National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. DeGETTE. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of my amendment to add the first six titles of the Protecting America's Wilderness in Public Lands Act to this year's NDAA bill.

This legislation will preserve nearly 1.3 million acres of public land across Colorado, California, and Washington State, and it will add more than 1,000 miles of river to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

Preserving these untouched public lands from the threat of future development is more than just protecting our environment. It is about protecting our economy and jobs and our western way of life. It is also about ensuring that some of our Nation's most elite military pilots have the opportunity and the space they need to train.

Included in the nearly 1.3 million acres of land this measure would protect are some of our Nation's most important military training grounds, including the High Altitude Aviation Training Site, or HAATS, in Colorado, that is responsible for training some of our most elite helicopter pilots to take on some of the harshest conditions anywhere on the planet.

As a fourth-generation Coloradoan, I know how important these lands are to the people in my State, and I know how important these training grounds are to the brave men and women who serve in our Nation's military.

The designations included in this amendment were not made up overnight. They were the result of decades of hard work by citizens across the State of Colorado, and they have garnered widespread support among the public across the West.

It is why the legislation has been passed by this Chamber now three times in just 2 years, including as a part of last year's NDAA bill, and again, this year, as a standalone bill.

I want to thank my colleagues, Representatives Huffman, Carbajal, Chu, Schiff, Kilmer, Neguse, and the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, Chairman Grijalva, for their unwavering support and all the work they have done to get this package to the floor.

I urge all Members to vote ``yes'' on the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. DeGETTE. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff).
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. DeGETTE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, all of the six areas in this bill have been studied, have been worked on, and have been under consideration for several decades, as my colleague, Mr. Schiff, pointed out.

The areas in Colorado in my bill were originally designated as wilderness study areas in the 1980s, and they have already been managed as wilderness for almost 40 years. What this would do is it would simply make permanent what everybody in Colorado knows. These are the most special wild areas that we can have.

My colleague from Colorado alleges that helicopter training would be prevented by this bill, but, in fact, that is incorrect. After working with the National Guard, we withdrew the areas that were scheduled to be wilderness and called them potential wilderness so that the helicopters can continue to land there, as I pointed out in my opening statement, allowing our military to have the high-level training that they need.

Finally, to my knowledge, there are no rare minerals in any of the six potential areas of this bill. In fact, what we are doing is simply preserving for future generations the wilderness that we all know and the wilderness that stimulates jobs and the economy throughout the West.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this amendment and preserve these very special places, and I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source