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71-552 PS 2001

ENERGY IMPACTS OF THE

ROADLESS RULE

JOINT OVERSIGHT HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND

MINERAL RESOURCES

AND THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTS AND FOREST HEALTH

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

April 4, 2001

Serial No. 107-16

Printed for the use of the Committee on Resources

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house

or

Committee address: http://resourcescommittee.house.gov

(II)

COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES

JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah, Chairman

NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia, Ranking Democrat Member

Don Young, Alaska,

Vice Chairman

W.J. ‘‘Billy’’ Tauzin, Louisiana

Jim Saxton, New Jersey

Elton Gallegly, California

John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee

Joel Hefley, Colorado

Wayne T. Gilchrest, Maryland

Ken Calvert, California

Scott McInnis, Colorado

Richard W. Pombo, California

Barbara Cubin, Wyoming

George Radanovich, California

Walter B. Jones, Jr., North Carolina

Mac Thornberry, Texas

Chris Cannon, Utah

John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania

Bob Schaffer, Colorado

Jim Gibbons, Nevada

Mark E. Souder, Indiana

Greg Walden, Oregon

Michael K. Simpson, Idaho

Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado

J.D. Hayworth, Arizona

C.L. ‘‘Butch’’ Otter, Idaho

Tom Osborne, Nebraska

Jeff Flake, Arizona

Dennis R. Rehberg, Montana

George Miller, California

Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan

Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon

Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, American Samoa

Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii

Solomon P. Ortiz, Texas

Frank Pallone, Jr., New Jersey

Calvin M. Dooley, California

Robert A. Underwood, Guam

Adam Smith, Washington

Donna M. Christensen, Virgin Islands

Ron Kind, Wisconsin

Jay Inslee, Washington

Grace F. Napolitano, California

Tom Udall, New Mexico

Mark Udall, Colorado

Rush D. Holt, New Jersey

James P. McGovern, Massachusetts

Anibal Acevedo-Vila, Puerto Rico

Hilda L. Solis, California

Brad Carson, Oklahoma

Betty McCollum, Minnesota

Allen D. Freemyer, Chief of Staff

Lisa Pittman, Chief Counsel

Michael S. Twinchek, Chief Clerk

James H. Zoia, Democrat Staff Director

Jeff Petrich, Democrat Chief Counsel

(III)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND MINERAL RESOURCES

BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming, Chairman

RON KIND, Wisconsin, Ranking Democrat Member

W.J. ‘‘Billy’’ Tauzin, Louisiana

Mac Thornberry, Texas

Chris Cannon, Utah

Jim Gibbons, Nevada,

Vice Chairman

Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado

C.L. ‘‘Butch’’ Otter, Idaho

Jeff Flake, Arizona

Dennis R. Rehberg, Montana

Nick J. Rahall II, West Virginia

Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts

Solomon P. Ortiz, Texas

Calvin M. Dooley, California

Jay Inslee, Washington

Grace F. Napolitano, California

Brad Carson, Oklahoma

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTS AND FOREST HEALTH

SCOTT McINNIS, Colorado, Chairman

JAY INSLEE, Washington, Ranking Democrat Member

John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee

John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania,

Vice Chairman

Mark E. Souder, Indiana

Michael K. Simpson, Idaho

Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado

J.D. Hayworth, Arizona

C.L. ‘‘Butch’’ Otter, Idaho

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan

Tom Udall, New Mexico

Mark Udall, Colorado

Rush D. Holt, New Jersey

Anibal Acevedo-Vila, Puerto Rico

Betty McCollum, Minnesota

(V)

CONTENTS

Page

Hearing held on April 4, 2001 ................................................................................ 1

Statement of Members:

Cubin, Hon. Barbara, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Wyoming ........................................................................................................ 3

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 5

Kind, Hon. Ron, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Wisconsin, Prepared statement of ............................................................... 14

McInnis, Hon. Scott, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Colorado, Prepared statement of ................................................................. 2

Otter, Hon. C.L. ‘‘Butch’’, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Idaho, Prepared statement of .................................................................. 17

Rahall, Hon. Nick J. II, a Representative in Congress from the State

of West Virginia ............................................................................................ 6

Statement of Witnesses:

Eppink, Jeffrey, Vice President, Advanced Resources International ........... 35

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 37

Lance, Hon. Alan G., Attorney General, State of Idaho ................................ 8

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 10

Morton, Dr. Peter A., Resource Economist, The Wilderness Society ........... 57

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 58

Letter from The Ecological Society of America submitted for the

record ...................................................................................................... 68

Moyer, Steve, Vice President of Conservation Programs, Trout Unlimited 38

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 43

Letter to The Honorable Barbara Cubin and The Honorable

Ron Kind submitted for the record ...................................................... 40

Phillips, Randle G., Deputy Chief for Programs and Legislation, Forest

Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture .................................................... 30

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 32

Letters from the Office of Advocacy, Small Business Administration,

and other materials submitted for the record ..................................... 72

Schaefer, Greg, Director, External Affairs, Arch Coal Company ................. 47

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 48

Additional materials supplied:

Report entitled ‘‘Endogenous Substitution Among Energy Resources and

Global Warming’’ submitted for the record ................................................. 125

(1)

JOINT OVERSIGHT HEARING ON ‘‘ENERGY

IMPACTS OF THE ROADLESS RULE’’

Wednesday, April 4, 2001

U.S. House of Representatives

Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, joint with the

Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health

Committee on Resources

Washington, DC

The Subcommittees met, pursuant to notice, at 1:27 p.m. in

Room 1324, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Scott McInnis,

[Chairman of the Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health] and

Hon. Barbara Cubin [Chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy

and Mineral Resources] presiding.

Mr. MCINNIS. The Committee on Resources Subcommittee on

Forest and Forest Health in the joint oversight hearing on energy

impacts of the roadless rule will come to order.

Here is what our schedule looks like this afternoon. As you know,

it is 1:30 now. That clock is wrong, by the way. A couple of things

we would like to go over. Number one, we would like to have this

hearing completed within a two-hour period of time. Unfortunately,

during that period of the two hours we will be interrupted with voting, which we did not anticipate, but the meeting must conclude by

3:30.

With that in mind, what I have done as Chairman is exercised

my discretion and taken the witness list out of order. I intend to

call our witnesses first who are from out of town in hopes that we

can complete your testimony.

Under the rules of this Committee we allow the witnesses 5 minutes. We have a timer that is sitting on your desk there on the witness table. I ask that you comply with it. It gives you warning

when you come close to the end of your time expiration. And in

order that we can complete as much of this hearing as possible

within the allotted time, I ask that everyone respect the time limits

that have been allotted.

Congresswoman Cubin will be joining us shortly. She is cochairing the meeting so I would expect that I will turn the meeting

over for her to chair not long after she gets here.

I am going to go ahead and waive my opening remarks, again in

hopes, as a courtesy to the witnesses, that we can get as many witnesses as possible on so I will submit my remarks for the record.

[The prepared statement of Mr. McInnis follows:]

2

Statement of The Honorable Scott Mcinnis, Chairman,

Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health

The RARE I and RARE II (Roadless Area Review and Evaluations) in 1971 and

1977, were attempts to deal with the debate over roadless areas, each in a single

national process. Both times, they proved unsuccessful legally and politically. In response, through passage of the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) in 1976,

Congress provided for the further protection of roadless areas, but on a forest-byforest basis. It directed the Forest Service to develop forest plans for the management of those forests, utilizing significant local and state input, then move resulting

wilderness recommendations through Congress. This process, while deliberate and

at times cumbersome, resulted in significant protections for roadless areas and the

creation of more than 30 million acres of congressionally designated wilderness on

the national forests. While somewhat controversial, this process nevertheless managed to resolve most disagreements through thoughtful compromise. Ultimately and

unfortunately, these compromises were not acceptable to some groups and individuals, who were then able to convince the Clinton Administration to take another

run at the roadless issue in yet another single national process. Repeating the mistakes of history, the Clinton Administration moved forward a top-down roadless

rule-making process, trading a hard-won local consensus for an explosive national

controversy. In so doing, it created a new, illegal process with striking similarities

to the failed RARE I and RARE II national initiatives.

This is unfortunate because to most of us in Congress there has never been any

question that some roadless areas deserve further protection, it is simply a matter

of how best to do it. To cram a one-size-fits-all political edict down the throats of

the states could not have been more polarizing and damaging to the issue itself. It

should therefore come as no surprise that a number of states have filed, or are in

the process of filing, lawsuits against the rule -- and it is likely that the states will

prevail. This also should come as no surprise, considering that the Administration

denied all Freedom of Information Act requests and all Cooperating Agency Status

applications filed by affected states. Consider also that accurate maps were not

made available during the public comment period, in violation of the Administrative

Procedures Act. Consider that the Administration developed the policy in lockstep

coordination with a handful of national environmental groups and in conjunction

with their multimillion dollar roadless campaign—a likely violation of the Federal

Advisory Committee Act. Consider that no small business or small government analysis was done to comply with the Regulatory Flexibility Act. Consider that many

forest plans will have to be revised as a result of the rule, violating the National

Forest Management Act. Consider that it usually takes the Forest Service two to

three years to do a legally defensible EIS for a timber sale covering only 300 acres,

yet it took the Administration only one year to do a single massive EIS covering

58 million acres. How many ‘‘considerations’’ does it take before it becomes painfully

obvious that the roadless initiative was not undertaken to solve environmental problems but rather was done for the purpose of creating a partisan political issue.

It’s no secret that if you want broad national policies to be accepted broadly, you

must get a critical mass of buy-in from the public, both nationally and locally. Polls

asking only whether roadless areas deserve protection, while avoiding how this

should be done, do not accurately represent the public’s sentiments on the issue.

Anyone who really believes that a lasting solution to the roadless debate can be

achieved by forcing it through politically, at the national level, without substantial

involvement at the state and local level is delusional.

I am willing to work with anyone concerning further protection of roadless areas,

but never at the expense of effective local participation. These are not mutually exclusive goals and, in fact, they can only be achieved together.

Mr. MCINNIS. I would also request that other members of the

Committee waive their opening remarks and just submit them for

the record. Is that all right, Mr. Udall? Mr. Otter?

Mr. OTTER. That is fine.

Mr. MCINNIS. Mr. Otter, would you like to introduce the first witness?

Mr. OTTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me begin

by thanking you for calling this very important meeting that has

had a devastating effect on Idaho—on our economy and our way of

3

life, on our big game habitat, you name it. It has been a problem

for us.

I am proud to bring before the Committee today Alan G. Lance,

who is the Attorney General for the State of Idaho. Al Lance was

elected as the 31st Attorney General of the State of Idaho in 1994

when I was elected to my third term as Lieutenant Governor for

the State, and Al and I had the chance to work a term and a half

very close together.

Attorney General Lance’s leadership has resulted in the successful consolidation of legal services to the State of Idaho, an effort

sought by previous Attorneys General for more than two decades.

So General Lance is well known for his austere moves and abilities

to save Idaho taxpayers as much as $1.6 million thus far and many

more to come.

General Lance has done a terrific job on a national front for the

State of Idaho. He is recognized as a national leader in the battle

against domestic terrorism. Legislation that he sponsored in Idaho

has become a national model for dealing with the extremist groups

and the surviving families.

General Lance signed a monumental agreement with the tobacco

industry on November 18, 1998, unprecedented by any of our sister

states, for $712 million, which is the largest civil settlement in

Idaho’s history.

General Lance has served as the Chairman of the Conference of

Western Attorneys General in 1999 and the year 2000 and he is

currently a member of the Strategic Planning Committee on the

National Association of Attorneys General.

Mr. Chairman, I bring before you today a well qualified advocate

for the position which I hold for the State of Idaho and the roadless

area issue and I am proud to say the champion, the first champion

that has been willing to come forward to subject the last Administration’s land grab in the State of Idaho and in the West to court

resolve.

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, I present to you

Alan G. Lance, Attorney General of the State of Idaho.

Mr. MCINNIS. Mr. Lance, prior to you beginning your testimony

I would like to welcome the Co-Chair of the Committee, Barbara

Cubin, Congresswoman from Wyoming. I will turn the microphone

over to her. Following her remarks, Mr. Lance, we will go immediately to your remarks.

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE BARBARA CUBIN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WYOMING

Mrs. CUBIN. Thank you and thank you for your patience.

This Subcommittee meets today jointly with our sister Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health, in our oversight capacity

to take testimony on the impact of the Clinton Administration’s

roadless area conservation rule. Our Subcommittee wishes to focus

on the ‘‘opportunity costs’’ of this policy upon our nation’s energy

supply. By that I mean the potential of the affected National Forest

System lands to host deposits of natural gas, coal, oil and other

mineral resources which could contribute to domestic energy supplies.

4

The Energy Subcommittee has held several such oversight hearings to examine the role of public lands and minerals and what role

they can play in alleviating the current energy crisis. We are now

focusing on the roadless rule. With the able assistance of Chairman

McInnis, we hope to understand better the pending transportation

policy of the U.S. Forest Service. I guess it is not pending; it is the

case now.

My interest in this issue was aroused when I learned that late

last year that the Department of Energy had contracted to analyze

the impact of the draft roadless rule on oil and gas resources availability. Despite the serious concerns raised by the DOE, senior officials of the OMB and also the Council on Environmental Quality,

the Forest Service and several influential environmental groups decided to meet in early December of 2000 and recommend to President Clinton an alternative which they knew would have a major

impact. There certainly was an effort by some to write a rule which

would not have reached the $100 million impact threshold by exempting mineral leasing activities from the roadless policy. In the

end though, the decision was made to exempt no one. Instead they

chose to forge quickly ahead with the little time available in order

to make the ‘‘midnight rule’’ effective before the new President was

sworn in. And we are all left to clean up the mess.

I have concerns that the past Administration inadequately analyzed the impact of the rule upon the small business community,

a requirement of the Regulatory Flexibility Act for major rules. But

this is hardly the first time they have run roughshod over these

folks. The small hardrock mineral miners successfully sued when

the BLM tried to ignore them in a rush to make new rules. Perhaps that will also be the case here, although I am told that the

Forest Service has argued that the roadless policy is not subject to

this law.

One legacy of Bill Clinton which is just beginning to be recognized is the energy situation in which our nation has been left. The

past decade was one of denial. The Internet-driven economy was

booming. Why should they worry about power demands versus supplies? The previous Administration felt OPEC could not set the

price of crude oil like they did in the ’70’s and ’80’s, so why should

they concern themselves about import dependence? They felt

natural gas was so plentiful that we would be able to put off-limits

some of the best hunting grounds for replacement supplies—

including the public lands of our Rock Mountain basins with high

potential for development of significant energy resources. We are

all feeling the effects of that poor policy direction.

The cavalier attitude of the past CEQ Chairman and the recently

retired Chief of the Forest Service is simply baffling. As with the

argument that ANWR’s estimated 10 billion barrels of oil represents only six months of domestic demand, so it was said that

DOE’s estimate of 11 trillion cubic feet of roadless area gas is only

six months of our national production. In the aggregate these

amounts do matter.

Chief Dombeck even stated in a January 5, 2001 letter to OMB,

and this is a quote, ‘‘If exploration and development did occur, it

would likely be five to 10 years before any production would occur,

because oil and gas leasing is a lengthy process. Therefore the

5

value would not be realized in the near future and any production

would be spread over multiple years in the future.’’ So what is wrong with this picture? Mr. Dombeck acknowledged

that natural gas to be developed from these lands would be an additional increment of supply over many years, not six months. Yet

he argued against exempting energy leasing from the roadless proposal, anyway. On the date he signed this letter spot prices for natural gas were hovering around $10 per million BTUs of energy— five times the long-term average—and in Southern California the

prices were hitting over $50. But because roadless gas could not get

to market this winter, the previous administration chose to continue down the road of denial. They chose to lock up these resources and further reduce our ability to increase our own energy

supply.

In addition to the gas resources taken off the board, there was

a great deal of access to coal reserves also restricted by this policy.

The former Chief felt there was plenty of coal outside the roadless

areas, so they should not worry about the rule’s impact on coal production. This was while California was warning that rolling blackouts were about to happen, and they did happen.

I am here to tell you they will need more coal-fired power from

Utah, not less. What were they thinking when they recommended

that Bill Clinton promulgate this rule? Could they have been any

more short-sighted than they were? It reminds me of the story of

how Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

Chairman McInnis, I look forward to this hearing and I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses as we try to understand the

effects of this roadless policy.

[The prepared statement of Mrs. Cubin follows:]

Statement of The Honorable Barbara Cubin, Chairman,

Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources

The Subcommittee meets today jointly with our sister Subcommittee on Forests

and Forest Health, in our oversight capacity to take testimony on the impact of the

Clinton Administration’s roadless area conservation rule. Our subcommittee wishes

to focus on the ‘‘opportunity cost’’ of this policy upon our nation’s energy supply. By

that I mean the potential of the affected National Forest System lands to host deposits of natural gas, oil, coal and other mineral resources which could contribute

to domestic energy supplies.

The Energy Subcommittee has held several such oversight hearings to examine

the role public lands and minerals can play in alleviating our current energy crisis.

We are now focusing in on the roadless rule, with the able assistance of Chairman

McInnis, to help us understand the pending transportation policy of U.S. Forest

Service.

My interest in this issue was aroused when I learned late last year that the Department of Energy had contracted to analyze the impact of the draft roadless rule

on oil and gas resource availability. Despite the serious concerns raised by DoE, senior officials of the Office of Management and Budget and also the Council on Environmental Quality, the Forest Service and several influential environmental groups

decided to meet in early December 2000 and recommend to President Clinton an

alternative which they knew would have a major impact.

There certainly was an effort by some to write a rule which would not have

reached the $100 million impact threshold, by exempting mineral leasing activities

from the roadless policy. In the end, the decision was made to exempt no one. Instead they chose to forge quickly ahead with the little time available in order to

make the ‘‘midnight rule’’ effective before the new President was sworn in. And we

are all left to clear up the mess.

I have concerns that the past Administration inadequately analyzed the impact

of the rule upon the small business community, a requirement of the Regulatory

Flexibility Act for major rules. But this is hardly the first time they ran roughshod

6

over these folks. The small hardrock miners successfully sued when BLM tried to

ignore them in a rush to rulemaking. Perhaps that will also be the case here, although I’m told that the Forest Service has argued the roadless policy is not subject

to this law.

One legacy of Bill Clinton which is just beginning to be recognized is the energy

situation in which our nation has been left. The past decade was one of denial. The

internet-driven economy was booming, why should they worry about power demands

versus supplies? The previous administration felt OPEC couldn’t set the price of

crude oil like they did in the ‘‘70s and ‘‘80s, so why should they concern themselves

about import dependence?

They felt natural gas was so plentiful that we would be able to put off-limits some

of the best ‘‘hunting grounds’’ for replacement supplies - including the public lands

of our Rocky Mountain basins with high potential for development of significant energy resources. We are all feeling the effects of that poor policy direction.

The cavalier attitude of the past CEQ Chairman and the recently retired Chief

of the Forest Service is simply baffling. As with the argument that ANWR’s estimated 10 billion barrels of oil represents only six months domestic demand, so it

was said that DoE’s estimate of 11 trillion cubic feet of Roadless area gas is only

six months of our national production. In the aggregate, these amounts do matter.

