Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act

CENTRAL IDAHO ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND RECREATION ACT -- (House of Representatives - July 24, 2006)

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Mr. SIMPSON. Madam Speaker, in regard to the opening statement, I notice that this bill really is not being rushed to the floor. It has been in development for 6 years. I wouldn't call that rushing anything to the floor. In fact, it has been in the form of a bill for over 3 years, so people have had a chance to look at it and know what we have been talking about here.

Idahoans know that the Boulder-White Clouds are some of the most beautiful mountains in Idaho. They also know they have been the subject of some of the most contentious wilderness debates in our time.

H.R. 3603, the Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act, marks a new area in wilderness creation, one in which the needs of the people who live and recreate in the area are as important as the lines drawn on a map. The old approach to wilderness of sacrificing the needs of individuals and specific user groups to the benefit of others will not work anymore. Those who are affected by wilderness must be a part of the solution.

During the past 6 years, my staff and I had countless meetings with the groups and individuals that will be impacted by my proposed wilderness designation. These meetings included Custer County's commissioners, elected city officials, ranchers, snowmobilers, off-road vehicle users, outfitters, conservationists and others, as well as public meetings in Stanley, Challis, and Ketchum. What I heard made me believe that we could find a positive outcome in the management of the Boulder-White Clouds that benefits all users.

H.R. 3603 represents my best effort at crafting a compromise piece of legislation in a manner where no one is unfairly impacted. We are providing economic stability for Custer County. We are securing roads and trails for today's motorized recreation users and future generations of motorized users. We are working on providing economic viability to ranching families, and we are creating three substantive wilderness areas that have an area half the size of the State of Rhode Island. We are even creating the first handicapped-accessible wheelchair trail into wilderness.

By passing this bill, we can put to rest many longstanding conflicts and move ahead to a stronger, more secure economy in the rugged, beautiful, and productive heart of Idaho. This bill meets the needs of today's users and secures the future for generations of Idahoans who want to continue using and enjoying the beautiful Boulder-White Clouds.

Henry Clay once stated that ``politics is not about ideological purity or moral self-righteousness. It is about governing, and if a politician cannot compromise, he cannot govern effectively.''

Today, we have an opportunity to show that we can, in fact, govern effectively.

I want to thank the following individuals who have helped me over the last 6 years in creating this bill. First, I want to thank the chairman of the full committee and Ranking Member Rahall; subcommittee Chairman WALDEN and Ranking Member TOM UDALL for their work on this. Custer County Commissioners Wayne Butts, Cliff Hansen and Linn Hintze, Blaine County Commissioners Sarah Michaels and Tom Bowman, Stanley Mayor Hannah Stouts, Former Governor Cecil Andrus, Former Senator Jim McClure, Bob Hayes, Bethine Church and the Sawtooth Society, Rick Johnson, Linn Kincannon with the Idaho Conservation League, Bart Koehler, Tim Mahoney, Marcia Argust, Erik Schultze.

And to the staff of the Resources Committee, particularly Erica Tergeson and Doug Crandall, and to Greg Kostka at the legislative counsel who drafted countless versions of this legislation.

And, finally, I want to thank those who put the most work into this, my staff: Lindsay Slater, my chief of staff; Laurel Hall; Josh Heird; and Nikki Watts for their incredible efforts on this piece of legislation.

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Mr. SIMPSON. Madam Speaker, I have to respond to a couple of the statements that were been made because I know that they have been made over the past by the Sierra Club and others.

First of all, the Wilderness Society and the Campaign for American Wilderness would not be supporting this bill if we actually had wilderness-weakening provisions in this. And while there are compromises in that, and the comment of the ranking member, Mr. Rahall, that we should not have a quid pro quo, that is kind of the nature of a compromise, that there are some things in it that you like and some things that you do not like. There are provisions of this bill which I personally am not in favor of, but they were necessary in order to get the compromise that is necessary in order to pass this legislation and protect these lands.

First of all, the land transfers that are being talked about, they total about 3,600 acres. This is in a county that is 95 public land, over 95 percent. Out of a total of 3.2 million acres in this county, we are talking about transferring about 3,600 acres. These are not the beautiful mountains that you see in the pictures. These are mostly desert lands, sagebrush lands. They will help the county do things like find room for their landfill, other things like that which will help in the economic development of this county.

Most people that have looked at the actual lands that are being transferred are not opposed to them except for a small portion of them that are actually in Stanley, and in Stanley the city of Stanley has to repay the Federal Government for these lands that were actually purchased by the Federal Government.

I would also say that if there was a great deal of concern about these land transfers and what it is going to do to the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, the Sawtooth Society would not be supporting this. Frank Church's wife, Bethine Church, would not be supporting this, as well as the other members of the Sawtooth Society. Neither would the Boulder-White Clouds Council be supporting in this. So it is a compromise. There are provisions in it that you can find that you do not like.

One of the interesting things is that the Sierra Club says there is no Federal reserved water rights on this

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Mr. SIMPSON. One last comment, Madam Speaker. The argument I found so strange by the Sierra Club is that they say that this does not have Federal water right protection in it. And you are right. It does not have Federal water right protection in it. It does not need Federal water right protection in it because the wilderness area is all headwaters. Whatever falls on the ground from the sky, whatever comes out of the springs there, are protected by the wilderness designation. It does not need Federal water right designation because there is no water right to protect. So I have never understood their argument.

But the reality is that we protect water in this bill better than any wilderness bill that has ever passed because the Wilderness Act itself allows for the President on his declaration to go into a wilderness area and build a dam or other things for irrigation purposes if he declares that that is necessary. That is one of the actual compromises that were made when the Wilderness Act was enacted. We take away the President's right to do that. He could not go in and designate certain areas to be used for irrigation and build dams and take water or anything else. The water that falls on the land will be preserved for the Boulder-White Clouds Wilderness.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentlewoman's concern, and I appreciate the fact that this is a compromise and that there are people on both sides of this issue, in fact, on all sides, there are multiple sides, who do not like this, who do not think it goes far enough in their direction. But the nature of a compromise is that you try to bring people toward the middle. You try to bring people toward a center that they can say we get more out of this bill than we lose.

If we were to draft the perfect bill that you liked, that the Sierra Club liked, we could never get it passed because the people on the other side would then be violently opposed to it. So what we are trying to do is reach that balance where we can actually protect the Boulder-White Clouds, and if you have ever been there, it is something that deserves protecting.

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