Colorado Wilderness Act of 2021
Floor Speech
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I rise today in opposition to this package of en bloc amendments, which is bad for our environment, kills jobs, locks up more lands, and does nothing to reduce our dependence on hostile foreign nations for critical minerals.
One of the amendments in this package is a feasibility study for the Great Dismal Swamp National Heritage Area. Now, the Great Dismal Swamp may technically be located on the Virginia-North Carolina border, but House Democrats attempting to ram through dozens of amendments completely unrelated to the underlying bill, without going through regular order, sure makes it seem like the Great Dismal Swamp is actually located right here in Washington, D.C.
Much like the underlying bill, many of these amendments have not gone through regular order, are not supported by local stakeholders, and do not have the support of the Members whose districts are directly impacted.
One such amendment creates the Ice Age National Scenic Trail as a unit of the National Park Service in Wisconsin. This amendment was offered without the consultation of my colleague on the Natural Resources Committee, Representative Tiffany, and does not have his support. Unlike other trail designation bills that have passed the House by voice vote in previous Congresses, this amendment lacks basic protections to ensure these trails do not have unintended consequences for neighboring communities.
Similarly, the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument Boundary Expansion Act ignores the will and voices of local stakeholders. The Arizona State Land Department expressed concerns to the committee regarding the cooperative agreement language of this amendment and shared that they have encountered numerous problems with these types of agreements in the past. These are exactly the types of concerns that should be vetted through the committee process with testimony from local stakeholders and the affected agencies.
I would like to briefly discuss one amendment offered by my friend and colleague, Representative Panetta from California, that would simply reinforce the status quo policy of forest management in wilderness areas.
I have worked with Representative Panetta on forest management policies in the past, particularly on the wildland-urban interface. I know his heart. I know he has the right intent and wants to do the right thing. But I also know that he is greatly restricted by his own conference on forestry management issues.
While I appreciate his intent, over the past 10 years, we have had nearly seven million acres of wilderness and wilderness study areas burn up in catastrophic wildfires. Land managers and wilderness areas must rely on century-old techniques, like handsaws and shovels when millions of acres of forest are in desperate need of treatment.
Mr. Speaker, 1910 called and it wants its forest management policy back.
Clearly, the status quo isn't working and unfortunately, his amendment won't actually allow for proper forest management and won't stop this bill from hurting our environment.
Michael Jordan once wisely advised: ``If you do the work you get rewarded. There are no shortcuts in life.''
House Democrats are looking to take the shortcut with this amendment package and the underlying bill. Unfortunately, our economy and environment will have to bear the consequences of these misguided policy decisions.
I would strongly urge my colleagues to oppose these amendments, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to focus on wilderness areas. I know it sounds great to have a wilderness area. I have enjoyed spending time myself in wilderness areas, and forestry and wilderness areas are very important to me. Mr. Speaker, I have a degree in forestry, and I have actually been licensed to practice forestry, taken exams to do that. I can tell you, Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike, we all, I think, can appreciate a healthy forest because we know that it provides clean air, it provides clean water, it provides wildlife habitat, and it also provides great places for us to do recreation.
There are certain places where we need wilderness areas, but there are certain places where we do not need wilderness areas. Seven million acres of wilderness area went up in wildfire in the last 10 years. I would love to be able to take my colleagues out to the forest. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I can promise you, actually being in the forest tells a much bigger picture, a much better story.
I would love to go to an area that has been properly managed and then go to a wilderness area that hasn't been managed and be able to make the case that although we can pass these bills and create wilderness areas right now that aren't going to affect us, because it takes a long time for a forest to grow and it takes a long time for a forest to degrade, but our children and our grandchildren are going to suffer the consequences of us locking these lands up and making them subject to catastrophic wildfire in the future.
Mr. Speaker, I understand the sentimental value, the emotional value, in wanting to make more wilderness areas. But I wish we would have a long-term look and think about the impact that this is going to have on the future.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague from Colorado's love for the outdoors. I appreciate his passion to do what is right.
He mentioned the provisions in the Wilderness Act to address insects, disease, and wildfire. Mr. Speaker, that is a Band-Aid. That is what you do after the fact.