Chief Dombeck even stated in a January 5, 2001 letter to OMB, ‘‘if exploration

and development did occur, it would likely be 5 to 10 years before any production

would occur, because oil and gas leasing is a lengthy process. Therefore the value

would not be realized in the near future, and any production would be spread over

multiple years in the future.— So what is wrong with this picture? Mr. Dombeck acknowledged that natural gas

to be developed from these lands would be an additional increment of supply over

many years, not six months. Yet he argued against exempting energy leasing from

the Roadless proposal anyway. On the date he signed this letter spot prices for natural gas were hovering around $10 per million BTUs of energy - five times the longterm average - and in southern California the prices were hitting over $50.

But, because roadless gas couldn’t get to market this winter, the previous administration choose to continue down the road of denial. They choose to lock up these

resources and further reduce our ability to increase our energy supply.

In addition to the gas reserves taken off the board, there was a great deal of access to coal reserves also restricted by the policy. The former Chief felt there was

plenty of coal outside the roadless areas, so they shouldn’t worry about the rule’s impact on coal production. This was while California was warning that rolling blackouts were about to happen. And they did.

I am here to tell you, they will need more coal-fired power from Utah, not less.

What were they thinking when they recommended that Bill Clinton promulgate this

rule? Could they have been any more short-sighted? It reminds me of the story of

how Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

Chairman McInnis, I look forward to hearing the testimony of our witnesses as

we try to understand the effects of this roadless policy.

Mr. MCINNIS. Thank you, Madam Chairman.

Now I will recognize Mr. Rahall. Then we will go to you, Mr.

Lance, but I will recognize Mr. Rahall to present the minority

opening remarks, as well as his own. Mr. Rahall?

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE NICK J. RAHALL, II, A

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF

WEST VIRGINIA

Mr. RAHALL. Thank you, Mr. McInnis. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate very much your allowing me to give this opening testimony.

If the government is to run more like a business, as many in the

business community have urged us to do throughout the years,

then it would seem to me that we should all agree that the roadless

rule makes economic sense. I make this observation because the

380,000 miles of roads in our national forests are not by any

stretch of the imagination being maintained. The Forest Service is

receiving only about 20 percent of the funds it annually needs to

keep these roads in repair and we are faced with an $8.4 billion

7

capital improvement backlog. The results—a rash of public health,

safety and environmental threats.

Once built, people in rural communities begin to use many of

these roads but they do so at their own peril. The state of disrepair

is so bad that landslides and slope failures put not only these people at risk but also endanger entire watersheds and critical fish

and wildlife habitats.

It seems to me that prudence dictates that we first fix what we

have rather than build more roads in national forests only to then

have them deteriorate once the timber or energy companies are

done with them.

Frankly, I believe it is unfair to the American taxpayer to have

to shoulder this burden. The public is being called upon to subsidize these extractive industries, to add to their profit margin, and

then to be saddled with the responsibility of maintaining these

roads long after the timber is gone, the oil and gas is drilled, or

the coal is mined. That is hardly an attractive proposition.

So I would submit that the first question, Mr. Chairman, that we

should ask is whether these industries are willing to help finance

repairing the existing roads as well as pay to maintain any new

roads before any consideration is given to opening up these

roadless areas. If they are, then in my opinion we have something

to discuss, but I do not see that mentioned in any of the testimony

that will be given to us today.

We have had several hearings in this Committee already on the

issue of producing more energy from public lands and I think those

calling these hearings are becoming more desperate. Energy production from these lands was at an all-time high during the Clinton Administration. Oil production from Federal areas already account for 27 percent of the U.S. total: natural gas, 38 percent of

the total; coal, 33 percent of that total. And where will the major

new production could come from? The OCS? Well, much of that is

off-limits due to leasing moratoria supported by both Republicans

and Democrats.

So this Committee is now reduced to looking at opening up national monuments and pristine roadless areas, which amount to

only 2 percent of the lands in the continental U.S. If that is the

case, why not set a drill pad down in Yellowstone National Park?

It would be 100 percent certain that wells at Old Faithful would

generate geothermal power. While you are at it, why not build a

dam in Grand Canyon National Park? It would be 100 percent certain that hydropower from the new dam on the Colorado would

generate electricity. But the fact of the matter is that the American

people would overwhelmingly oppose such a trade-off of national

treasures for energy development.

I do not believe that this nation is so desperate, so short of alternatives, that we should now sacrifice our remaining pristine forest

roadless areas which, by the way, have been opened to energy leasing for decades, so that the American people will have what apparently some view as the honor of subsidizing these activities even

further. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MCINNIS. Welcome Mr. Inslee, the Ranking Member on the

Forest Subcommittee.

8

Mr. Lance, we are now prepared for you to begin your comments.

You may proceed.

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ALAN G. LANCE, ATTORNEY

GENERAL, STATE OF IDAHO, ACCOMPANIED BY THORPE

ORTON, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF

Mr. LANCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Madam Chair. Let me

take this opportunity to introduce Thorpe Orton, my Deputy Chief

of Staff, who has been the project manager on the roadless proposal.

Congressman Otter, thank you very much for that generous although brief introduction.

Congressman Simpson, good to see you again, sir.

Congressman Rahall, thank you for your perspective on this.

My good friend, Tom Udall, former attorney general of New Mexico, Tom.

Congressman Udall, nice to see you, Mark, and Congressman

McCollum.

Let me start out by explaining Idaho’s lawsuit. First of all, it was

filed on behalf of the Land Board. The Land Board consists of five

constitutional officers, which would be the governor, the attorney

general, the superintendent of public instruction, the secretary of

state and our controller, five constitutional officers. The Land

Board’s responsibility is to manage the state lands within the State

of Idaho. The proceeds of that management go to fund our endowed

institutions, which are the schools, and for the benefit of the school

children of the State of Idaho.

For the minority members I think it is significant to note that

all five members of the Land Board filed the lawsuit and have been

opposed to this roadless initiative from its inception. The composition is three Republicans and two Democrats on the Land Board

in the State of Idaho and all five are plaintiffs in the lawsuit

against the Forest Service at the present time. In Idaho this is not

a partisan issue; this is a bread and butter issue.

Sixty-five percent of our land mass in the State of Idaho is presently under Federal management, and I might say mismanagement. Last year we lost 1.2 million acres to forest fires as a result

of years of neglect, by the Forest Service and forest policy.

Idaho has actually filed two lawsuits against the roadless initiative. The lawsuits were filed through the Idaho State Board of

Land Commissioners, which I have described to you. The Land

Board is bipartisan, composed of five statewide-elected constitutional officers. The Land Board manages the State of Idaho’s endowment lands to maximize revenue for our public schools, whose

lands are impacted by the roadless rule substantially.

The thrust of our case is quite simple. NEPA requires meaningful public notice and comment and that means meaningful to the

citizens of the State of Idaho, who stand to lose 9.5 million acres

in inventoried roads to this initiative.

President Clinton called the roadless initiative one of the largest

land preservation efforts in America’s history. It was not, however,

put through anything close to an equally historic public comment

period. Instead, the notice of intent was issued just six days after

President Clinton’s announcement. The public was given just 60

9

days to comment during the scoping period. Forest Service Chief

Michael Dombeck called the proposal urgent and told his agency

that it cannot afford to waste a single day. Indeed the roadless proposal impacts 58.5 million acres of inventoried roadless areas. We

cannot tell how many acres of uninventoried acres are impacted

but Idaho alone accounts for 9.5 million acres of inventoried

roadless lands.

The Forest Service-touted website for public information on the

roadless service was, by and large, totally useless during the entire

scoping period. Public meetings in Idaho began just 12 business

days before the deadline expired. The Freedom of Information Act

information which was requested and filed by my office, was totally

ignored and we had to bring a lawsuit to get the information that

we desired.

Idaho’s first lawsuit was filed on December 30, 1999. The court

had to dismiss our lawsuit at that time due to the issue of ripeness

but it provided a rather stern warning to the Forest Service. The

warning included the following statements by the court, and I

quote. ‘‘The Forest Service should make every effort to ensure that

the process is properly implemented with reasonable time frames

to allow meaningful participation by the public.’’ And I quote again. ‘‘When the areas contemplated to be roadless

are not defined or shown by way of maps or otherwise illustrated,

one does not have to be learned in the law to determine that the

public’s participation will hardly be meaningful.’’ I quote again. ‘‘The Forest Service should proceed with caution.

Time is not of the essence on this issue that has been studied for

over 30 years.’’ Idaho’s second lawsuit: Despite Idaho’s efforts and the court’s

warning, the Forest Service pressed forward, rejecting requests for

extensions of comment periods and ignoring Freedom of Information Act requests. The DEIS comment period was a laughable

69 days. The Idaho State Board of Land Commissioners provided

an additional comment to the Forest Service immediately after the

Final Environmental Impact Statement was issued on

November 13, 2000. The Land Board also requested a face-to-face

meeting with Secretary Glickman and Chief Dombeck. We never

heard anything back as a result of our request to them. Maps or

other identification of the uninventoried areas were never provided

to the people of the State of Idaho.

Accordingly, given the court’s clear directives to the Federal

Forest Service and our concerns, the State of Idaho filed a second

lawsuit on January 9, 2001. We are currently awaiting the court’s

decision on the state’s motion for a preliminary injunction and that

was argued last Friday.

Idaho is concerned with the roadless rules and its impact on energy, particularly given the current energy crisis. Idahoans typically pay close to the highest prices in the nation for gasoline. Adverse impact in other states will trickle down to the price that we

pay at the pump in the State of Idaho.

With respect to mineral extraction, the Final Environmental Impact Statement details impacts associated with phosphate mining

in the Caribou National Forest. The annual economic impacts are

set forth in the FEIS at Table 3-68.

10

In conclusion, Chairman, let me thank you again for the opportunity to be here. You may be aware that the State of Colorado has

joined with Idaho in its case against the roadless rule. In addition,

I understand that the State of Alaska has now filed its own lawsuit. These three states contain almost 49 percent of the total

inventoried acreage impacted by the roadless rule. I have heard

that several other Western states may be filing suits too, including

the states of Wyoming, Montana, North and South Dakota.

Thank you, Chairman, for your consideration and time.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lance follows:]

Statement of The Honorable Alan G. Lance, Attorney General,

State of Idaho

I would like to thank Chairwoman Cubin and the members of the subcommittees

for inviting me to testify here today. It is an honor to appear before you as the chief

legal officer of the State of Idaho to speak about an issue that is extremely important to the citizens of Idaho.

It is my understanding that this hearing focuses on the effect of the Roadless

Area Conservation Rule on this nation’s energy resources. The State of Idaho does

indeed have significant concerns about the roadless rule and its effect on Idaho’s economy. The most immediate economic concern of the State of Idaho relates to our

endowment lands which are contiguous to or surrounded by the roadless areas. The

endowment lands must be managed by the Idaho State Board of Land Commissioners (Land Board) for the benefit of Idaho’s public schools. The State of Idaho

has 9.3 million acres of inventoried roadless areas, and the Forest Service has not

yet told the State how many acres of uninventoried areas in Idaho would qualify

as roadless. I also understand that the subcommittees are particularly interested in

the reasons why the State of Idaho has filed a lawsuit against the roadless rule.

As a threshold matter, let me make clear that Idaho’s legal case focuses on the

process followed by the United States Department of Agriculture in proposing and

implementing the roadless rule. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is

a procedural law, requiring certain steps be followed by federal agencies. The process followed by the Department of Agriculture in adopting the roadless rule wholly

ignored the procedural requirements of NEPA.

The State of Idaho, through the Idaho State Board of Land Commissioners, which

is bipartisan and composed of five statewide elected constitutional officers, unanimously agreed to file two lawsuits against the roadless initiative. The first lawsuit

was filed on December 30, 1999, during the NEPA process and shortly after the

scoping period expired. The second lawsuit was filed on January 9, 2001, shortly

after completion of the NEPA process and adoption of the rule. The second lawsuit

is currently pending in the United States District Court for the District of Idaho.

From the beginning, the State of Idaho was concerned with the short timeframes

and information provided for public notice and comment. Moreover, when those concerns are considered in the context of a NEPA proposal of such historic scope, impacting 58.5 million acres nationwide, the quality of the public notice and comment

provided rises to the level of a legal deficiency. As you know, NEPA was enacted

to ensure fully informed and well-considered decisions on proposed actions with environmental consequences. In other words, public notice and comment must be

‘‘meaningful’’ in order to comply with NEPA.

The roadless rule was first announced by former President Clinton on October 13,

1999, at which time he characterized it as ‘‘one of the largest land preservation efforts in America’s history.’’ Just six days later, the Department of Agriculture initiated the scoping period by publishing a notice of intent to prepare an environmental

impact statement. The fanfare surrounding the announcement also included Forest

Service Chief Dombeck’s October 28, 1999, letter to Forest Service employees,

wherein he characterized the roadless proposal as an ‘‘urgent’’ need and stated that

the agency ‘‘cannot afford to waste a single day.—

The public was given only sixty (60) days to comment during scoping. Public meetings were scheduled in Idaho starting just twelve (12) business days and ending just

three (3) business days before the end of scoping. Requests for an extension of the

scoping period from Idaho Governor Kempthorne and from myself and six (6) other

western Attorneys General were ignored. A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request sent by my office for pertinent information was also ignored. Meanwhile, the

Forest Service’s touted website for public access and information on the roadless

proposal was, by and large, totally useless during the entire scoping period. Finally,

11

despite the fact that this proposal was a land management proposal, no accurate,

site-specific maps were made available to the public, and there were no maps for

the uninventoried roadless areas. I would submit that it is not possible to meaningfully comment on a land management proposal when you do not know where the

land is located.

Based upon the lack of any responses to our extension request letters and FOIA

request, as well as the sheer magnitude of the proposal in Idaho, the Land Board

was left with no alternative but to file a lawsuit seeking an order from the court

for more information and an extension of the public comment period.

Idaho’s first lawsuit was ultimately dismissed due to the fact that the federal

courts lack power to hear NEPA cases before the entire NEPA process is final. However, the court’s order contained a rather ominous warning to the Forest Service.

Please allow me to read from the court’s February 18, 2000, decision:

While the Court has determined it lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the

State’s Complaint at this point, the Court would be remiss if it failed to emphasize to the Forest Service that due to the historic magnitude of the proposed action, the agency’s final action will undoubtedly be subject to close

judicial scrutiny. As stewards of the federal funds being expended to complete the NEPA process on the proposed action, the Forest Service should

make every effort to ensure that the process is properly implemented with

reasonable time frames to allow meaningful participation by the public. It

appears at least arguable to this Court that the Forest Service may be inviting error and a necessary review of its actions by ignoring the objections

of the Plaintiffs for a meaningful scoping process.

Counsel for the Forest Service do not dispute that the purpose of the

scoping process is to identify issues that are substantive and eliminate

issues that are not so as to instill confidence and trust in the process. A

central purpose of the NEPA process is to provide full disclosure of relevant

information to allow meaningful public debate and oversight. When the

areas contemplated to be roadless are not defined or shown by way of maps

or otherwise illustrated, one does not have to be learned in the law to determine the public’s participation will hardly be ‘‘meaningful.’’ The State’s con- cern over access to and management of its endowment and state forest

lands that may be surrounded by national forest land are legitimate concerns of state and local governments and its citizens.

The sheer magnitude of this governmental action involving 40 to 60 million

acres nationwide that precipitated 500,000 comments in sixty days is the

best evidence the Forest Service should proceed with caution. Time is not

of the essence on an issue that has been studied for over 30 years. The public needs to be informed in order to meaningfully participate. An argument

suggesting the Court is required to give due deference to agency action and

expertise is likely to ring hollow unless the Forest Service does what it says

it will do and that is give due consideration to new comments and issues

that may be raised both during the draft EIS comment period as well as

at the time the final EIS is issued.

Despite the court’s warnings, the Forest Service continued to press forward with

inadequate information and artificially short deadlines for public comment. The

draft environmental impact statement was issued on May 10, 2000, and the public

comment period was set at a meager 69 days. Once again, Idaho’s requests for extension of the comment period were denied. We still had no accurate maps for

inventoried areas and no maps for the uninventoried areas. The public meetings in

Idaho were once again set near the end of the comment period. In a letter we received from the Forest Service, Governor Kempthorne and I were told that no maps

or mapping criteria existed or were planned for the uninventoried areas.

The final environmental impact statement was issued on November 13, 2000, approximately one (1) year and one (1) month after this massive proposal was first

announced. In anticipation of the adoption of the final rule, the Land Board provided additional comment and requested a face-to-face meeting with Secretary

Glickman and Chief Dombeck. Once again, Idaho’s concerns and the request for a

face-to-face meeting were never even acknowledged.

Throughout this process, Idahoans have felt ‘‘stiffed’’ by the federal government.

What should have been an open process with meaningful information and dialogue

was fairly perceived as a sham process designed to reach a pre-determined outcome

before a political deadline. Moreover, it is an insult to the elected officials and others who attempted to participate, requested basic and highly relevant information,

and pled for additional time to comment on such a massive policy proposal, that we

were simply ignored. This is not a good way to do business, particularly with the

12

states that contain the most land impacted by the roadless rule, and it is why the

State of Idaho will continue to move forward in the second lawsuit it filed on

January 9, 2001.

With respect to energy and mineral exploration, many Idahoans have expressed

concern with the substance of the roadless rule. I know that the new Administration

is working on a comprehensive national energy policy, which I commend and recognize as clearly necessary for our future energy needs and economic well being.

The roadless rule is a one-size-fits-all national policy, which constitutes a significant departure from site-specific planning and multiple use. Therefore, while Idaho

is not currently an oil or gas producer, it will feel the impact of restrictions imposed

on other states.

Idahoans are often asked to pay higher prices for gasoline, and we are told that

the reasons are supply related, including pipeline capacity and geographical isolation. The final environmental impact statement details the adverse impacts on energy and mineral exploration and production.

In Idaho, phosphate mining in the Caribou National Forest will be substantially

impacted. Table 3–68 of the FEIS estimates an annual economic impact of 10.4 million dollars in direct labor income, 38.5 million dollars in total labor income, 185

direct jobs, 976 total jobs, and 1.3 million dollars in payments to the State of Idaho.

Once again, I want to thank the subcommittees for inviting me to testify here

today. Idaho will continue to press forward with its lawsuit. The State of Colorado

has filed an amicus brief in support of Idaho. Alaska has also filed a lawsuit. Idaho,

Colorado, and Alaska contain almost 49% of the total inventoried roadless areas

subject to the roadless rule. It is my understanding that several other western

states are contemplating lawsuits or preparing to file lawsuits against the roadless

rule. I will keep you apprised of any significant developments during the litigation.

Mr. MCINNIS. Thank you, Mr. Lance.

We will now begin the questioning. I will initiate that.

I find it interesting in your remarks that the Forest Service denied accurate maps of the roadless areas, they denied meetings

with you. My understanding is they denied information to you unless you sought it under the Freedom of Information Act and even

then stalled.

First of all, are my statements accurate about the information

denied to you? and what additional information was denied to you

by the U.S. Forest Service?

Mr. LANCE. Mr. Chairman, Co-Chairs, that is exactly accurate.

We made a request for maps so that we could have some meaningful input in terms of some of these public hearings that the governor’s office and my office attended. We had about 25 hearings in

Idaho and I think we attended about 20 of them.

