Wilderness 
Preservation System land located within the Lake Clark National 
Park and Preserve as the ``Jay S. Hammond Wilderness Area.'' 
This designation is a fitting and appropriate way to recognize 
Hammond's significant contributions to the Alaska National 
Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), the National Park 
System, and Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, which was an 
important part of an extraordinary legacy of public service.
    In 1946, following his military service as a fighter pilot 
during World War II, Jay Hammond came to Alaska and became a 
bush pilot, guide and trapper. In 1949, Hammond graduated from 
the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and went to work for the 
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. As a U.S. Fish and Wildlife 
Service employee, Hammond conducted wildlife surveys of the 
Lake Clark area and located a homestead along Lake Clark. He 
lived with his wife Bella in their lakeside homestead from 
about 1982 until his death on August 2, 2005. Bella still 
resides in the homestead and enjoys the splendid views of the 
wilderness area.
    In 1959, Hammond was elected to the state legislature and 
served several terms before being elected as a state senator in 
1967. From 1972 to 1974, Hammond was the mayor of the Bristol 
Bay Borough. In 1974, he was elected Governor of Alaska, and 
served the state in that role until 1982. During his tenure, he 
oversaw the building and the opening of the Alaska Pipeline and 
preserved a large portion of the oil lease revenues in the form 
of a Permanent Fund which has been in existence for three 
decades. As a governor who sought to balance the development of 
Alaska's energy resources with the conservation of the state's 
vast untouched natural resources, he worked with the Federal 
government to achieve enactment of the legislation that became 
ANILCA.
    ANILCA protected 104 million acres of land. It added more 
than 40 million acres in 10 new units of the National Park 
System, including the 3.86 million-acre Lake Clark National 
Park and Preserve. The law also designated the 2.6 million 
acres of wilderness within Lake Clark National Park and 
Preserve. Governor Hammond later said that what President 
Carter had done with the signing of ANILCA was ``locking Alaska 
open'' for future generations of Americans to enjoy and 
preserve for all time.
    The National Park Service Management Policies 2006 states 
that ``to be permanently commemorated in a national park is a 
high honor, affording a degree of recognition that implies 
national importance.'' The policies support the commemorative 
naming of national park resources only in cases where there is 
a compelling justification for the recognition. In general, a 
compelling justification involves an association between the 
park and the person that is of exceptional importance, as well 
as a lapse of at least five years since the person's death. The 
designation of wilderness within Lake Clark National Park and 
Preserve in honor of Jay S. Hammond meets these criteria.
    Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony, and I would be 
happy to answer any questions you or other members may have.

                        CHANGES IN EXISTING LAW

    In compliance with paragraph 12 of rule XXVI of the 
Standing Rules of the Senate, the Committee notes that no 
changes in existing law are made by the bill as ordered 
reported.

                                  [all]