What we are proposing is proactive forest management so that you don't have the insects, the disease, and the wildfires. An ounce of prevention is definitely worth a pound of cure.
I would challenge my colleagues to enjoy those scenes and those vistas. I encourage them to take pictures so they can show their children and grandchildren what they looked like before they locked them away in a wilderness area.
Mr. Speaker, this random assortment of amendments does nothing but make a bad bill three times worse. The only difference is that instead of having a package of eight bills that haven't been through regular order that will harm our environment and that will kill jobs in rural communities, we now have a package of 23 bills that haven't been through regular order, will harm the environment, and will kill jobs in rural communities.
No amendment in this package reduces our dependence on hostile foreign nations or critical minerals, improves our supply chains, or bolsters American energy security. No amendment in this package changes how we currently treat forest and wilderness areas with century-old technology like handsaws and shovels. No amendment in this package creates new jobs or bolsters our economic growth.
What does this package do? It just adds more wilderness, more wild and scenic river designations, and more provisions that haven't gone through regular order and do not have the support of Members of Congress directly impacted by those amendments.
Needless to say, this isn't how we should be managing our resources, and it isn't how we should be legislating in Congress.
Mr. Speaker, I strongly urge my colleagues to oppose this package of en bloc amendments, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah for his tireless work on doing what is right for the environment. I use that word ``environment,'' and not the word ``climate,'' because I want people to understand that those two things are different.
Climate is very narrowly focused. Climate is an issue that has made carbon, a necessary element, arch enemy number one. Republicans are about a cleaner, safer, and healthier environment. We are concerned not just about carbon in the atmosphere, but we are concerned about forest health, about air quality, about water quality, about wildlife habitat, about having great places for recreation.
Mr. Speaker, nobody wants to mine inside the Grand Canyon. Nobody is mining inside the Grand Canyon. Nobody ever will mine inside the Grand Canyon. We have already got the Grand Canyon National Park that establishes those boundaries, and these mineral withdrawals are far outside of the actual Grand Canyon.
Mr. Speaker, we want a clean environment. We want a healthy environment. We are all for cleaner technology, but that cleaner technology takes certain things. It takes minerals and elements. It takes research and development. It takes using all of the energy sources that we have.
Why can't we talk about creating more next-generation nuclear power?
It has zero carbon. If your concern is about climate, your concern is about carbon. And nuclear energy doesn't emit carbon.
Why not put hydroelectric plants on existing dams?
We don't have to build new dams. We can add 12,000 megawatts of clean, carbon-free hydropower on existing dams. We can use the natural resources that we have and develop cleaner ways to use them.
As we develop more electrical components and devices that, again, run on carbon-free energy, unless that energy is produced from carbon sources, but we have to have a stable and reliable supply of energy, and we can't have that without developing these resources.
I appreciate the gentleman's concern about not locking up these resources and doing a study to make sure that when we lock them up, we are not locking away our future, we are not taking away the ability for this country to produce our own energy supply, that we are not further relying on a foreign supply chain that is controlled by Communist parties.
Mr. Speaker, we are blessed with a resource-rich country, but we are right now at the mercy of foreign suppliers, especially China, to meet our mineral needs. Resources like lithium, cobalt, gallium, and dozens more will be needed in the billions of pounds to meet the projected growth in electric vehicles and other renewable technologies. Even commodities like copper, which have historically been produced in surplus, are now falling short of demand.
Mr. Speaker, I encourage supporting the gentleman's amendment.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the en bloc amendments that would offer important improvements to the underlying bill.
Unfortunately, this en bloc is only a fraction of the amendments Republicans would have offered if Democrats had held a markup on the bill in the Natural Resources Committee.
It is egregious that House Democrats rejected every single Republican recreation and wildfire amendment offered at the Rules Committee. House Democrats also denied Representative Boebert of Colorado the chance to offer a single amendment to this legislation, despite the fact that one-third of all wilderness designations contained in the entire bill are in her district, and she has never had the chance to even debate it, as a new Member of Congress.