In order to testify in a meaningful and intelligent manner we

needed to know what sort of areas we were looking at. The Forest

Service claimed that it had the maps on the website. However,

upon closer scrutiny one determined that, in fact, no website had

been developed. It was still under development.

We then made a FOIA request, which was virtually ignored, and

after several telephone calls and requests for the information, we

were required to file a lawsuit. That lawsuit was mooted 2 days before the scheduled hearing because the Forest Service then finally

came up with these maps and the information that we had requested. It was an on-going delaying tactic. Of course, we are dealing with a large area. We are dealing with 2477 roads. Some have

existing roads and some do not.

But we have tremendous impact, Mr. Chairman, and some of the

impact that I think may be missed is that much of the state’s land,

our endowed land that we use to support some of our schools, is

surrounded by Federal land. If, in fact, they make that a roadless

13

area surrounding our land, the only way that we can meaningfully

harvest any timber off of our land to help pay for the school costs

is to helicopter log, which substantially reduces the receipts to the

school children of the State of Idaho. No one has satisfactorily answered the question.

At any rate, the governor and I and the other members of the

Land Board also requested the face-to-face meetings with Secretary

Glickman and Chief Dombeck. That was receipted for by certified

mail, our request which was sent in December, and we have yet to

hear a response from anyone.

But we have serious issues. We have not been trying to sandbag

the Forest Service or anybody else but the bottom line is they have

been totally uncooperative.

Mr. MCINNIS. I can tell you, Mr. Lance, that it is the opinion of

the Chair that the Forest Service’s cooperation, regardless of which

side of the issue one falls on this, is absolutely necessary. It is that

kind of noncooperation that creates a great deal of deep distrust.

I find their behavior reprehensible and I use that word with caution but I intend to say that word because of the fact that they

have that information; they know what they were doing. And I

should advise you that if you have further difficulties in the future

you may contact either of the Chairs and we will have them in our

office and we will sit down, as well as your own congressman, because we can have that Forest Service sent in a different direction.

Mr. LANCE. Thank you.

Mr. MCINNIS. With that, I will turn questioning over to the CoChair and then we will go to the Ranking Member. Madam Chairman?

Mrs. CUBIN. I just have a couple of questions. They will be brief.

You discussed briefly logging with the use of helicopters. I want

to know when you use energy to fly the helicopter is that an energy-efficient way to harvest the timber or is it cheaper to harvest

it from the ground in the traditional ways?

Mr. LANCE. Madam Chair, Co-Chairs, obviously it is much more

expensive to attempt to helicopter log and it is not as environmentally friendly in the opinion of many, but the result is that if

it costs more to have a state timber harvest when you bid out a

tract for selective harvesting, the bottom line is that we, the State

of Idaho and the school children of the State of Idaho, are going

to receive fewer net proceeds as a result of the increased costs of

the logging processes.

And this is not mythical. We have a forest timber sale that has

been now pending for about 3 years on Contux Creek and if you

talk to the Forest Service and certain others they will tell you that

there is a process that you can go through referred to as the

ANILCA (Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act) process for accessing your way through federally managed forests to get

to your own timber for purposes of harvest or energy exploration,

et cetera, et cetera. We have been blocked now for 3 years from

making a sale on Contux Creek as a result of NMFS and the

Forest Service not allowing us access to our own land so that we

can manage that forest or those trees in a very responsible manner.

That is the sort of noncooperation that we have not only with the

Forest Service but also National Marine Fisheries.

14

Mrs. CUBIN. I remember a large blow-down, I think it was in

Idaho, where the Forest Service did not allow anyone to go pick up

the blow-down, so it got insect-infested, and became worthless. It

happens all over.

One last question. How will the roadless rule affect state firefighting efforts on state and private lands?

Mr. LANCE. Madam Chair, Co-Chairs, that is an excellent question. Secretary Norton recently visited what is now called the National Interagency Fire Center but referred to still in Idaho as the

Boise Interagency Fire Center. She was very concerned about what

has been projected in terms of the fire year that we are facing this

coming year. Idaho and Oregon and Washington have 40 percent

of the snowpack that we traditionally have. As a result of mismanagement or lack of management by the Forest Service, we have

beetle infestations; we have a great fuel load on many of the acres

that we presently have in the State of Idaho. It is going to be a

tough fire year and unless or until you can access these fires that

start by lightning strikes that are not followed by rain, contrary to

many views held here in the East, you have lightning strikes, you

have a fire start, and you have to get on that fire as quickly as possible.

The bottom line is if you do not have fire breaks, represented by

roads, if you do not have access to those fire sites, which are also

generally represented by roads and also air control, we are going

to have a very serious problem and we anticipate a very serious

problem because the undergrowth, the fuels that have been allowed

to accumulate on these nationally managed forests and lands have

reached an unacceptable level; the infestation by insects is just absolutely horrendous.

And I think by way of comparison, Madam Chair and Co-Chairs,

it takes about 27 years to grow a saw log on federally managed

lands. It takes about 21 years to grow a saw log on state-managed

lands and about 17 years to grow a saw log on privately managed

lands. That tells you the level of management that they have put

into it so far.

Mrs. CUBIN. Thank you, Mr. Lance. I have nothing further.

Mr. MCINNIS. Mr. Kind?

Mr. KIND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to thank the witnesses for being here today for today’s

hearing and your testimony. I have a written statement I would

like to submit for the record without objection.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kind follows:]

Statement of The Honorable Ron Kind, Ranking Member,

Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources

This afternoon we continue our review of the Clinton Administration’s conservation and environmental policies by bringing into question the Forest Service

roadless policy as it pertains to energy resources. While I do not debate the need

for a comprehensive national energy policy, we will not achieve that goal by undoing

the good work of the past Administration.

As is the case with the hard rock mining rules, CO2 emission reductions, protection of national monuments, and ANWR—the Bush Administration appears determined to undercut environmental initiatives and retreat from environmental challenges. Characterizing this policy, and the others, as ‘‘last-minute decisions’’ of the

Clinton Administration is a thinly disguised attempt to discredit a good policy in

order to rationalize jettisoning it as the oil and gas industry demands.

15

As the record plainly shows, the Forest Service finalized its ‘‘roadless area’’ initiative on January 12 of this year after three years of public debate, review, and consultation. They held more than 600 hearings nationwide and received more than 1.6

million comments. The Forest Service analyzed the effect of the policy on oil and

gas activities, among other things, as part of the Environmental Impact Statement.

Some may disagree with the intent of the roadless policy, but, we should not pretend that it was a snap judgement at the eleventh hour.

The roadless areas affected by this policy comprise roughly one-third of all National Forest System lands, or approximately 58.5 million acres. According to the

Forest Service, although the roadless areas comprise only 2% of the land base in

the continental United States, they exist within 661 of the more than 2,000 major

watersheds in the nation and provide many social and ecological benefits, such as

fish and wildlife habitat, clean water, hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation resources, to name but a few. On the other hand, Forest System lands play a minor

role in producing oil and natural gas, generating only about four tenths of one percent of current domestic production. By comparison nationwide, Federal lands account for about 11 percent of the natural gas produced onshore while offshore the

Outer Continental Shelf accounts for more than 26 percent of domestic natural gas

production.

The vast majority of lands affected by the roadless policy have been open to oil

and leasing for decades but the oil and gas industry has demonstrated little interest

in exploiting the potential energy resources in these areas. Confirming this lack of

industry interest, the Forest Service noted in its Final EIS, Minerals and Geology

Specialist Report, that because of the downturn in the domestic oil and gas industry, the amount of National Forest System land under oil and gas leases dropped

from about 35 million acres in the mid–1980s to 5.8 million acres in 1998.

The Forest Service presented a good overview of the rule’s potential effects on oil

and gas development in the final environmental impact statement for the roadless

rule. However, as noted by several of our expert witnesses in their statements, the

resource estimates are highly speculative and with the lack of industry activity in

roadless areas over the years, cannot be considered as sufficient to warrant rescinding the roadless rule. The resource estimate of 11.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas,

for instance, is derived from academic exercises designed to estimate the location

of resources and can only be considered as a hypothetical scenario.

The total oil and gas production from all National Forest System lands is less

than one percent of the current national production. And the potential oil and gas

resources that could be located inside inventoried roadless areas—by even the most

generous estimates—are but an insignificant portion of total domestic resources. On

these two facts alone, the wildlife, environment and social values protected by the

rule outweigh the costs of foreclosing oil and gas drilling in those areas.

Mr. KIND. Mr. Lance, just a couple of questions before we move

on. Currently Idaho has filed suit in regard to the roadless initiative; is that correct?

Mr. LANCE. Co-Chairs and Congressman, yes, that is correct.

Mr. KIND. Is Idaho currently producing any oil and gas or even

coal production?

Mr. LANCE. Co-Chairs, Congressman, no, but we certainly wish

that we had some and would like to explore. A few years ago certain petroleum exploration companies took out some options on

some land but at the present time, to my knowledge, we have no

oil or gas production occurring.

Mr. KIND. Right. And I think overall there is roughly less than

1 percent of oil and gas being produced in our Forest Service lands

to begin with.

I certainly appreciate the complaints that you have raised in regard to the process and access and communication and certainly

there is room for improvement in that area but my concern in regard to the roadless initiative is since it is such an insignificant

amount currently being produced on our national forests, given the

energy needs out there, there is so much attention placed on supply. Would you agree that as we develop a long-term energy policy

16

in this country we need to be looking in the areas of conservation,

alternative and renewable energy sources, as well, rather than just

focusing on the supply equation and also looking at demand aspects in regard to the energy needs?

Certainly the constituents of mine in Wisconsin are feeling the

effects of rising energy prices, as I am sure the people in Idaho are,

too, but would you agree that a more balanced approach to our

long-term energy needs is what is required right now?

Mr. LANCE. Co-Chairs, Congressman, certainly renewable resources is at the top of my list. Being from farm country, we think

ethanol would certainly be one of those things that should be explored and we need to get into. But may I also say that while they

were building the pipeline in Alaska I was a member of the 172nd

Infantry Brigade up in Alaska for three years. The argument that

the caribou would be scared away by the pipeline, that the pipeline

would destroy the tundra, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera—we heard

all those arguments and I would be happy to take you, Congressman, up to the Denali Highway and when the caribou want to

cross they will cross right in front of your car.

So I think that there is a balance here. I think you are absolutely

right. I think we have to use our resources and our intelligence and

sit down and discuss this matter, make sure that we apply those

areas to conservation that are necessary but, at the same time, I

think we need to somehow lower our dependence on foreign oil.

Mr. KIND. I am not sure what the economic impact to the State

of Idaho is in regard to access to our national forests in the areas

of fishing and wildlife habitat but certainly I would hope you would

agree that part of managing the national forests should be conservation, the protection of fishing lands and access.

In fact, in a written statement to this Committee today Mr.

Moyer of Trout Unlimited kind of broke down some of the economic

benefit to conservation practices, access to hunters and fishermen

on these lands. In fact, in his written statement Mr. Moyer noted,

and I quote, ‘‘According to a 1999 report from the American Sports

Fishing Association, 1996 fishing on the national forests produced

$8.5 billion to the nation’s economy. Hunting yielded $6.1 billion.

Much of this value comes from trout and salmon fishing and big

game hunting. Roadless area protection is tied to the long-term

sustainability of these huge benefits.’’

Now again your process complaints aside, do you agree or disagree that roadless areas are needed in order to protect or enhance

these valuable fish and wildlife habitats for outdoor sports, as well?

Mr. LANCE. Co-Chairs, Congressman, I would disagree with that

statement. In order to manage you have to be able to access. You

have to get back in and look at your elk herds. You have to take

a look at your mule deer populations, your goats, your sheep. You

have to be able to access it. Also, in order to sell a hunting license

you have to give hunters and recreationalists a reasonable access

to it.

The best way that we have found in Idaho to manage our larger

game herds is to require that we examine the animals that are

taken for diseases, nutritional things, that type of thing. And I

think if you take away all of the roads in the State of Idaho in

terms of fishing, as well as hunting, we are not going to be able

17

to provide the access that we usually do to harvest those animals

in a manner that is consistent— Mr. KIND. I would agree that access is important but we also

have a backlog of multi-millions of dollars in repair and maintenance expenses that are currently going unmet in regard to the

current roads that already exist. Do you have any solution of how

we deal with that to improve access on the roads that already

exist?

Mr. LANCE. Co-Chairs and Congressman, yes, close coordination

with the locals. You all are not going to solve the problem in Idaho

from Washington, D.C. here, other than spending money for the

problem. The folks in Idaho have been living on these lands for

generations. We know how to manage those lands and what we

need is a close coordination with the Federal managers. Sixty-five

percent of our land mass is presently under Federal management.

We know how to manage lands. The people here in Washington

don’t. So we would be happy to sit down with them, have local

input—we are stakeholders, as well—and come up with solutions

to the problems that I know that you are concerned about, Congressman, and legitimately so.

Mr. KIND. Thank you. Thanks for your testimony.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MCINNIS. Thank you.

Mr. Otter?

Mr. OTTER. Mr. Chairman, Madam Chairman, I would like to

submit for the record my opening statement, as well, without objection.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Otter follows:]

Statement of The Honorable C.L. ‘‘Butch’’ Otter, A Representative in

Congress from the State of Idaho

Chairman McInnis and Chairwoman Cubin, thank you for holding this hearing

today on the devastating impacts that the previous Administration’s forest roadless

rule will have on our efforts to develop a comprehensive domestic energy policy.

I’m particularly pleased to see my good friend and the Attorney General for the

State of Idaho—Al Lance, who’s here today to explain for the committee the reasons

that led to the State’s lawsuit challenging the process and substance of this rule,

and the potential impacts it would cause on Idaho citizens. I understand that the

State of Alaska has also filed a lawsuit challenging the rule.

The previous Administration’s rush to pursue unprecedented and sweeping restrictions on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands—through

monument designations and this roadless rule—would effectively shut off access to

9 million acres of Idaho public lands. This is land that most certainly would yield

to the development of new sources of natural gas supply, rich mineral, phosphate

and coal resources.

Additionally, the Forest Service estimates that 7 million acres of inventoried

roadless areas are at risk of dying trees from insect infestation or diseases. The proposal could interfere with road construction and maintenance necessary to restore

degraded ecosystems and reduce the risk of uncontrollable and catastrophic

wildfires—like the 7 million acres that burned last summer and fall.

One of the primary concerns that I have heard about the roadless policy is that

it effects 58 million acres of national forest lands, and yet only about 60 days were

allowed for the citizens affected by the proposal merely to comment on the proposed

rule. No extensions were permitted. No maps were provided to those interested in

looking at the areas affected until well after the Forest Service’s 60 day-comment

period had expired.

After the Forest Service issued a 700-page impact statement, along with the proposed rule, it released the rule on November 13, 2000, and published it on

January 12, 2001 so that it would go into effect without regard to other reasonable

alternatives, ignoring many critical comments to the proposal, including its impact

18

on energy. They overstepped the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), ironically, in the name of protecting the environment.

Recent estimates reveal that 11.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could be made

available from untapped American resources, including trillions of cubic feet that

are now off limits because of the monuments, roadless rules, and other restrictions

imposed by the previous Administration on public lands.

Coal is another source of that could be made available on federal lands. Federal

lands account for almost 35 percent of total U.S. coal production. Another 30 billion

tons of minable coal are sitting unused on millions of acres of Forest Service land.

Over 2.5 million acres of coal bearing rocks are in inventoried roadless areas. Holders of existing federal coal leases are concerned that the roadless rules will bar them

form building roads necessary to mine, and future coal leasing would be prevented

altogether.

Yesterday, we held a hearing with the Forests and Forest Health subcommittee

on the potential to utilize biomass for energy and other uses. I was quite intrigued

by the technology that the Forest Service has already developed. If it were marketed, it could provide significant financial assistance for rural communities in

Idaho, whose tax base, schools, and other basic services have been hit hard by the

Forest Service’s rules. Unfortunately, the Forest Service acknowledges that some 27

percent of the potential biomass materials are inaccessible due to the forest roadless

policy.

And the impact of the roadless rule does not only affect access to public lands.

The Forest Service acknowledges it cannot deny ‘‘reasonable access’’ to reserved or

outstanding privately-owned minerals. Yet, private mineral rights cannot be

accessed unless and until they go through stringent environmental permitting and

delays that can discourage or prevent them from accessing their rights at all. Transportation across forest roadless areas impacts a great deal of private land.

That energy that could fuel American industries, businesses, homes—and help offset the millions of dollars that taxpayers are now paying for years of poor maintenance by the federal agencies in our national forests.

I notice that there are panelists today, Mr. Chairman, that will say that the

roadless policy is important to protect endangered species. But the Forest Service

is not the agency responsible for endangered species. That is a task that the U.S.

Fish & Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service have taken on— and their management of endangered species is a subject of another hearing. But

overlooking the mission of federal agencies seems to have been a specialty of the

previous Administration. They masterminded the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Plan and other top-down bureaucratic processes that would

eliminate years of local planning efforts to properly manage our forests in Idaho,

Washington, Oregon, and Montana.

While we must all be sensitive to the environment we all live in, I cannot agree

that preventing access to areas that would help maintain healthy forests and eliminate destructive wildfires will protect species. In fact, it has already done exactly

the opposite. Entire watersheds and land where endangered species live were destroyed by fires last year—fires that could have been prevented through better management and access. Last year, an enormous amount of silt and sediment from the

wildfires fell into the tributaries and waters where fish swim, eat, and live. Undoubtedly, deer, elk, even lynx and wolves perished in the millions of acres of hot

fires that rages for months last year.

On an issue unrelated to the roadless rule, but pertinent to the energy crisis we

face in the Pacific Northwest and California, I think its time for a reality check.

We cannot rely solely on conservation or marginal proposals to use solar or wind

power generation. We need to continue exploring and increasing clean, renewable

sources of energy—including hydroelectric power.

Trout Unlimited and the Wilderness Society are represented here today by witnesses that argue against selective timber harvesting of the forests, and against the

increased use of any other source of fuel—coal, natural gas, or oil. They also are

on record for endorsing a proposal to tear out four hydroelectric dams that produce

up to 3,000 megawatts of power at their peak—enough to power the City of Seattle

three times over.

Replacing the clean electricity generated by the dams with the next cheapest

source—natural gas—would take years to implement, cost millions of dollars per

year, and would further exacerbate the growing demand for natural gas that is already there. Instead, we should support efforts to swiftly relicense these dams, and

authorize access to public lands to maximize their transmission capability.

I look forward to working with the committee, to explore common sense proposals

to unlock the abundant energy resources available on the millions of acres of public

lands and to reverse unwise directives such as the roadless regulations, that prevent

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access to those who could untap resources, reduce the risk of forest fires, and to ease

our nation’s energy crisis.

Mr. OTTER. Hearing none, I would like to follow up with a few

of the questions or at least one of the questions that Mr. Kind

brought up.

Mr. MCINNIS. Mr. Otter, may I interrupt for a second? I made

a procedural mistake. I should have recognized Mr. Inslee as the

Ranking Member. I apologize.

Mr. INSLEE. No, I think the gentleman’s on a roll. Let’s let him

keep going.

Mr. MCINNIS. I apologize.

Mr. OTTER. Thank you for that compliment. I appreciate it.

Mr. MCINNIS. Mr. Otter?

Mr. OTTER. Anyway, Al, much was made of whether or not we

have any energy exploration going on in Idaho or proven. Is it not

a fact that some of the oldest phosphate beds known to man are

actually in the Southeastern Idaho and that phosphate then is

made into fertilizer and that fertilizer then helps corn and other

farm products grow, which we make ethanol and other energy

products out of?

Mr. LANCE. Co-Chairs, Congressman Otter, Butch, you are absolutely right. In the heart of the Caribou National Forest in Southeastern Idaho we have some of the richest phosphate deposits in

the United States that are presently being extracted for purposes

of use in agricultural pursuits, et cetera, et cetera. And yes, you

can make by logical extension, the argument that those products,

in fact, could be used as a biomass to make ethanol and so forth

and so on but other than that, I am unaware, Butch, of the energy

relationship that we might come up with, although over by Sand

Hollow a few years ago they did give out some options on some exploration for oil but other than that and the phosphates.

But Idaho is a large state and virtually unexplored in certain

areas, so we may be sitting on some natural gas that we are unaware of.

Mr. OTTER. Thank you for that response, Al.

I would remind all the members of this Committee that it was

only two short days ago that we had substantial testimony that

was offered before this Committee on biomass and indeed how

much energy could come from the forest and forest floor and would

result in many kilowatts of potential electricity, needed electricity,

that could be created. And with 21.5 million acres of forest in

Idaho, along with 14 million acres of BLM ground, there is much

fuel stock there that could leave a fire-defensible forest, as well as

fire-defensible public lands and still yield an awful lot of energy.

Al, I am very interested in the impact that the roadless area has

had on Idaho’s schoolchildren and your comment relative to the endowment plans. For the benefit of a lot of people that are east of

the Mississippi River and probably do not experience this in their

state, these tremendous land grabs that go on by the Federal Government constantly, is it not true that sections 16 and 36 out of

every township—and every township is roughly six square miles or

23,040 acres—out of every township the State of Idaho was granted

for its public schools an endowment fund of 1,280 acres?

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Mr. LANCE. Madam Chair, Co-Chairs, Congressman Otter, yes,

that is absolutely correct. Idaho presently has about 2.5 million

acres still in inventory that is under the management of the Land

Board and those proceeds, which are grazing lands, agricultural

lands, some mining, not too many mining lands, and timber lands,

the proceeds from the management of those lands are used for the

endowed institutions, which primarily are the educational institutions in the State of Idaho.

And parenthetically, let me add that those school districts that

are heavily dependent upon the timber industry are hurting at the

present time because we have shut down several timber mills, as

you are well aware, as a result of the unavailability of timber to

keep those folks working and to pay their taxes to keep those

schools open. But you are absolutely right, Butch, but we are down

to about 2.5 million acres of state-endowed lands.

Mr. OTTER. Very quickly, Al. Yes or no on these next two because

I think they are important.

Is it not true that the private sector holdings in the timber industry—for instance, Weyerhauser, Boise Cascade, Potlatch, Plum

Creek, many of the other private holdings—pay on the average to the State of Idaho and to the counties I should say $8.82 an acre

for timbered lands a year?

Mr. LANCE. Mr. Chairman, yes.

Mr. OTTER. Is it not also a fact that of the total Federal receipts

for 21.5 million acres of Idaho forest lands we receive less than 80

cents in the county for support of publics schools, fire, police, et

cetera?

Mr. LANCE. Co-Chairs, Congressman, yes, that is true.

Mr. OTTER. And is it not a fact that most of the receipts that we

formerly received came only when we were allowed to use those

timber resources on a sustainable yield, sustainable cut for the

supplies for our logging mills?

Mr. LANCE. Co-Chairs, Congressman Otter, that is correct, yes.

Mr. OTTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Madam Chairman, my

time is up.

Mr. MCINNIS. Thank you, Mr. Otter.

Mr. Inslee?

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Lance, I am really glad you are here today because I think

all of us know how beautiful Idaho is and every American citizen

in this room has some interest in this policy because we all have

a stake in Idaho, even if we do not live there.

I would like you to help educate us a little bit about the status

of this lawsuit. Let me tell you, I have some very, very deep concerns about it because it is my understanding that the attorney

general of the United States promised the American people in his

confirmation hearing that if indeed the United States Senate confirmed him he would enforce the law of the United States of America when it came to protecting and defending this roadless policy.

I heard him say that, the press heard him say that and I have

heard that in this lawsuit, at best, he has delayed and at worst,

he has looked for a way for the law to be abrogated and that really

disturbs me to think that an attorney general who has told the

U.S. Senate and the American people they are going to defend the

21

law apparently is doing something, what I used to call, and I used

to be an old trial lawyer, called taking a dive and I am very concerned about that and I would like you to address, in fact, what

the United States government has done in that lawsuit. Are they

defending this rule? Are they aggressively defending it or are they

doing something else?

Mr. LANCE. Co-Chairs, Congressman, thank you for the question.

The plaintiffs are the Land Board, the State of Idaho, the governor and the attorney general of the State of Idaho. We have two

Idaho counties that are also plaintiffs in that action, the Kootenai,

one of our tribes up in Northern Idaho. And on the defense side you

not only have the Federal Government and the Forest Service but

you also have a variety of intervenors. Those intervenors were

present and made argument last Friday in Boise, Idaho on behalf

of the Forest Service. The Federal Government was there and

made argument on behalf of the Forest Service and we, on the

other side, made our arguments before Judge Lodge.

He presently has it under advisement as to whether or not he is

going to grant us the injunction that we sought, the State of Idaho

and the plaintiffs. Of course, the intervenors and the Federal Government have defended against the granting of that injunction.

I would say to you, sir, that the intervenors on behalf of the

Federal Government and the Forest Service are well represented.

They have made their arguments. I am talking about the conservation groups and so forth and so on. They, in conjunction with the

Federal Government, have gone all the way.

If we had a deal, so to speak, with the Federal Government, Congressman, we would not have had to spend my resources last Friday in going before Judge Lodge and making this argument, taking

some substantial risk relative to the overall development of the

case, if you will. But we had no deal. We went forward. We made

our best arguments and we would have made those arguments

whether or not it was Janet Reno, the attorney general of the

United States, or John Ashcroft as the attorney general of the

United States. We have a case to make and we are going to make

it regardless of who is in the White House, sir.

Mr. INSLEE. And could you tell us what the pleadings were that

were first filed by the attorney general of the United States? Did

he, in fact, file a pleading on behalf of the United States which asserted that these rules were appropriately adopted and that they

should be implemented and that your case should be dismissed

with prejudice? Did he do that, sir?

Mr. LANCE. Mr. Chairman, Congressman, the first thing that

happened was that President Bush suspended the implementation

of the rules until May 12 so as to give the administration, as I understand it, the opportunity to look at it. The next thing that I was

involved with was a meeting with the Department of Justice and

representatives from the Department of Agriculture. The same people, you understand, were with the Department of Justice that

were under the present administration as were, in fact, under the

previous administration. So we were dealing with virtually the

same people. And until last Friday Michael Dombeck was also the

Chief of the Forest Service until his resignation.

22

So to answer your question, the bottom line is the administration, as I understand it, is taking a look at these rules and some

of our complaints and some of our problems and we would hope

that someone would listen to us in terms of the due process violations that we perceive transpired during the course of the hearing.

Mr. INSLEE. So I take it your answer, in a short word, is no, in

fact, the attorney general did not do that, even though he told the

U.S. Senate that he would do that. Is that a fair statement?

Mr. LANCE. Co-Chairs, Congressman, no, I do not think that that

is a fair statement. The United States government showed up.

They made their arguments, along with the intervenors, against

our position. I think that is opposition. Whether or not one would

characterize it as being in violation of Attorney General Ashcroft’s

oath, I am not prepared to say, sir.

Mr. INSLEE. I really truly want to understand what happened in

the lawsuit because I have been asked myself, so I do want to understand it.

My understanding is, and I used to practice a little law in my

day, that when you file a pleading you state what your position is.

My understanding is that the attorney general had the opportunity

to come in and follow his oath to the U.S. Senate and file a document that said that the position of the United States of America

was that this policy was appropriately adopted and should be implemented and my understanding is he did not do that. Am I correct or not?

Mr. LANCE. Congressman, as I understand your question, and

Chairs, no, they were there. They argued against our position.

Mr. INSLEE. The answer is no, is that correct?

Mr. LANCE. Last Friday they were there, they made their arguments against our position. So if they wanted to stipulate to it and

give us what we wanted, which would have been a lot easier, we

would have much preferred that, sir, but they were there arguing

against our position in court in Boise last Friday.

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you, Mr. Lance.

Mr. LANCE. Thank you, sir.

Mr. MCINNIS. Mr. Lance, I am going to save you a little breath.

You do not always have to address the Co-Chairs and the Committee. We appreciate your formalness but it is not necessary.

To get us back on track I am going to recognize Mr. Rahall. Mr.

Rahall?

Mr. RAHALL. Attorney General, you may have heard my opening

statement. I mentioned the 380,000 miles of forest roads. There is

an $8.4 billion backlog of maintenance needs just to repair what is

already there.

Mr. LANCE. Yes.

Mr. RAHALL. Only 20 percent of what the Forest Service needs

on a yearly basis is being appropriated to help maintain that backlog.

Now I appreciate your comment about us people here in Washington not knowing how to manage these lands and my colleague

from Idaho trying to tell us east of the Mississippi what life is like

out West but I am just wondering if I am missing something here.

With that backlog and with the lack of funds to adequately maintain what is there now, and by the way, you mentioned the high

23

gasoline prices in your State of Idaho, the high costs you already

face. You are the fourth highest in the nation in state gas tax and

there is nothing wrong with that; my state is high in state gasoline

tax, as well, but we do not go blaming it on us people here in

Washington. And we are glad to see that because we use it to

match more Federal dollars and build more highways.

But anyway, where are you proposing then the money comes

from? Is the State of Idaho willing to belly up to the bar, so to

speak, to pay for this? Do you have industry commitments of which

we are unaware, that are willing to help maintain what we have

now?

Mr. LANCE. Chairs, Congressman, first of all, I have been to your

beautiful State of West Virginia on several occasions.

Mr. RAHALL. I have been to your beautiful state of Ohio—I mean

Idaho, sorry.

Mr. LANCE. I was originally born in Ohio but that is a whole long

story.

You know, the common misperception, and I understand that the

needs are great in terms of what is perceived to be normal and routine maintenance of roadways but we are not talking interstate

highways here. We are just talking about roadways, generally

speaking logging roads that have been cut in the side of the mountain to access a timber sale and then once the timber has been extracted in a selective and environmentally responsible manner,

that road is there.

Now the only maintenance that is necessary in some instances

is to ensure that it does not pollute the stream and erode, quite

simply. That can be done in several manners. Number one, you can

close access to that logging road. The road is there as a fire break.

It is there in the event of an emergency. And assuming that you

have the erosion under control it does not take anything.

The bottom line, Congressman, I think is that we need a Forest

Service and a Federal Government that we can sit down with and

we can compare our needs.

Now industry, certainly when we have a timber sale that is anticipated on state lands, we take into account the value added to

our lands when we ask a contractor to come in and carve in a road

and then to put in the culverts and to take care of the road in a

responsible manner. That is factored into our timber sales price

and I suspect the Forest Service ought to take a look at that but

the bottom line, I think, is that we all need to sit down together

and find out what the State of Idaho is willing to do, if we have

sales, what the industry might be prepared to do in terms of a sale

and a credit for the improvements that they may make to the land,

and what the Federal Government is willing to do. Right now we

do not have a place at the table.

Mr. RAHALL. I am aware of that process that you have just described. I am just not aware of any financial responsibility or anywhere where the state or the industry has kicked in to help once

those extractive industries have gotten their payloads out of the

area. There are still some costs involved in that process. You say

you do not have the ability to sit down at the table. Perhaps if you

sat down at the table without the Federal Government involved

and then came to us with a proposal; is that not a proper scenario?

24

Mr. LANCE. Mr. Chairman, Co-Chairs, Congressman, yes, I think

that it is. I think that if we, in fact, Idaho has what we call a process that we have spent a lot of time and money on dealing with

the joint management of Federal lands. We have identified six

projects. This has been run through the committee that was funded

by the Department of Lands and the Land Board through the University of Idaho. We have identified six projects to sit down with

the Federal Government and jointly manage this, which would require money on our part but it would also require a willingness on

the part of the Forest Service and others to sit down and discuss

our proposals. Thus far we have had no cooperation in terms of sitting down and looking at these proposals, finding out how to manage these six tracts of land that we have identified and how we are

going to pay for the roads and how we are going to maintain them,

sir.

Mr. RAHALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MCINNIS. Mr. Simpson?

Mr. SIMPSON Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

If you wonder why General Lance always responds to the Chairman first, to the Committee and then the one asking the question,

the Idaho Legislature, that is the way it is always done. He served

there for a number of years with me and has testified before the

Legislature many, many times and consequently you get in the

habit of doing that. It is just the way we show respect in Idaho.

There are some interesting things that have been brought up

during this and I appreciated the opening statements of the CoChairs and also of the gentleman from West Virginia. He mentioned that we had an $8.4 billion backlog in roads in our national

forests currently and we were not doing our best to address those

and that because of those, we were damaging critical fish and wildlife habitat, and so forth.

You know, last year we had legislation called CARA and many

of us suggested that we ought to use that money, before we start

acquiring more land, to address the backlog needs in our national

forests and national parks. But, of course, we could not get enough

support for that but that is one of the ways we could have addressed some of that backlog because I agree with you that there

is a problem there.

But I can tell you another thing. We did not in any of these roads

damage as much critical fish and wildlife habitat as the wildfires

that occurred last year in Idaho. And the fish habitat that is being

destroyed today as water runs off that area and into the streams

and covers the beds is doing more damage than any roads have

ever done. And a large part of the reason those fires occurred is

because we have not had active management of those lands over

the last several years and the roadless moratorium that we are

talking about today just means that we will not have more active

management because you will not be able to get in there and do

it, or it will make it so expensive that you cannot actively get in

there to do it.

Mr. RAHALL. Would you yield? You mentioned my name.

Mr. SIMPSON That I would.

Mr. RAHALL. Just on the CARA issue, I supported that legislation, as well, and I suggest you go talk to the leadership that conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:26 Jan 11, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 71552.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: HRESOUR1
25

trols the Appropriations Committee here. That is where that problem lies. My party does not control the leadership here.

And I would say as far as the fire issue, on those areas that are

not opened up, I am not sure what there is to control as far as fires

that may occur.

Mr. SIMPSON Well, reclaiming my time, I appreciate the gentleman’s comments but last year what we tried to do is make sure

that that money used in CARA was used to address the backlog instead of all the new programs that were in there. I voted against

CARA because of that so that’s the reason that I opposed it.

Let me pose a hypothetical and I wish Mr. Inslee was still here.

You are the attorney general for the State of Idaho. Your job is to

defend the State of Idaho and the people of the State of Idaho. Let

us say that an agency of the State of Idaho had proposed a rule

and in proposing that rule they had violated a number of Idaho

statutes. Would you, as the attorney general, then feel obligated to

defend the rule implemented by that agency?

Mr. LANCE. Congressman Simpson, you would examine it, you

would find out how serious the violations were. If it were a violation of due process, I think as an officer of the court you would

have an obligation to make that known to the court that the rules

had been violated and that your agency probably stepped across

the line and maybe they ought to go back to the drawing board and

start again and do it by the numbers.

Mr. SIMPSON Considering that the past Administration denied all

Freedom of Information Act requests and all cooperating agency

status applications filed by the affected states, considering also

that accurate maps were not made available during the public comment period, in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act, considering that the administration developed the policy in lock-step

coordination with a handful of national environmental groups and

in conjunction with their multi-million-dollar roadless campaign, a

likely violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, considering

that no small business or small government analysis was done to

comply with the Regulatory Flexibility Act, considering that many

forest plans will have to be revised as a result of this rule, violating

the National Forest Management Act, considering that it usually

takes the Forest Service two or 3 years to do a legally defensible

EIS for a timber sale covering only 300 acres yet it took the administration only 1 year to do a single massive EIS covering over 5,800

million acres, do you think the attorney general can defend this?

I know that is a tough question.

Mr. LANCE. Congressman Simpson, let me just say that I think

the new Administration would have preferred to have more time to

include the attorney general and the attorneys that represented the

Forest Service and others. They would have preferred to have a lot

more time to study this to get to the bottom of it.

The bottom line is they were new. They walked in, they offered

a defense because we felt it would have been a violation of the

court’s order to stipulate to the continuance to give them that time

that would have been required. All I can tell you, sir, is that they

were there, they opposed our position and they were doing their job

and probably if circumstances were such, I would have been very

willing to give them additional time to study the issue and study

26

the problem. But the bottom line is fire season is going to be starting in Idaho, as you both are aware, very soon and we do not have

time to have people tell us that we cannot go to put out the fires

that are being caused as a result of the years of neglect in our national forests.

Mr. SIMPSON In your opinion what is the likelihood of catastrophic fires occurring again this year?

Mr. LANCE. I think, Congressman, this is going to be the first

year we are going to have back to back record fires. Last year was

a terrible fire year. We had 1.2 million acres destroyed by fire last

year. We still have about 895,000 acres of good timber just laying

out there and we cannot get at it because the Forest Service will

not cooperate in terms of some sort of salvage effort. As a consequence, we are just wasting that timber. You talk about wasting

energy. You are talking about many, many boardfeet laying out

there that we cannot get at because the Forest Service is not cooperative.

This year is going to be a tremendous fire year, a very bad fire

year, not only in the State of Idaho but from what I predict and

what I see, the states of Washington and Oregon, as well, sir.

Mr. SIMPSON Thank you.

Mr. MCINNIS. Mr. Udall?

Mr. UDALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

General Lance, good to see you here today, to be reunited with

you again from the old days. His two colleagues here did not say

but he is also the national commander of the American Legion,

which I think is a real honor that they have bestowed upon him,

so congratulations on that. I know that happened near the end of

your AG term there.

General Lance, you have talked about imported oil and dependence on imported oil and how we should get our way out of that

situation. You know, we have grown dramatically in terms of our

dependence. In the 1960’s we imported about 20 percent of our oil.

We are headed toward 60 percent now. We are not doing anything

to change that direction. We are heavily dependent on imported oil

and 55 percent of that imported oil is from the Middle East, which

is a very volatile region.

When you look at the numbers here, especially in Idaho, of oil

that we are going to get out of roadless areas, you are not here to

tell us that we are going to solve our energy problem with oil that

we are going to get off roadless areas in Idaho, are you?

Mr. LANCE. Congressman, Tom, good to see you again, too. Absolutely not. To my knowledge, as I have testified, we do not have

any oil unless there is some that I am unaware of. We have a little

potential for natural gas in the Targhee National Forest.

Tom, when it comes right down to the issue of energy exploration

I am here just to say that the process was not, in fact, followed.

The NEPA processes were not followed. The governor of the State

of Idaho and the attorney general of the State of Idaho were given

3 minutes to testify and that was the maximum. Testimony from

people who work in the forest, took off time from their jobs and

away from their families to come and stand in line to testify were

given the same weight as people who sat in their offices and sent

in e-mails. That is just wrong, Tom. I know you and I may have

27

some disagreements in terms of the ultimate result but I think we

both have a commitment to the process and that is why we filed

the lawsuit.