One amendment that I offered is included in this package, and it would rectify the fact that Democrats have arbitrarily included tens of thousands of acres of wilderness designations that have not been recommended for wilderness or do not meet the basic definition of wilderness in the Wilderness Act.
If my Democratic colleagues feel so confident that every single acre in this bill is actually worthy of a wilderness designation, they should have no problem supporting my simple amendment to reaffirm proper wilderness characteristics.
Also included in these amendments is a proposal from one of our freshmen members of the Natural Resources Committee, Representative Moore from Utah. It will protect the rights of counties to have a say in local land use by requiring county approval of wilderness designations.
Representative Stauber also offered a version of this amendment for mineral withdrawals and several amendments that would exclude congressional districts represented by Members of Congress who were not consulted on this legislation and strongly oppose it.
This should not be a difficult hurdle to overcome. In fact, it should be a desirable outcome for the sponsor of these bills. Forcing land management decisions upon local communities without their support is a bad idea.
Another one of our freshman committee members, Representative Herrell of New Mexico, offered an amendment to remove all potential wilderness designations in the bill. This bill designates an amount of area equivalent to the size of President Biden's home State of Delaware, and it includes only one wilderness study area release. We shouldn't be adding potential wilderness to this bill without releasing an equivalent amount of wilderness study area first.
Finally, this package of amendments would improve our American energy security by ensuring continued development of critical energy infrastructure, promoting the responsible utilization of domestic critical minerals, facilitating rights-of-way for utilities, and protecting jobs in the energy sector. In contrast, the underlying bill is just an extension of the Biden ban and will hurt rural jobs and our national security.
Mr. Speaker, I wish that Democrats afforded us more than 10 minutes to consider these amendments that would actually improve our environment and economy through conservation and multiple use.
Mr. Speaker, I would urge all of my colleagues to strongly support this en bloc of amendments, and
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I would love to visit the gentleman's district, take some photos so that we could show future generations what it looked like before it was locked away in wilderness, and maybe be able to talk about some of those forest management activities and how it could help improve the area.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time both sides have remaining.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record this letter from the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce. It says that this bill, if passed, will negatively impact our already fragile economy and jeopardize our economic recovery.
Grand Junction Area, Chamber of Commerce, February 24, 2021. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, Washington, DC.
Dear Congresswoman Boebert: On behalf of the 900 small businesses employing 37,000 people that the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce represents, I am writing to encourage you to oppose H.R. 803, a bill that would lock up public lands in Mesa County and negatively impact our local economy. Our community's economy is still reliant in part on the business activity generated by our legacy industries of agriculture and energy. This bill if passed will negatively impact our already fragile economy and jeopardize our economic recovery.
These are lands that are literally in our backyard in Mesa County yet Congresswoman DeGette continues to ignore us, does not meet with us, and does not even consider the consequences of her bill on the hardworking families of our areas.
In addition to opposing H.R. 803 our organization supports the various amendments you are proposing be added to the bill that include keeping the BLM Headquarters in Grand Junction Colorado, requiring that affected counties must approve the Wilderness Designation and protects grazing and water rights.
We appreciate your efforts to help retain jobs and the diversity of our local economy by opposing H.R. 803 and offering amendments to help preserve the livelihood of our families and our water life. Sincerely, Diane Schwenke, President/CEO.
Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues that if you want to improve our environment, if you are worried about job losses in your district, if you think we should secure our supply chains and improve American energy independence, if you think our forests need to be properly managed to avoid catastrophic wildfires, and if you enjoy recreating in our public lands, you should vote for this amendment package.
The underlying bill is a feel-good bill that hurts our economy and environment. We won't have to suffer the consequences of that. It will be our children and our grandchildren who have to live with the fact that we don't have forests because we burned them all down and we don't have jobs because we outsourced our domestic mining industry to Russia and China.
It shouldn't be a surprise to anybody that the Democrats didn't want to put a package this disastrous for our economy and environment through regular order. They may be able to limit our ability to debate this package, but there is no hiding the truth: This legislation is a land grab that devastates the very communities and lands it claims to support and protect.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the en bloc amendments and oppose the underlying bill. I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
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