Now if the energy exploration business piggybacks on our lawsuit

when it comes to the process and sitting down and talking about

these things and coming up with some type of process that is acceptable to the American people and to the affected states, so be

it, but I cannot comment too much on the energy thing, Tom. Unfortunately, Idaho is not a large energy-producing state.

Mr. UDALL. Thank you. The issue that you have raised of the

commenting and the process that was followed, that is clearly one

where many other individuals had an opportunity to comment and

I think they took comments in the time period. 1.6 million people

stepped forward and got their comments in and had the ability to

do it.

So I do not think you are suggesting that a lot of other Americans did not have the opportunity to look at the roadless policy and

comment in their respective state about it, are you?

Mr. LANCE. Congressman, I think that there were a lot of form

letters being filled out, a lot of postcards, a lot of e-mails. And I

think, Tom, to be real honest with you, there is a difference between somebody who takes time off of the job to go to a Federal

public hearing and waiting an hour and a half and he works in the

sawmill and he has kids to support. He or she is there to testify

eyeball to eyeball with these folks and I think there is a tremendous difference between that person’s testimony and the sacrifice

they made and then somebody who fills out a form letter and sends

it into the Forest Service. That is my point.

Mrs. CUBIN. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. UDALL. I just want to deal with one more thing and then I

would be happy to yield.

You mentioned in your testimony about the school children. The

last time around we had a lot of testimony in front of the Resources

Committee dealing with timber-dependent communities and that

money in terms of the schools and we, in fact, one of the bipartisan

things we did out of the Resources Committee was to pass a piece

of legislation—I forget exactly what it was called but it was the

county payments legislation. What we did was we said under the

old system, because you had these cycles of boom and bust, that

you could make a choice. You could go with the old system, with

the cycles of boom and bust, or you could choose a formula under

the new system and that formula many times was higher than

under the old system.

So we tried to deal, I think, with the situation you are talking

about. I do not know how familiar you are with that law but I

think we did a good job of trying to disconnect the two, make sure

that we have healthy forests on the one hand and that states could

also choose on the other hand their method of payment so that you

did not have this connection driving the forest policy.

And I guess since the time is out I would just say for the record

that piece of legislation did pass, I believe it passed on a large bipartisan basis and it was an attempt to really tackle the issue that

you are talking about.

28

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I would yield to you

at this time.

Mrs. CUBIN. That is okay; you do not have any time left.

Mr. Lance, did you want to say anything?

Mr. LANCE. If I may, Madam Chair, Tom, you are absolutely

right. I think that was a step in the right direction and I applaud

those of you who studied that issue. But you are talking about the

PILT payments, Tom, what we used to call the payment in lieu of

taxes payments. That is a little different issue than land that is

owned by the State of Idaho and you cannot access your land for

purposes of harvest because there is a roadless policy of the lands

of the Federal Government that surround you. That is a little different issue, Tom, but I—

Mr. UDALL. In fact, we are not talking PILT payments. We are

talking county school payments and we did legislation on that and

states can now make a choice. I do not want to argue with you. My

time is up. I am running over here and maybe on the next round

we will have an opportunity to go through it again.

Pleasure to have you here.

Mr. LANCE. Thank you, Tom.

Mr. UDALL. I would like to carve out some time for our Chairman

here. You have the prerogative. You have all the time over there,

anyway.

Mrs. CUBIN. I just do want to make a point about the process to

counter what was said. Yes, there was a lot of public input. There

were hundreds of thousands if not millions of statements that were

submitted but also the rule was put in place before it was physically possible for the Forest Service to have considered all of those

comments.

I know in the State of Wyoming there was like 24 hours left and

thousands and thousands of statements that needed to be regarded

and the point is, Tom, that the statements were made but they

were not included in the decision-making process.

The Chair now recognizes Mr. Flake.

Mr. FLAKE. No questions.

Mrs. CUBIN. Mrs. McCollum?

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Lance, when you were talking about the mills closing, I am

from Minnesota so we are not identical but we are on that border

with Canada and I am hearing from a lot of the folks in my part

of the world that part of the reason why our mills are not successful has to do with what is happening with Canadian timber.

Is that a fair statement, that that played a factor in what you

were describing as closing the mills and it was not all the Forest

Service?

Mr. LANCE. Madam Chair, Congressman, yes, absolutely, there is

no question about it. The Canadians are exporting large quantities

of lumber. That is a factor in terms of the mill closures. There is

no question about that.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Mr. Lance, I appreciate you clarifying that because had I not brought that up you would have thought that only

the factor that you mentioned was the only reason why your lumber people are suffering.

29

Could you tell me, has your state, as my state, had any discussions about closing roads, trading roads back and forth between the

Federal Government? Any where there is state forest, national

forest, where they are parallel, doing any land swaps, road swaps,

any of that kind of stuff?

Mr. LANCE. Congressman, yes, we swap lands, state lands with

Federal lands, on a fairly frequent basis in the State of Idaho, generally a block-up. If you have in-holdings here and there, what you

are trying to do is block it up so that we have a management unit

and the Federal Government ends up with a manageable unit.

Sometimes those include roads and rights-of-way and so forth and

so on.

The problem that we have that I do not know if you have in Minnesota is 2477 roads. We have these historic roads that were established sometime ago and we still are trying to sort out where the

2477 roads are, who owns them and who has the right to use them.

So that kind of complicates some of those transfers that you would

suggest.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Mr. Lance, could you tell me where your school

trust lands are isolated, as ours are in Minnesota, has the state

had a dialogue going on to access those lands, to get the dollars for

the schools? Have they had a long dialogue going on identifying

records of conversations back and forth between the Forest Service

to access those spots of school trust land? Have they been working

on this for a while?

Mr. LANCE. Well, Congressman, the example that I used is

Contux Creek, state land. We tried to do a timber sale. In fact, we

did the timber sale. It is surrounded by Federal lands. We were in

the process of working with the Forest Service. Intervenors, like

conservation groups, filed a variety of lawsuits. NMFS came in and

wanted another environmental impact statement so it has been

about 3 years and our timber is still there and we have not been

able to harvest it.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Mr. Lance, that was not my question.

Mr. LANCE. All right.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. My question was are you aware if your state has

had an on-going dialogue about trading lands back and forth, making sure that road access, as roads were being developed by the

state and by the Federal Government or roads in Federal lands be

kept up, upgraded so that you could have access to your school

trust funds lands? Have you been doing that?

Mr. LANCE. Madam, Congressman, I am of the opinion that yes,

we attempt to do that on a fairly frequent basis. As I indicated earlier, we do, in fact, trade lands with the Federal Government and

agencies of the Federal Government on a fairly frequent basis. To

identify all of the parcels of state lands and to sit down and attempt then to identify all of the roads or the 2477 roads or whatever else, I think would be somewhat difficult but we are certainly

willing to do as you suggest, to sit down and to try to cooperatively

manage many of these roads and lands.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. And Madam Chair, Mr. Lance, I am very disappointed that you did not get access to maps when you asked for

them so I want to make that perfectly clear. I am sure we had

some of the same things going on in Minnesota but we had maps

30

available to us to figure out what was going on. Were you totally

clueless as to what this was going to look like when the roadless

policy came out or did you have some maps, some idea or were you

really totally out there without a clue what was going to happen?

Mr. LANCE. Congressman, there are two types of roads covered

by the roadless proposal, two types of lands, one of which is the

inventoried roadless and one is the uninventoried roadless. No one

knows what the uninventoried roadless is. We know that the inventoried roadless in Idaho is 9.5 million acres. No one can tell us

what the uninventoried size is. It has been projected that maybe

that is another 4.5 million acres. On the uninventoried, we are totally clueless. We do not know.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you.

Mrs. CUBIN. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Holt.

Mr. HOLT. No questions for this witness at this time. Thank you,

Madam Chair.

Mrs. CUBIN. Well, Mr. Lance, we certainly thank you for your

testimony, thank you for the answers to the questions and we really appreciate your being here.

Also, Mr. Orton, we appreciate your being here. You were just as

cute as could be sitting there. Don’t think we do not appreciate

that.

Mr. LANCE. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mrs. CUBIN. Okay, never mind. You are not that cute.

Thank you very much. The panel is now dismissed.

The Chair would like to now call for panel two: Mr. Randy Phillips, Deputy Chief of Programs and Legislation for the USDA

Forest Service; Mr. Jeffrey Eppink, Vice President for Advanced

Resources, International; Mr. Steve Moyer, Vice President of Conservation Programs for Trout Unlimited; Mr. Greg Schaefer, Director of External Affairs for the Western Region for Arch Coal, Incorporated and, I might add, a personal dear friend of mine—thank

you, Greg, for being here—and Mr. Pete Morton, Resource Economist for The Wilderness Society.

Let me remind the witnesses that under our Committee rules

you must limit your oral statements to five minutes but your entire

statement will appear in the record.

I now recognize Mr. Phillips for his five minutes of testimony.

STATEMENT OF RANDY PHILLIPS, DEPUTY CHIEF, PROGRAMS

AND LEGISLATION, USDA FOREST SERVICE

Mr. PHILLIPS. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I am Randy Phillips, Deputy Chief of Programs and Legislation

for the U.S. Forest Service. I am also accompanied by Mr. Larry

Gadt, who is the director of our minerals and energy program for

the Forest Service.

I am here today to discus with you the effects of the roadless rule

on energy production based on the analysis in the Roadless Area

Conservation Final Environmental Impact Statement that was released on November 9 of last year and the final rule that was published on January 12 of this year.

As you know, on January 20, 2001 the Assistant to the President

and White House Chief of Staff issued a memorandum to agencies

to request that all new rules and regulations not yet in effect be

31

delayed for 60 days to give the administration time to review the

rules. In accordance with that direction, the secretary delayed the

effective date of the Roadless Area Conservation final rule from

March 13 of this year until May 12, 2001.

With the roadless rule currently under review by the Department

of Agriculture, my comments today will be limited to the effects

documented in the final environmental impact statement and the

final regulatory impact analysis that was prepared in conjunction

with the final rule.

The roadless rule would generally prohibit road construction and

reconstruction in inventoried roadless areas on about 58.5 million

acres of national forest and grasslands. The prohibition of road construction and reconstruction is anticipated to have some impact on

leasable energy minerals. The final rule would not affect road construction and reconstruction providing access to and development

within existing mineral lease boundaries or access needed for existing rights, such as private or state-owned mineral deposits. The

prohibitions would likely prevent expansion of existing mineral

lease areas into adjacent inventoried roadless areas or exploration

and development of new mineral leases except in situations where

development can be done without road construction.

The final roadless rule could affect exploration for or development of known coal reserves on approximately 47,400 acres in Colorado alone not currently leased in inventoried roadless areas.

These reserves are estimated at between 237 million and 1.3 billion

tons of coal near or adjacent to active mines. In addition, there are

over 2.5 million acres of inventoried roadless areas with varying

levels of potential to contain coal resources suitable for commercial

development. There may also be other coal resources in inventoried

roadless areas. However, the extent of the resources is not known

at this time.

The mining of coal from inventoried roadless areas is not extensive but there are active mines on the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre

and Gunnison National Forests in Colorado and the Manti-Lasal

National Forest in Utah. On the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and

Gunnison National Forests, Arch Coal is interested in expansion

into a contiguous inventoried roadless area.

Although the mine is an underground operation, expansion may

require road access for exploration and development drilling and

construction of ventilation shafts. If production cannot be expanded

into inventoried roadless areas, the mine could close within two to

5 years when current reserves are exhausted. Potential effects from

closure of this mine could include the loss of 361 direct jobs and

affect 2,119 total jobs. Two other operating mines adjacent to

roadless areas on the GMUG could also be affected. Together these

two mines produce about 9 million tons per year and employ 368

people. There are also three tracts with known recoverable coal reserves in the Manti-Lasal National Forest that currently are not

under lease.

Currently over 6 million acres of National Forest System land is

under lease for oil and gas. This includes approximately 759,000

acres of inventoried roadless areas considered to have high oil and

gas potential under lease. The areas currently under lease will not

be materially affected by the roadless rule.

32

Near the completion of the Roadless Area Conservation Final Environmental Impact Statement the Department of Energy, DOE,

raised additional concerns about the potential impacts on production of coal, oil and gas resources. After being informed about these

concerns the Forest Service evaluated the information provided by

DOE in accordance with agency procedures under the National Environmental Policy Act for new information. The agency concluded

that there was no change in the magnitude of the effects, as disclosed in the FEIS. The DOE information was included in the regulatory impact analysis.

Using information from the Department of Energy, an estimated

11.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 550 million barrels of oil

could potentially underlie inventoried roadless areas. They also estimate that between 63 percent and 78 percent of these potential

reserves may be economically recoverable.

In addition, on the Los Padres National Forest in California the

prohibition of road construction or reconstruction in inventoried

roadless areas could affect exploration and possible development.

In summary, while the roadless rule does not impact existing

mineral leases and outstanding rights it could impact expansion of

existing leases and exploration and development of new mineral

leases on National Forest System lands. Thank you. This concludes

my statement. I would be happy to answer any questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Phillips follows:]

Statement of Randle G. Phillips, Deputy Chief for Programs and

Legislation, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Chairman Cubin, Chairman Mcinnis and Members of the Subcommittees:

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to talk about the potential impacts of the roadless rule on energy mineral leasing from National Forest

System lands. I am Randy Phillips, Deputy Chief for Programs and Legislation, and

with me today is Larry Gadt, Director for Minerals and Geology Management of the

Forest Service. I am here today to discuss with you the effects of the roadless rule

based on the analysis in the Roadless Area Conservation Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) that was released on November 9, 2000 and the final rule

that was published on January 12, 2001.

As you know, on January 20,2001, the Assistant to the President and White

House Chief of Staff issued a memorandum to agencies requesting that all new

rules and regulations not yet in effect be delayed 60-days to give the Administration

time to review the rules. In accordance with that direction, the Secretary delayed

the effective date of the Roadless Area Conservation final rule from March 13, 2001,

until May 12, 2001.

The roadless rule is currently under review by the Department of Agriculture, so

my comments today will be limited to the effects documented in the FEIS and the

final regulatory impact analysis that was prepared in conjunction with the final

rule.

In brief, the roadless rule would generally prohibit road construction and reconstruction in inventoried roadless areas (IRAs) on 58.5 million acres of national

forests and grasslands. The prohibition of road construction and reconstruction is

anticipated to have some impact on leasable energy minerals. The final rule would

not affect road construction and reconstruction providing access to and development

within existing mineral lease boundaries or access needed for existing rights, such

as private or State owned mineral deposits. The prohibitions would likely prevent

expansion of existing mineral lease areas into adjacent inventoried roadless areas

or exploration and development of new mineral leases except in situations where development can be done without road construction.

Before I talk about the impacts of the rule on energy mineral leasing, I first want

to briefly discuss energy mineral leasing on National Forest System lands.

33

BACKGROUND

Leasable mineral resources are those mineral resources that can be explored for

and developed under one of several mineral-leasing acts. They include energy resources such as oil, gas, coal, and geothermal.

Exploration and development of oil, gas, coal, and geothermal resources are discretionary activities, meaning that leasing of them may or may not be allowed. The

Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has the authority to lease minerals on National

Forest System lands; however, they may only be leased subject to Forest Service

concurrence. Environmental impact statements are generally prepared before the issuance of

mineral leases in inventoried roadless areas. The effects of any future lease exploration or development are also addressed in subsequent environmental analysis.

EFFECTS OF THE ROADLESS RULE

Locatable mineral access is a right granted by statute and therefore not materially affected by the road prohibition. Saleable minerals are subject to the road prohibition, and therefore generally eliminated as a permissible activity within inventoried roadless. However, the economic effect of eliminating saleable minerals is insignificant because saleable minerals (sand, gravel, limestone for aggregate, etc.) are

not economic unless very close to market due to haul costs, therefore there is a

minimal amount of this activity in inventoried roadless areas.

For leasable energy minerals, the road prohibition would not materially affect

road construction and reconstruction providing access to and development within existing lease boundaries, even if those leases are extended beyond their current termination dates. However, the road prohibition would likely prevent expansion of existing mineral lease areas into adjacent inventoried roadless areas. In many cases,

such expansion is more economically advantageous to the operator than developing

new deposits.

Where reserves are known to occur in inventoried roadless areas, the road prohibition is likely to preclude future development, except in situations where development can occur without road construction. The economic impacts of precluding development of an area depends on a variety of external factors that would lead to

development including market prices, transportation, access, plus other factors such

as the availability of alternate resources in areas that may be available for leasing

(either on other National Forest System lands or on other ownerships). Since mineral deposits tend to be concentrated in some geographic areas, it is likely that the

impacts on mining jobs and income would also be concentrated in a few areas. The

most immediate economic effects are associated with current proposals to expand existing leases into adjacent inventoried roadless areas for phosphate and coal mining.

Coal

In 1998, over 75 million tons of coal produced from Federal leases on National

Forest System land accounted for almost 7 percent of total national production, and

about 22 percent of production from Federal leases.

The final roadless rule could affect exploration for or development of known coal

reserves on approximately 61,200 acres not currently leased in inventoried roadless

areas. These reserves are estimated at between 237 million and 1.3 billion tons of

coal near or adjacent to active mines. In addition, there are over 2.5 million acres

of inventoried roadless areas with varying levels of potential to contain coal resources suitable for commercial development.

Some of these reserves or resources would likely be developed within the next 5

years if offered for lease. There may also be other coal resources in inventoried

roadless areas. However, the extent of the resource is not known and there is no

demonstrated industry interest in these.

The mining of coal from inventoried roadless areas is not extensive, but there are

active mines on the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests

(GMUG) in Colorado and the Manti–Lasal National Forests in Utah.

On the GMUG, Arch Coal is interested in expansion into a contiguous inventoried

roadless area. Although the mine is an underground operation, expansion may require road access for exploration and development drilling, and construction of ventilation shafts. The mine currently produces about 7 million tons per year. If production cannot be expanded into inventoried roadless areas, the mine could close within

two to five years, when current reserves are exhausted. Potential effects from closure of this mine could include the loss of 361 direct jobs and affect 2,119 total jobs.

Two other operating mines adjacent to roadless areas on the GMUG could also

be affected. Data was not available on when current reserves may be depleted for

these mines, but together the two mines produce about 9 million tons per year and

employ 368 people. If future expansion of these operations is precluded by the road

34

prohibition, and no alternative sources of production are economically attractive,

then these mines could be closed after current reserves under lease are mined.

There are also three tracts with known recoverable coal reserves on the Manti– Lasal National Forest that currently are not under lease. Two of the potential tracts

have relatively small recoverable reserves, but the third tract has an estimated 135

million tons of recoverable reserves, of which 50 million tons is within inventoried

roadless areas. Included in the recoverable reserve estimate are about 22 million

tons of recoverable reserves owned by the State of Utah. Access to coal owned by

the State of Utah would be guaranteed, as would access to any privately held rights.

This tract would require development facilities in an inventoried roadless area,

which may preclude development of the rest of the tract once the State’s portion of

the reserve is extracted.

Oil and Gas

Federal leases are an important source of oil and gas production, but most of the

production is from off-shore leases. Production from national forests and grasslands

currently accounts for only 0.4 percent of total U.S. oil and gas production. However,

interest may increase in response to increasing prices and demands. Although much

of the increased development is expected to be off-shore, a number of national

forests and grasslands either have current leases, or have applications for permits

to explore for natural gas.

Currently over 6 million acres of National Forest System land is under lease for

oil and gas. This includes approximately 759,000 acres of inventoried roadless areas

considered to have high oil and gas potential under lease. The areas currently under

lease will not be materially affected by the roadless rule.

Near the completion of the Roadless Area Conservation FEIS, the Department of

Energy (DOE) raised additional concerns about the potential impacts on production

of coal, oil, and gas resources if the final roadless rule did not allow road building

in support of exploration and development of these leasable minerals. After being

informed about these concerns, the Forest Service evaluated the information provided by DOE, in accordance with agency procedures under the National Environmental Policy Act for new information. After careful review of the information provided, the agency concluded that there was no change in the magnitude of the effects as disclosed in the FEIS. The Forest Service included the DOE information in

the regulatory impact analysis that accompanied the final rule.

Department of Energy undertook an analysis that focused on the potential impacts to undiscovered oil and gas resources in the two U.S. Geological Survey

(USGS)-defined Rocky Mountain regions. Overlaying USGS oil and gas ‘‘play’’ areas

on Forest Service maps of IRAs, DOE estimated the acres of IRAs in each of the

play areas. (A play is a USGS-designated area with common geologic characteristics

that have potential to produce oil or natural gas.) The calculations of oil and gas

resources that are estimated to occur beneath inventoried roadless areas are tied

to these acreage estimates.

Using information from the Department of Energy, an estimated (mean) 11.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 550 million barrels of oil could potentially underlie

inventoried roadless areas. (Estimates range from 3.5 trillion cubic feet to 23.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and from 119 million barrels to 1,212 million barrel

of oil.) They also estimate that between 63 percent and 78 percent of these potential

reserves may be economically recoverable. DOE estimates that historically about

one-third of the oil-in-place of known reservoirs is recovered. At the assumed prices

($3–4 per Mcf), the value of the economic activity for these natural gas resources

would range from $23 to $34 billion dollars, which would be realized over a number

of years.

In addition, on the Los Padres National Forest in California the prohibition of

road construction or reconstruction in inventoried roadless areas could affect exploration and possible development of five high potential oil and gas areas and preclude possible future development of up to an estimated 21.4 million barrels of oil.

Based on DOE’s figures of total undiscovered resources within the 208 Rocky

Mountain play areas examined, estimated resources beneath IRAs account for about

3 percent of undiscovered gas and almost 7 percent of undiscovered oil resources in

these play areas. DOE estimates that 2.7 million acres of inventoried roadless acres

contain 83 percent (9.3 trillion cubic feet) of the natural gas resource in all inventoried roadless areas. Based on information from the National Petroleum Council

this is less than 1 percent of the nation’s natural gas resources.

If exploration and development did occur, it would be 5 to 10 years before any

production is likely because oil and gas leasing is typically a lengthy process. The

value would not be realized in the near future and any production would be spread

over multiple years in the future. It is unlikely that exploration in IRAs would be

35

a high priority because of issues independent of the Roadless Area Conservation

Rule, such as access limited by rugged terrain, low probability of occurrence of oil

and gas resources, distance to markets, and potential restrictions of other environmental laws.

Transmission lines

There is nothing in the final roadless rule that would prohibit construction of new

power lines or oil and gas lines in inventoried roadless areas. However, having to

construct these facilities without the use of roads would generally increase the construction and maintenance costs.

Hydropower and Geothermal Energy

The roadless rule FEIS also did not identify any impacts to existing or proposed

hydropower or geothermal energy projects.

SUMMARY

While the roadless rule does not impact existing mineral leases and outstanding

rights it could impact expansion of existing leases and exploration and development

of new mineral leases on National Forest System lands that require road construction or reconstruction in inventoried roadless areas.

Outside of known reserves such as the active coal mines in Colorado, the actual

impacts can only be estimated. However, in those identified communities with a history of mining dependence, prevention of existing mining expansion due to the

roadless rule could likely have a significant impact.

Predicting the impact on undiscovered resources is difficult since it is unknown

how much of these potential reserves are actually underneath inventoried roadless

areas or how much of the reserves will be economically recoverable in the future,

or what future prices will be.

It is reasonable to assume, under the current demand conditions, that there will

be increased interest for development of natural gas resources on Federal lands and

elsewhere. However, while it is unlikely that inventoried roadless areas would be

a significant contributor at current prices, since exploration in inventoried roadless

areas may not be a high priority because of existing rugged terrain and access

issues independent of the roadless rule, at higher market prices development of gas

resources on Federal lands could increase.

This concludes my statement. I would be happy to answer any questions.

Mrs. CUBIN. Thank you, Mr. Phillips.

The Chair now recognizes Mr. Jeffrey Eppink.

STATEMENT OF JEFFREY EPPINK, VICE PRESIDENT,

ADVANCED RESOURCES INTERNATIONAL

Mr. EPPINK. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairwoman Cubin and

members of the Committee. My name is Jeffrey Eppink. I am a

Vice President with Advanced Resources, International, an energy

consulting firm based in Arlington, Virginia.

At Advanced Resources we have conducted a number of oil and

gas resource assessments in recent years. I participated in the National Petroleum Council’s 1999 study on natural gas and am currently conducting a major study on the impacts of leasing stipulations which I will elaborate upon later.

Today I would like to present an analysis that we conducted last

fall concerning oil and gas resources associated with then-proposed

Forest Service inventoried roadless areas. We performed the study

for the Department of Energy as a task under a multi-year technical and analytical support contract to the department. We will

first present the conclusions from the study, then briefly discuss

how the study was conducted and then present specific results.

The analysis shows the following. Nationwide the vast majority

of natural gas resources in roadless areas are found in the Rocky

Mountain region. Undiscovered natural gas resources in the Rocky

36

Mountains impacted by the roadless areas amount to 11 Tcf and

are mostly contained in the largest nine plays. Less than 5 percent

of the roadless areas nationwide contain about 80 percent of the

natural gas resources. Implementation of the roadless area rule in

the Rocky Mountain region will close to development an additional

9.4 Tcf of natural gas, raising the total estimated by the NPC from

29 to 38 Tcf, a significant 32 percent increase. Economic activity

associated with the recovery of natural gas resources associated

with roadless areas is estimated to be $23 to 34 billion.

Next I would like to briefly discuss how the study was conducted.

The study was comprehensive. In all, we examined 19 Rocky Mountain provinces or basins and 208 plays. The map on the left shows

the Rocky Mountain region that was covered by the study. The region contains a vast majority of oil and gas on Federal lands. The

red areas on the map depict the so-called inventoried roadless

areas, areas which without road access would effectively prohibit

oil and gas resource development. Shown on the map in light green

are areas of underlying oil and gas resources.

We used resource estimates from several expert groups in the

analysis. The vast majority of resource data was taken from the

USGS 1995 assessment, which I might add we participated in. For

a few selected plays where analysis had been conducted subsequent

to the 1995 assessment we supplemented the USGS data with resource estimates conducted by ourselves, the Utah Geologic Survey

and the Potential Gas Committee.

The areas of occurrences of resources in the analysis are defined

by the intersection of the plays themselves with the roadless areas.

Estimates of high, low and mean technically recoverable oil and

gas resources were made. The results show that the roadless areas

contain from about 3 to 23 Tcf of natural gas with a mean value

of about 11 Tcf. The roadless areas also contain from minor

amounts to over 1 billion barrels of oil with a mean value of 550

million barrels.

Further in the analysis we examined the issue of access using

guidelines established in the NPC study and we determined that

implementation of the roadless areas will close to development an

additional 9.4 Tcf of gas, a 32 percent increase, and further, that

resources subject to access restrictions will increase by 7 Tcf from

137 to 144 Tcf.

To examine the economic impacts for eliminating access to these

resources we also provided a cursory examination of the economically recoverable natural gas resources. Based on the mean resource values and prices of $3 and $4 an Mcf, about 68 to 75 percent of the technical natural gas resources could be recovered economically, representing about $23 to 34 billion of economic activity.

We also estimate that the nine largest plays in the study area

comprise about 83 percent of the total impacted natural gas resources. We determined that these nine plays represent less than

5 percent of all roadless areas nationwide.

I mentioned earlier that we are conducting on-going resource

studies. As follow-up to the NPC study we are currently conducting

a major study on the cumulative impacts upon undiscovered natural gas resources of leasing stipulations. We are conducting the

study on a detailed township by township basis. The study covers

37

Southern Wyoming and Northwestern Colorado and preliminary results show that over 60 percent of the natural gas resources are either closed to development or available with restrictions.

We will next be examining oil and gas in the Uinta-Piceance

Basin in Utah and Colorado. These studies are being conducted for

the Department of Energy and we would be happy to share those

results with you when they are available.

I appreciate the opportunity to present our roadless analysis to

you and would be glad to answer any questions you might have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Eppink follows:]

Statement of Jeffrey Eppink, Vice President,

Advanced Resources International, Inc.

Good afternoon, Chairwoman Cubin and members of the committee. My name is

Jeffrey Eppink. I am a vice president with Advanced Resources International, an

energy consulting firm based in Arlington, Virginia.

At Advanced Resources, we have conducted a number of oil and gas resource assessments in recent years. I participated in the National Petroleum Council’s 1999

study on natural gas and am currently conducting a major study on the impacts of

leasing stipulations upon natural gas resources, which I will elaborate upon later.

Today, I’d like to present an analysis that we conducted last fall concerning oil

and gas resources associated with then-proposed Forest Service Inventoried

Roadless Areas. We performed the study for the Department of Energy as a task

under a multi-year technical and analytical support contract to the Department.

I will present first the conclusion from the study, discuss briefly how the study

was conducted, and then present specific results.

The analysis shows the following:

• Nationwide, the vast majority of natural gas resources in Roadless Areas are

found in the Rocky Mountain region. Undiscovered natural gas resources in the

Rocky Mountains, impacted by the Roadless Areas, amount to 11 Tcf and are

mostly contained in the largest nine plays.

• Less than 5% of the Roadless Area nationwide contain about 80% of the natural

gas resources under those Forest Service lands.

• Implementation of Roadless Area Rule in the Rocky Mountain region will close

to development an additional 9.4 Tcf of natural gas resource, raising the total

estimated by the 1999 NPC Study from 29 Tcf to 38 Tcf, a significant 32% increase.

• Economic activity associated with recovery of natural gas resources associated

with Roadless Areas is estimated to be $23 to $34 billion.

Next I’d like to briefly discuss how the study was conducted. The study was comprehensive; in all, we examined 19 Rocky Mountain provinces or basins and 208

plays. The map to my left shows the Rocky Mountain region that was covered in

the study—New Mexico to Montana plus a portion of North Dakota. This region contains the vast majority of oil and gas on federal lands. The red areas on the map

depict the so-called ‘‘Inventoried Roadless Areas’’, areas which, without road access,

would effectively prohibit oil and gas resource development. Shown on the map in

the light green are areas with underlying oil and gas resources. In dark red within

Roadless Areas are areas of high slopes—mountain tops, ridges, etc., which we assumed to be less prospective because they would be locations where it is physically

difficult to site a drill rig or because they are could represent difficult geological settings for oil and gas to occur.

We used resource estimates from several expert groups in the analysis. The vast

majority of resource data was taken from the USGS 1995 National Assessment. For

a few selected plays where analysis had been conducted subsequent to the 1995 Assessment, we supplemented the USGS data with resource estimates conducted by

Advanced Resources (for the Department of Energy), the Utah Geological Survey

and the Potential Gas Committee (an industry group).

The areas of occurrence of resources in the analysis is defined by the intersection

of the plays themselves with the Roadless Areas. Estimates of high, low and mean

technically recoverable oil and gas resources were made. High estimates have low

probability for occurring; conversely, low estimates have a high probability for occurring. Technically recoverable resources are those that are recoverable using current

technology.

The results, presented in the table below, show that the Roadless areas contain

from about 3 to 23 Tcf of natural gas, with a mean value of 11 Tcf. The Roadless

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Areas also contains from minor amounts to over 1 billion barrels of oil, with a mean

value of 550 million barrels of oil.

Further in the analysis, we examined the issue of access using guidelines established in the 1999 NPC study (see table below). We determined that, for the Rocky

Mountains: • Implementation of the Roadless Areas will close to development an additional

9.4 Tcf of gas, raising the total to 38 Tcf from the 29 Tcf presented in the NPC

Study, a significant 32% increase.

• Resources subject to access restrictions will increase by 7 Tcf (resource formerly

under Standard Lease Terms), from 137 to 144 Tcf.

To examine the economic impacts for eliminating access to these technically recoverable resources, we also provided a cursory examination of economically recoverable natural gas resources. Based on the mean resource values and prices of $3/Mcf

and $4/Mcf, about 68 to 75% of the technical natural gas resources could be recoverable economically, representing $23 to $34 billion of economic activity, respectively.

We also estimate that the nine largest plays in the study areas comprise about

83% of the total impacted natural gas resources (please see the map). We determined that these nine plays represent less than 5% of all roadless areas nationwide.

I had mentioned earlier that we are conducting ongoing resource studies. As a follow-up to the 1999 NPC study, we are currently concluding a major study of the

cumulative impacts upon undiscovered natural gas resources of leasing stipulations.

We are conducting that study on a detailed township-by-township basis. The study

we are just now concluding covers Southern Wyoming and northwestern Colorado

(the Greater Green River Basin). Preliminary results show that over 60% of the natural gas resources are either closed to development or available with restrictions.

We will next be examining the Uinta–Piceance Basin in Utah and Colorado. The

studies are being conducted for the Department of Energy and we would be happy

to share those results with you when they are available.

I appreciate the opportunity to present our Roadless Areas analysis to you and

would be glad to answer any questions you might have.

Mrs. CUBIN. Thank you.

The Chair now recognizes Mr. Moyer.

STATEMENT OF STEVE MOYER, VICE PRESIDENT OF

CONSERVATION PROGRAMS, TROUT UNLIMITED

Mr. MOYER. Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify

before the Subcommittees today. I am Steve Moyer, Vice President

for Conservation for Trout Unlimited.

Trout Unlimited is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to

conserve, protect and restore North America’s trout and salmon

fisheries and their watersheds and we have about 130,000 members spread across the country. The National Wildlife Federation,

39

the nation’s largest wildlife conservation group, endorses the main

points of my testimony. The National Wildlife Federation has a

deep and abiding interest in the health of the national forests.

Back to Trout Unlimited, our members are thoroughly invested

in protecting and restoring trout and salmon habitat in the national forests. Since our inception our members have devoted hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of person-hours to onthe-ground restoration work on watersheds in the national forests

and we have invested considerable time in the studying and commenting on Forest Service policies and decisions of all types.

We support the roadless policy because of the great fish and

wildlife habitats roadless areas contain, because of the substantial

adverse impacts that roads have on fish and wildlife habitat, and

because of the huge backlog of existing unaddressed forest road

maintenance costs. It makes good sense to us to fix the all-too-common existing broken roads in habitat in the national forests before

building new roads in the roadless areas and incurring even more

costs for which we cannot pay.

As the Subcommittees consider the potential benefits of increased

energy production from roadless areas on the national forests, we

urge the Subcommittees to fully consider what would likely be the

high cost to the Federal treasury, as well as fish and wildlife habitat, if greater energy development were to occur in roadless areas.

Further the Subcommittees should consider the current great

needs to restore healthy fish and wildlife habitats that already

exist on national forests. And finally, the Subcommittees must consider the huge backlog of road maintenance and reconstruction

needs on the existing forest road system and the substantial adverse impacts those poorly maintained roads have on fish and wildlife.

Also I am here today speaking as one of the six trustees of the

Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Alliance. The TRCA consists of

us, the Izaak Walton League of America, Wildlife Forever, the

Mule Deer Foundation, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and

the Wildlife Management Institute. The purpose of the alliance is

to educate and motivate hunters and anglers to positively influence

the future of our National Forest System.

Relevant to today’s hearing the TRCA supports the general policy

direction contained in one of its square deal initiatives which I

mention in my testimony and it was included in a letter to President Bush and to the leaders of this Committee, which I have here

with me today and I would like to have included in the record if

I could.

Mrs. CUBIN. Without objection.

[The letter follows:]

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41

42

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Mr. MOYER. The letters support keeping roadless areas roadless

on the national forests, as well as supporting the scientific management and conservation of all fish and wildlife habitat on the national forests.

Just a few points that I would like to make in addition to what

I have said here in my final minutes. Roadless areas are known to

include some of the best remaining habitat for fish and wildlife in

the nation. Especially in the Western United States, roadless areas

are vital for trout and salmon resources and for big game, such as

elk and mule deer. These resources sustain hunting and fishing

recreation that is extremely valuable to Western communities. According to a study that I have highlighted in my testimony, fishing

on the national forests produces about $8.5 billion worth of value

to the nation’s economy and hunting yields about $6.1 billion.

These are very valuable resources that are sustained in part by

roadless areas.

A related point, as I have mentioned, is poorly designed and

poorly maintained roads are some of the biggest threats to aquatic

life and wildlife in our national forests. When you combine this

with the backlog that we already have, the Subcommittees really

need to ask the question, can we afford to build more roads when

we cannot afford to pay for the ones that we already have?

On the energy issue, as you are hearing from this panel, the

amounts of energy available may be debatable. What is not, I do

not think, is the high cost of developing these resources relative to

the cost of developing other energy sources in already roaded areas.

And the Subcommittees must look at the cost as well as the benefits of energy production to come from roadless areas.

I just wanted to finish my highlighting the fact that what was

already said, 1.5 million people have commented in support of the

roadless policy or even making it stronger. And yes, it is true that

many of these were post cards or e-mails but still that is a national

record in terms of the response to a Federal rule and I think it does

show that there is deep support in the American populace for this

policy. And I just wanted to highlight the fact that hunters and anglers who are conservationists who use these Federal forest lands

are also very much part of the large support for this policy.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Moyer follows:]

Statement of Steve Moyer, Vice President of Conservation Programs,

Trout Unlimited

Thank you for the opportunity to testify before the Subcommittees today on behalf

of Trout Unlimited (‘‘TU’’) regarding energy and roadless area conservation on the

National Forests. TU is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to conserve, protect, and restore North America’s coldwater fisheries and their watersheds. TU has

more than 130,000 members in the United States.

TU and our members are deeply invested in protecting and restoring trout and

salmon habitat on the National Forests. Since our inception in 1959, our members

have devoted hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of man-hours to on

the ground restoration work on watersheds on the National Forests. They have invested considerable time into studying and commenting on Forest Service policies

of all kinds, from national policies such as the roadless conservation policy, to revisions of national forest management plans, to individual road reconstruction and

grazing allotment decisions.

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Summary of TU’s Position on the Forest Service’s Roadless Policy

TU supports the roadless policy because of the great fish and wildlife habitats

roadless areas contain, because of the substantial adverse impacts that roads have

on fish and wildlife habitat, and because of the huge backlog of existing,

unaddressed forest road maintenance costs. It make good sense to us to fix the all

too common existing broken roads and habitat in the National Forests before building new roads into roadless areas and incurring even more costs for which we cannot pay.

As the Subcommittees consider the potential benefits of increased energy production from roadless areas on the National Forests, we urge the Subcommittees to

fully consider what would likely be high costs to the federal fisc as well as fish and

wildlife habitat if greater energy development were to occur in roadless areas. Further, the Subcommittees should consider the current, great needs to restore healthy

fish and wildlife habitats on the National Forests. Finally, the Subcommittees must

consider the huge backlog of road maintenance and reconstruction needs on the existing forest road system and the substantial adverse affects those poorly maintained roads have on fish and wildlife. I assure you that TU stands ready to assist

the Subcommittees as they consider these important aspects of forest road policy,

and fish and wildlife habitat, in addition to the ramifications of the roadless area

policy itself.

Summary of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Alliance (TRCA) Position on

Managing the National Forests and Roadless Areas

I am also here today speaking as one of the six trustees of the Theodore Roosevelt

Conservation Alliance (TRCA). The TRCA consists of TU, the Izaak Walton League

of America, Wildlife Forever, the Mule Deer Foundation, the Rocky Mountain Elk

Foundation, and the Wildlife Management Institute. Our organizations believe the

future of the National Forest System is of great importance to healthy fish and wildlife species, clean water and the opportunity for all Americans to enjoy quality hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation on our public lands. The purpose of our Alliance

is to educate and motivate hunters and anglers to positively influence the future of

our 192 million-acre National Forest system.

Relevant to today’s hearing, TRCA supports the general forest policy direction

contained in ‘‘Square Deal Initiative 1’’ (below) that was carefully drafted by the

TRCA trustees, and was included in the a letter to President Bush, which was

signed by over 100 sportmen’s conservation clubs across the nation. I have brought

copies of the letter for the Subcommittees, and I ask that it be included in the hearing record.

TRCA’s Square Deal Initiative 1: Room to Roam—Landscape and Access

Management

‘‘We urge elected officials and public land managers to scientifically manage

all fish and wildlife habitat in the National Forest System, whether roaded

or unroaded, as valuable and unique lands that will remain open to hunters, anglers and other public users. Balance accessibility to National Forest

lands, with the year round requirements of fish and wildlife (habitat, clean

water, food, shelter, open space and disturbance management), while maintaining a functioning forest road system, including keeping roadless areas

roadless (with science-based exceptions made for forest health, restoration,

and other national needs).’’

National Forest Roadless Areas Contain Valuable Fish and Wildlife Habitat, Which

Sustains Valuable Hunting and Fishing Recreation.

The roadless policy would ban new road construction in 58 million acres of inventoried roadless areas in the National Forests, while maintaining access for anglers,

hunters and other public users. Roadless areas are known to include some of the

best remaining habitat for fish and wildlife in the nation. Especially in the western

U.S., roadless areas are vital for trout and salmon resources, and for big game, such

as elk and mule deer. National Forests support 80% of the elk, mountain goat, and

bighorn sheep habitat in the lower 48 states.

The following are a few examples from Montana National Forests:

• The South Fork of the Flathead has perhaps the state’s strongest populations

of bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout. Most of the watershed is roadless

(mainly in the Bob Marshall wilderness).

• The Blackfoot drainage has some of the healthiest populations of migratory bull

and cutthroat trout in Montana. The three most important spawning tributaries

for bull trout are Monture Creek, the North Fork and the Landers Fork. Large

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portions of these watersheds are roadless. Bull trout are uncommon in heavily

roaded drainages of the Blackfoot drainage.

• Rock Creek is one of the most popular wild trout fisheries in the state. Approximately half of the watershed is roadless. Biologists have found that most of the

important spawning and rearing areas for bull trout are in waters flowing

through roadless areas such as the Quigg Peak and Stony Mountain areas.

• The majority of the remaining pure-strain native westslope cutthroats in the

upper Missouri drainage, where these fish hang on by a thread, are in roadless

areas found along the Rocky Mountain Front, in the Elkhorns, in the upper Big

Hole watershed and in the roadless fragments found near the Continental Divide.

Fish and wildlife resources found on National Forests, such as those highlighted

above, sustain hunting and fishing recreation that is extremely valuable to local

economies. According to a 1999 report from the American Sportfishing Association,

in 1996 fishing on the National Forests produced $8.5 billion to the nation’s economy. Hunting yielded $6.1 billion. Much of this value comes from trout and salmon

fishing, and big game hunting. Roadless area protection is tied to the long-term

sustainablity of these huge benefits.

Simply put, world class hunting and fishing are still available to the public in the

remote areas of our National Forests and use trends show hunting and angling rising at five percent per year nationwide. In some areas like California, hunting use

of National Forests is doubling in eight years, while fishing use of Alaska’s Tongass

National Forest doubled in the last seven years. Further, if America’s 50 million

hunters and anglers grow in proportion to the population of the U.S. during this

century, wild space open to the public will be at an absolute premium.

Roads Often Damage Fish and Wildlife Habitats

Existing poorly designed and maintained roads are some of the biggest environmental threats to aquatic life and wildlife in our National Forests, promoting soil

erosion in fish spawning and rearing areas and destroying the water quality of

streams.

Studies from the Forest Service’s Interior Columbia River Basin plan, for example, conclude that:

• Increasing road density and management intensity is correlated with declining

pool frequency and increased fine sediments in streams. Pools are important

winter and foraging habitat. Sediment from roads fills pools and smothers

spawning gravels. Thus, roads are harming critical elements of aquatic habitat.

A Huge and Pressing Backlog of Forest Road Maintenance Needs Already Exists.

The Subcommittees should bear in mind that the forest roads debate should start

by recognizing that the Forest Service has an $8.4 billion backlog on maintenance

and reconstruction of its existing 386,000 miles of road. As we consider the prospect

of building new roads to access hard to reach, potential, energy or timber sources,

we need to address the question, ‘‘Why build more when we can’t care for what we

have?’’

The Tongass road situation is but one bad example. The Forest Service in cooperation with the State of Alaska, recently completed the Tongass Road Condition Survey, which determined that 53 percent of culverts (164 of 301 culverts) in Class I

streams are impeding passage of juvenile salmon under certain conditions, while another 29 percent (80 of 301 culverts) in Class I streams may be impeding passage.

The estimate for repairing the culverts in the Tongass National Forest is at least

$20 million.

There is a clear need for the Resources Committee to request, and for Congress

to appropriate, the funds that the Forest Service needs to improve road maintenance and reconstruction, as well as funds needed to eliminate unfixable roads,

which are damaging fish and wildlife habitat.

The Amount of Available Energy from Roadless Areas is Debatable. The High Cost

of Developing Those Resources, Relative to the Costs of Developing Other Energy

Sources in Roaded Areas, Is Not.

According to the Forest Service, the roadless policy could have some impact on

leasable minerals, such as oil and gas, because the policy would prohibit road construction associated with future mineral leasing. Yet, the Forest Service’s roadless

documents say that there appears to be relatively small amount of oil, gas and coal

in roadless areas. In context, total oil and gas production from all National Forest

lands is about 0.4 percent of the nation’s supply, and since the roadless areas have

been available to oil and gas leasing for many years and have remained undeveloped, it is difficult to see where the supplies really are.

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A study done recently for the Energy Department held a different view. The study

found that roadless areas ‘‘contain moderate to significant amounts of natural gas

and oil.—

TU is not an energy expert and thus we are unable to shed much light on the

debate surrounding availability of energy sources on roadless areas. What we do

know is this: roadless areas have remained such for a reason—most are difficult to

access. Building roads to access energy in the roadless areas would likely be costly

ventures. Add in the fish and wildlife habitat harm produced by these roads, and

the result of any contemplated energy development in roadless areas is likely to be

an expensive proposition. The Subcommittees must carefully look at the costs, as

well as the benefits, of energy production from roadless areas.

Millions of Americans, Including Hunters and Anglers, Support Keeping Roadless

Areas Roadless.

Finally, the Subcommittees should keep in mind that 1.6 million Americans commented in favor of the roadless policy being as protective, or more so, than it is right

now. This is the largest outpouring of public support for any federal rulemaking in

history.

Similarly, a survey of American hunters and anglers commissioned by the TRCA

last year found a very strong response from sportsmen and women in support of

keeping roadless areas roadless: 83% of respondents favored such a proposition. In

short, support for roadless area protection runs deep, and it includes sportsmen and

women.

In sum, TU supports the roadless policy because of the high habitat and recreational values that they sustain, and because the substantial damage roads incur

on fish and wildlife habitat. We also support the best science-based management of

those areas, as well as all of our National Forests. We urge the Subcommittees to

fully consider what would likely be high costs to the federal fisc as well as fish and

wildlife habitat if energy development were to occur in roadless areas.

We look forward to having a more detailed dialogue with the Subcommittees on

these issues. Also, we urge the Subcommittees to work with us on fixing the longstanding problems associated with lack of funding for roads maintenance and reconstruction and fish and wildlife habitat restoration.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify at the hearing.

Summary of TU’s Position on the Forest Service’s Roadless Policy

TU supports the roadless policy because of the great fish and wildlife habitats

roadless areas contain, because of the substantial adverse impacts that roads have

on fish and wildlife habitat, and because of the huge backlog of existing,

unaddressed forest road maintenance costs. It make good sense to us to fix the all

too common existing broken roads and habitat in the National Forests before building new roads into roadless areas and incurring even more costs for which we cannot pay.

As the Subcommittees consider the potential benefits of increased energy production from roadless areas on the National Forests, we urge the Subcommittees to

fully consider what would likely be high costs to the federal fisc as well as fish and

wildlife habitat if greater energy development were to occur in roadless areas. Further, the Subcommittees should consider the current, great needs to restore healthy

fish and wildlife habitats on the National Forests. Finally, the Subcommittees must

consider the huge backlog of road maintenance and reconstruction needs on the existing forest road system and the substantial adverse affects those poorly maintained roads have on fish and wildlife. I assure you that TU stands ready to assist

the Subcommittees as they consider these important aspects of forest road policy,

and fish and wildlife habitat, in addition to the ramifications of the roadless area

policy itself.

Mrs. CUBIN. Thank you, Mr. Moyer. I am one of those hunters

and fishermen that oppose the policy.

We have a series of votes so we will not be able to take the testimony of the other two witnesses until about 3:30 when we should

be able to be back. Thank you very much and thank you for your

patience.

[Recess.]

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Mr. PETERSON. I welcome you back to the hearing. I am

Congressman Peterson, Fifth District, Pennsylvania. I am the substitute for the substitute for the substitute.

We are going to call now on Mr. Greg Schaefer, Director, External Affairs, Western Region, Arch Coal Company.

STATEMENT OF GREG SCHAEFER, DIRECTOR, EXTERNAL

AFFAIRS, WESTERN REGION, ARCH COAL COMPANY

Mr. SCHAEFER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And for the record a

special hello to Congresswoman Barbara Cubin, who is my representative in Wyoming.

The Forest Service has a mineral policy which states that ‘‘the

national forests and grasslands have an essential role in contributing to an adequate and stable supply of mineral and energy resources.’’ This policy is as important today as it was the day it was

written. The mineral policy further states that the Forest Service

requires ‘‘reclamation plans for all proposed surface-disturbing activities to return the land to productive uses, in accordance with

land management goals.’’ As you listen about the backlog of maintenance on roads on

Forest Service lands, keep clearly in mind that any road that we

construct or reconstruct must be reclaimed at our own sole expense

to a condition at least as good as it was premining.

The final rule stated that the action was not designed to prohibit

mining but only prohibits road construction and reconstruction.

Roads are needed, however, even with underground mining operations for such activities as exploration drilling, construction and

maintenance of mine ventilation and for emergency situations.

Relative to energy, California has drawn a great deal of attention

over the past year. Currently the State of California is importing

25 percent of their electric needs from other Western states. There

are no major coal-fired power plants in the State of California but

coal-fired generated electricity still accounts for 20 percent of their

total electric consumption. Some of these sources include the Intermountain Power Project in Utah, which is owned by the City of Los

Angeles and burns Utah Coal; the Reid-Gardner Unit Number 4 in

Nevada, which burns Utah and Colorado coals; the Deseret G&T

plant in Utah, which burns Utah coal; the Boardman plant in Oregon, which burns Utah, Colorado and Wyoming coals; and various

other sources, including PacifiCorp in Utah, which is supplied by

Utah coal. Each of these power plants obtains coal from mines that

are either on or immediately adjacent to the new roadless areas.

The North Fork Valley of Colorado produces between 50 and 60

percent of the total volume of coal in Colorado and is the fastest

coal-producing region in Colorado. These underground mines employ about 700 people in rural Colorado with an annual payroll of

about $50 million. Forty percent of the coal mined in Colorado

stays in Colorado to be used to generate electricity; the rest of the

coal is shipped to other states, such as Kentucky, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Oregon, Minnesota, Texas, Iowa, and Utah.

The Department of Energy reported that ‘‘the West Elk Mine will

require access in the next one to 5 years of high-quality coal resources that lie partially or entirely under roadless areas. Approximately 200 million tons of high-quality coal would be put off-limits

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[which is roughly a 35-to 40-year supply for that mine] and the

mine would be forced to close prematurely. As a result, the $100

million worth of infrastructure already invested in this mine would

be abandoned. The Bowie Mine in Colorado is hemmed in on the

north and west by roadless areas. These are the logical directions

for expansion of this mine. This mining company estimates that the

roadless rule would put 50 million tons of high-quality coal off-limits.’’

In Utah the map of Utah shows that the significant portion of

Utah’s coal production, almost 70 percent, is located on the MantiLaSal National Forest and is either overlain or adjacent to the

roadless area boundary. Over half of Utah’s coal production is also

used in generating plants within the State of Utah. Utah coal is

also exported to Nevada, Missouri, Oregon, Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska and to the Pacific Rim.

The State of Utah is unique among coal-producing states in that

it does not have an extensively developed rail system for many of

the mining operations and coal-fired power plants. That means in

most instances the Utah power plants are reliant on local sources

of coal. For example, the Hunter Power Plant, which has no rail

service, is planning on a significant expansion to meet energy demands in Utah and other Western states, such as California. As

mentioned, the City of Los Angeles owns the Intermountain Power

Project in Utah and is also planning a significant expansion.

The proposed power plant expansions in Utah could add as much

as a 40 percent increase in in-state demand for Utah coal used for

electric generation. As a result of this rule, the coal industry is facing a long-term impact to the coal supplies in Colorado and Utah.

I hope that Congress carefully looks at this impact to energy production in the West and corrects the mistakes that have been made

due to a lack of sufficient information.

Again thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Schaefer follows:]

Statement of Greg Schaefer, Director, External Affairs, Arch Coal Company, on Behalf of the National Mining Association and the Colorado,

Utah and Wyoming Mining Associations

Good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today regarding

the Roadless Area Final Rule. My name is Greg Schaefer and I am Director External Affairs Western Operations for Arch Coal, Inc. I am also here on behalf of the

National Mining Association (NMA) as well as the Colorado, Utah and Wyoming

Mining Associations. As background, Arch Coal is the second largest coal producer

in the nation, producing about 112 million tons of high quality coal annually. We

serve 149 power plants in 30 states. We currently have six operating coal mines in

the western United States, four of which operate at least partially on National

Forest Service lands.

At the outset let me say that the Forest Service, throughout the rulemaking process, stated the rule was not designed to prohibit mining, it would only prohibit the

construction and reconstruction of roads. In fact the preamble to the rule states that

‘‘[m]ineral leasing activities not dependent on road construction such as ‘‘underground development, would not be affected by the prohibition.’’ This proposition was

refuted in the record by a Department of Energy report (‘‘Impact of the Roadless

Initiative on Coal Resources’’ Bill Hochheiser, November 30, 2000) which provided,

‘‘[w]hile these resources are recovered using underground mines, roads are needed

to build ventilation shafts and for safety.’’ Simply put, one must have roads for mineral exploration and development. This point was clearly made in the rulemaking

record and obviously ignored by the rule’s authors.

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Impacts on Energy Resources

The Forest Service has a stated policy regarding minerals on Forest Service Lands

which states:

‘‘The Federal Government’s policy for minerals resource management is expressed in the Mining and Minerals Policy Act of 1970— ‘...foster and encourage private enterprise in the development of economically sound and

stable industries, and in the orderly and economic development of domestic

resources to help assure satisfaction of industrial, security, and environmental needs.’ Within this context, the national forests and grasslands have

an essential role in contributing to an adequate and stable supply of mineral and energy resources while continuing to sustain the land’s productivity for other uses and its capability to support biodiversity goals.’’

This policy is as important today as it was on the day it was written. Coal and

mineral resources from Forest Service lands are vital to supplying electricity at a

reasonable price and in an environmentally sound manner. The mineral policy also

states that the Forest Service ‘‘require reclamation plans for all surface-disturbing

activities to return the land to productive uses consistent with the ecological capability of the area and in accordance with land management goals.’’ This policy is

consistent with state and federal laws and regulations governing coal mining activities.

As I will describe in more depth later in this testimony, the Forest Service proposed and promulgated the Roadless Area Conservation Rule without sufficient information to perform an adequate analysis of the rule’s impact on coal production

from Forest Service lands. Only after the abbreviated 60-comment period closed did

it become clear what areas would be affected and to what degree. When this information became available to the Forest Service, it was glossed over or completely ignored in the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), the final rule and its

preamble.

Due to the lack of detailed information, the Forest Service significantly underestimated the rule’s impact on energy supplies in the western United States. The preamble to the final rule shows the effort to which the Department has gone to try

and minimize the impact of the rule. Faced with the additional information that we

provided, the Forest Service concluded:

‘‘Moreover, it seems likely that even if resources do underlie inventoried

roadless areas, they would be among the last areas entered for exploration

and development...the agency has determined that the information does not

materially alter the environmental analysis disclosed in the FEIS and does

not constitute significant new circumstances or information relevant to environmental concerns bearing on the rulemaking effort.’’

The fallacy of this statement can be seen on the attached maps. The additional

coal resources needed to keep the West Elk Mine alive would be among the first

areas entered for exploration and development—not among the last.

The Department also downplayed the significance of National Forest Service lands

as a source of high quality, low sulfur coal. In the preamble to the final rule they

stated:

‘‘The FEIS described the coal production from NFS lands as accounting for

about 7% of national production in 1999.’’

This statement implies that tightening up access simply will not have much impact on energy production from National Forest Service lands. However, last year

our Black Thunder Mine in Wyoming alone produced over 60 million tons of coal,

which represents over 5% of national production by itself. The Black Thunder Mine

is located in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and is located on the Thunder

Basin National Grasslands which is managed by the National Forest Service. In

speaking with Forest Service personnel, it was learned that they do not have a good

method of estimating coal production from National Forest Service lands. A quick

survey of some of producers on the Thunder Basin National Grasslands revealed

that these few mines in Wyoming accounted for 8–10% of national coal production.

This completely ignores coal production from National Forest Service lands in Colorado and Utah. If accurate data were used, the percentage of national coal production from National Forest Service Lands could very likely be 15–20%, which is a

very significant percentage.

In the justification for limiting access to high quality coal reserves on National

Forest Service lands, which ultimately leads to phasing out the existing mining operations, the Department concluded:

‘‘Overall, the U.S. has abundant coal reserves. Also, alternative sources of

low-sulfur coal do exist, concentrated in the western U.S., mostly in Colorado, Montana and Wyoming. Additionally, the abundant sources of low

50

cost-coal and available technology, such as scrubbers, will enable electric

utilities to meet their Clean Air Act compliance goals.’’

This statement writes off significant sources of high quality compliance coal in

Utah and parts of Colorado and creates major problems for the generators of electricity in Utah. The premise for this statement is simply incorrect, and will be discussed below.

Colorado Impacts

The State of Colorado produces close to 30 million tons of high quality bituminous

coal annually. Roughly 45% of this coal is used within the state and the remainder

is exported to other states. The North Fork Valley near Paonia, Colorado (roughly

90 miles east of Grand Junction, Colorado) produces approximately 60% of the total

volume of Colorado coal, and is the fastest growing coal-producing region in Colorado. This area consists of three underground coal mines: Arch’s West Elk Mine, the

Oxbow Mine and Bowie Resources. It is anticipated that these three mines will

produce up to16 million tons of coal in 2001 with about 700 employees and an annual payroll of $50 million.

In 1999, coal from these three mines was shipped to power plants in Colorado,

Kentucky, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Oregon, Minnesota, Missouri, Texas, Iowa,

and Utah. The Utah power plant supplied by this coal was the Intermountain Power

Project (IPP) which is owned by the City of Los Angeles and provides low cost reliable power to California.

The Department of Energy report referenced above highlights some of the energy

impacts created by the roadless rule:

‘‘This coal is highly valued by these utilities because of its low sulfur content (0.5%) and high Btu value. Utilities such as Tennessee Valley Authority rely on this coal as their Clean Air Act compliance strategy. The utilities

blend this coal with other, higher sulfur, lower Btu coal to achieve compliance, and burn the Colorado coal exclusively during time of high demand

in order to avoid derating of their plants while staying under air emissions

limits.’’

The Department of Energy report also describes specific energy impacts in the

North Fork Valley:

‘‘The West Elk Mine requires access in the next one to five years to three

areas of high quality coal resources that lie partially or entirely under

roadless areas. Approximately 200 million tons of high quality coal would

be put off limits and the mine would be forced to close prematurely. In addition, as much as 50 million tons of coal on the existing lease would likely

not be mined because planned longwall panels that would extend into unleased federal coal would not proceed. As a result, the $100 million of infrastructure already invested in this mine would be abandoned.’’

The West Elk Mine produces seven million tons of coal per year, providing $26

million dollars per year of direct labor income and almost $90 million of direct plus

indirect income. The potentially unminable 200 million tons of coal have a value of

$3 billion. Using the multiplier of 3.5, as used in the FEIS (p.3–316, table 3–68),

this represents a total of over $10 billion in foregone economic activity.

The Bowie mine, northwest of the West Elk mine, is hemmed in on the north and

west by roadless areas. These are the logical directions of expansion for this mine.

This mine produces five million tons of high Btu/low sulfur coal and employs 178

people at the mine, with an annual payroll of $9 million per year. This translates

to more than $30 million per year of direct plus indirect economic impact.

The mining company estimates that the roadless rule would put 50 million tons

of high quality coal off limits to the Bowie mine, coal with a value of $750 million.

Using the multiplier from the previous bullet, this translates to over $2.5 billion of

economic activity.’’

Utah Impacts

In Uinta coal region of Utah, the Forest Service concentrated on only three tracts:

the Muddy, Ferron, and North Horn tracts. These tracts are either next to an existing mine or contain sufficient high quality reserves to support a new mine. The

FEIS that preceded the final roadless rule estimates these three tracts contain 185

million tons of high–Btu coal. This coal would have a value of over $2.8 billion to

$3.7 billion if mined.

While these three tracts represent a sizable amount of coal, they also represent

only the tip of the iceberg as shown on the attached map of the Uinta region. The

roadless areas block mine development and expansion across the entire western

boundary of the region. None of this information regarding resource information outVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:26 Jan 11, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00056 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 71552.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: HRESOUR1
51

1Source: 1999 Net System Power Calculation, Electricity Analysis Office, California Energy

Commission , April 2000

side of the three tracts was considered by the rule writers nor the authors of the

FEIS.

The primary impact of the roadless area rule in Utah will be on the Manti–LaSal

National Forest. The map shows that a significant portion of Utah’s coal industry

is located in the Manti–LaSal National Forest and is either overlain or adjacent to

the roadless area boundary. The State of Utah annually produces roughly 25 to 27

million tons of high quality, low sulfur coal, half of which is used in the State of

Utah. Just under 50% of the coal is exported to states such as Nevada, California,

Oregon, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Idaho, Colorado, Washington, Wyoming and

Tennessee for electric generation (about 26%) and other industrial/commercial/residential uses (%16). Depending on the exchange rate and the demand for steam and

metallurgical coal about 10% of Utah coal is exported to Pacific Rim countries

through the Los Angeles Export Terminal.

The existing coal mines that are overlain by or adjacent to the Roadless Areas

are the SUFCO, Deer Creek, Trail Mountain, Crandell and Star Point mines. In

1999 these mines represented almost 70% of the coal production in the State of

Utah.

The State of Utah is unique among coal producing states in that it does not have

an extensively developed rail system for many of the mining operations and coalfired power plants. This means that in many instances the Utah power plants are

much more reliant on local sources of coal than counterparts in other states. For

example, the Huntington Power Plant has no rail service and must rely on local

mines to supply coal by truck. This plant is planning a significant expansion to meet

energy demand needs for the State of Utah, as well as for export to other western

states (e.g., California).

The City of Los Angeles owns the Intermountain Power Project (IPP), with the

power generated by this plant being exported to California. As a part of the current

energy crisis in California, the IPP plant is also considering a significant expansion.

The vast majority of the coal used at this plant is from the State of Utah.

The potential power plant expansions in Utah could add as much as a 40% increase in in-state demand for Utah coal. This is at a time when the number of coal

mines in Utah have been decreasing and significant uncertainty has been added due

to the roadless rule. A complicating factor in the State of Utah is the settlement

agreement between the state and the federal government over the lost coal resources as a result of the designation of the Grand Staircase Escalante National

Monument. In this settlement agreement, the federal government transferred temporary ownership of some coal reserves to the State of Utah (SITLA). The final rule

states that these tracts have valid existing rights and can be mined. However, after

the tracts, a certain amount of coal has been produced from these tracts, they revert

back to the federal government. Furthermore, some of these tracts will need adjacent coal in order to justify the capital needed to build a mine. Where that adjacent

federal coal is encumbered by the roadless area prohibitions, the likelihood of one

investing capital in these mines is diminished.

California

This section briefly discusses the role of coal in the State of California. This State

was chosen since it is currently in the middle of a critical energy crisis and has generated a great deal of attention. Currently, the State of California is meeting 75%

of its electric needs by in-state generation and is importing the remaining 25% from

other western states. There are no major coal-fired power plants in the State of

California, but coal-fired-generated electricity still accounts for 20% of their total energy mix 1. Some of these sources include the Intermountain Power Project in Utah

(Utah coal); Reid–Gardner Unit 4 in Nevada (Utah and Colorado coals); Deseret

G&T in Utah (Utah and Colorado coals); Boardman Plant in Oregon (Utah, Colorado

and Wyoming coals). Each of these sources receives a portion of its coal from mines

underlying areas affected by the roadless rule. The State of Califonia also has various ‘‘northwest contracts’’ from various sources including Pacificorp in Utah, which

is supplied by Utah coal and similarly affected by the rule. As can be seen, the Utah

and Colorado coal industries are an integral and critical part of not only the Utah

and Colorado electric supply but also the State of California as well.

Summary

The Nation must use our vast domestic resources to meet the growing energy requirements that an expanding economy requires. Many of these resources, including

coal, are found on lands administered by the Forest Service and on other public

52

lands. Demand for coal for affordable, reliable electricity is expected to increase by

over 25% during the next 20 years. Nearly 90% of this additional coal production

will come from public lands in the West; much from Forest Service administered

lands impacted by this rule. If this affordable coal is not available, high costs for

alternative fuels will mean higher electricity costs and lower electricity reliability.

Also, the coal industry will continue to be required to reclaim any surface disturbance to at least as good a condition as the premining landscape.

The Roadless Area Initiative Process.

I have been involved in the Roadless Area proceedings since President Clinton announced the initiative on October 13, 1999. I attended several public scoping meetings, including one in Grand Junction, Colorado in December, 1999 and subsequently requested an extension of time of the scoping period. In our letter, dated

December 17, 1999, requesting an extension of time we made several requests that

have never been adequately addressed in this process ‘‘It is difficult, if not impossible, to provide knowledgeable comments on the

proposal when the Forest Service has not provided the public with sufficient detail. For example, the Forest Service has not provided maps with

any level of detail to be able to develop questions or comments relative to

our operations. Just prior to writing this letter, I went to the Forest Service

website dedicated to the Roadless Area initiative and it still states that the

maps are ‘Under Development’. In Colorado, a public hearing was held in

Grand Junction, Colorado. Once again, the Forest Service provided maps,

but in this case they were ‘conceptual’, and lacked any meaningful detail.

We have asked for detailed maps, that included coordinates, townships,

ranges, and sections, but have been unable to acquire the requested information. Local Forest Service personnel have tried to help, but they have

warned us that even when the maps are available, they may not be accurate? At a minimum, the Forest Service should provide the following so that

meaningful comment can be submitted:

Detailed maps showing the location of the proposed roadless areas, with

coordinates, sections, townships and ranges. Identify the coal reserves

that are located within the proposed roadless areas, as well as quantify

the coal quality of those reserves. Identify the location of existing mining

operations that could access these reserves, and provide an analysis of

the socio-economic consequences of the inability to obtain additional reserves. If there are no nearby mining operations, assess the impact on

the loss of those coal reserves from the reserve pool.’’ The Forest Service never addressed this request. Subsequently, maps were posted

on the website after the close of the public comment period, but the scale and lack

of legal description made them virtually useless for assessing local impacts, but did

give us a sense that we should look very closely at our Colorado operation in particular. The same information was requested by the NMA though a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request during the comment period for the proposed rule.

After the close of the comment period, NMA was told in a formal response from the

Forest Service that, in short, the maps and the relationship between roadless areas

and mineral reserves were available on the Forest Service web site. Anyone who

saw the information on the Forest Service web site knows this statement is just

plain wrong.

Fearing that we would not have any data in which to assess the boundary of the

Roadless Area relative to our West Elk Mine in Colorado, we set out on a mission

to try and develop our own map(s). Working with a local Forest Service employee

we dug up the RARE II boundary that was proposed in 1979 and plotted that information on our mine plan map. It was found that the boundary passed right over

the top of the West Elk Mine and contained nearly all future reserves accessible by

this underground mine. As it turned out, the 1979 RARE II boundaries were used

in setting the boundaries of the Roadless Area without any further review of any

changes over the 20-year period. Of particular interest is that this boundary encompasses lands that contain a significant number of existing roads.

Once this map was developed, we met with the Regional Forester’s Office in Denver, Colorado in early February 2000. Their response was that they were pleased

to have a map with this level of details, as they had not been provided with any

detailed information from the Washington, D.C. Office of the Forest Service. The Regional Office acknowledged the problem and asked what relief we were seeking. Our

response was that since the West Elk Mine was on the margin (edge) of the proposed Roadless Area that we would like the boundary slightly modified in order to

provide a future for the West Elk Mine. The reply was that there was not an opportunity to move the boundaries as that decision had already been made.

53

Even though the public comment period had closed, we provided the map that we

had developed to the national Forest Service Team working on the Roadless Area

Environmental Impact Statement. One member of the team reiterated that there

was no opportunity to move the boundary as that decision had already been made.

Our question was how could that be if the Draft Environmental Impact Statement

was only now being prepared?

All of our efforts during this period were reflected in one small paragraph of the

DEIS, which stated:

‘‘[The prohibition of road construction] could increase exploration and development costs for leaseable minerals so that deposits in inventoried roadless

areas may be less economically feasible for development. For example, one

Colorado coal company has submitted information showing that the opportunity to access coal resources adjacent to their existing leases would be severely limited by a prohibition on road construction.’’

Leadership in the Forest Service either did not have adequate information or

chose to ignore it. The problem remained that there was a lack of detailed map information. Arch Coal commissioned a consultant to develop the location of existing,

and in some instances prospective coal leases, on the Grand Mesa, Uncompaghre

and Gunnison (GMUG) National Forest in Colorado. Significant resources were put

into developing this map, but the most difficult aspect was obtaining the legal descriptions of the proposed roadless areas.

During the development of these maps, we continued to meet with the minerals

branch of the Forest Service, the Department of Energy, Office of Management and

Budget, Council on Environmental Quality, among others. A scheduled meeting with

Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck was ‘‘delegated’’ as the Director and other senior members of the Forest Service canceled the meeting to lower level staff at the

last moment.

During one meeting with the Department of Energy we were shown a Roadless

Area delineation map supplied to them by the Forest Service that showed several

areas of significant impact to the coal industry on the Manti–LaSal National Forest

in Utah. This information was stunning for two reasons: first, the Forest Service

had never made this information public; and second, our company had been told

several times by local forest service officials that there was no impact to our underground coal mining operations in Utah. Unfortunately, we took that declaration at

face value.

Upon the revelation that the issue extended beyond our Colorado operations, we

also commissioned the consultant to perform the same mapping exercise for the

Manti–LaSal National Forest in Utah. The Colorado and Utah maps were finally

completed right about the time the Final Environmental Impact Statement was

issued, and are attached and incorporated in this testimony. Although the final rule

can be published as soon as 30 days following publication of the FEIS, the message

these maps conveyed manifested a significant impact the Forest Service failed to

project and the message was conveyed to the Department of Energy, the Office of

Management and Budget, the Council on Environmental Quality and the Forest

Service.

Notwithstanding this compelling information, the preamble to the final rule

states:

‘‘The Department has decided not to adopt the exception for future discretionary mineral leasing because of the potentially significant environmental

impact that road construction could cause to inventoried roadless areas.’’

This is clearly an excuse and not a valid reason. State and federal mining regulations require that all surface disturbances associated with the mining operation

must be reclaimed to a condition at least as good as the pre-mining condition. This

means that any roads developed in conjunction with the mine, including exploration,

development or operation must be reclaimed. Further, state and federal mining regulations require that the quality of surface and ground water must be protected.

In a further effort to convince the public that these lands need to be off-limits for

future mineral development the preamble states that if road construction and reconstruction were allowed for future energy and mineral leasing, an additional 59 miles

of road over a five-year period would be built in roadless areas (including oil, gas

and non-fuel minerals). The preamble further states that at this rate, 10 million

acres would be affected, which is interesting considering that the Department only

identified 8 million acres that have the potential for oil and natural gas (of which

2.5 million acres have potential for coal and coal bed methane). Again, the Forest

Service has conveniently ignored the fact that roads developed in conjunction with

mining must be fully reclaimed to a condition at least as good as the pre-mining

condition.

54

2 Hardrock Mining on Federal Lands, National Research Council (September, 1999)

Protections for Roadless Values Already Exist

The Forest Service chose to accept these severe proscriptions for roadless areas

even though roads associated with coal mines are temporary and the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) mandates that these roaded areas be reclaimed to a condition as good or better than they were before mining. Furthermore,

surface coal mines cannot be permitted at all on Forest Service lands unless the

Secretary of Interior ‘‘finds that there are no significant recreational, timber, economic or other values which may be incompatible with surface mining operations...’’

(Section 522(e)2)) In other words, the values the rule is intended to safeguard have

already been considered and protected by an existing statute.

During the rulemaking process, the Forest Service also ignored the fact that the

SMCRA provides the exclusive statutory scheme for designating areas unsuitable for

coal mining. The first question the authors of this rule should have asked was

whether the agency has the authority to deny reasonable access to federal coal.

Other Mineral Related Impacts of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule

Stillwater Mining Company produces platinum and palladium from its mine located partially on Forest Service lands in Montana. Two of the roadless conservation

areas cover portions of these reserves, which represent the only operating platinum/

palladium mine in the Western Hemisphere. Even though Congress specifically

drew the boundaries of the Absaroka–Beartooth Wilderness to exclude these important deposits, the roadless rule ignores this obvious congressional intent.

Platinum and palladium are critical elements in catalytic converters as well as

components in high temperature and corrosion resistant alloys used in jet aircraft

and other defense applications. The environmental, economic and national security

implications of denying access to develop these unique and important deposits are

significant.

Like coal underlying Forest Service lands, holders of federal phosphate leases will

be limited in their ability to expand production levels beyond the boundaries of existing leases. The FEIS states that 873.3 million tons of phosphates not yet leased

could be affected by the roadless rule and ideational amounts could be affected when

land management plans are revised or amended. The cumulative impact of the increased energy costs and the escalated cost of fertilizer on western farmers and

ranchers will be profound.

Conclusion

The Final Roadless Area Conservation Rule will clearly result in the loss of millions of tons of coal and phosphates, as well as substantial quantities of metallic

and other hardrock minerals, that could otherwise be recovered from Forest Service

administered lands. The economic impact on energy, agriculture and mining sectors

is hundreds of millions of dollars. The cost/benefit analysis appears to under-estimate grossly the impact, and the Forest Service has ignored the cumulative effect

the rule will have on sectors of the economy already reeling because of elevated energy costs.

In its evaluation of the adequacy of the regulatory framework for hard rock mining, the National Research Council stated:

‘‘The lack of information appeared to be greatest among highly placed officials who have the greatest need to know. Consequently, those responsible

for regulatory management and change, and for keeping the public and

Congress adequately informed, appear to be severely limited in their ability

to do so.’’ 2

Although this observation was made in a different regulatory context, it is clearly

applicable to the situation at hand.

The authors of the rule went to great pains first to dismiss then, when confronted,

understate the impacts this rule will have on the Nation’s ability to meet its energy

needs. The agency completely ignored the existing regulatory scheme, including the

Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, and most notably the Wilderness Act, that protects the values this

rule claims to defend. The price the entire Country will pay of this failure has already been witnessed in California and is spreading across the West.

55

56

57

Mr. PETERSON. Thank you.

Next we will hear from Mr. Pete Morton, a Resource Economist

for The Wilderness Society.

STATEMENT OF PETE MORTON, RESOURCE ECONOMIST,

WILDERNESS SOCIETY

Mr. MORTON. My name is Dr. Pete Morton. I am a natural resource economist in the Ecological and Economics Research Department of the Wilderness Society. We are a 200,000-member national

conservation group focusing on public land issues. I appreciate the

opportunity to testify today.

As you know, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule conserves approximately 57 million acres of the public estate managed by the

U.S. Forest Service. Conserving these roadless areas will provide

for multiple uses, multiple goods and services and multiple economic benefits for current and future generations. I would like to

include for the record an endorsement letter from the Ecological

Society of America, the world’s premier society of professional

ecologists, underscoring the scientific justification for the rule.

While gas is a clean-burning bridge fuel for the future, the drilling of gas generates significant ecological threats centered mostly

on the daily discharge of thousands of gallons of water in the arid

West. As a result of the drilling, aquifers are drained, water tables

are lowered, drinking water wells dry up, flood risks increase for

property located near discharge storage ponds, and the sudden influx of discharge water increases sediment loads that run into and

damage fisheries.

Water discharged from coal bed methane wells, for example, is

highly saline with a very high sodium absorption ratio. This ratio

affects how water interacts with soil and can cause declining crop

productivity for downstream farmers.

All these impacts carry price tags but they almost never are captured in cost-benefit analyses. Such costs need to be considered, especially since roadless watersheds provide clean water for hundreds of downstream communities and thousands of affected citizens.

Another problem would be landslides. In Colorado alone over a

million acres of Forest Service roadless areas have high risk from

landslides that dump tons of sediment into the water streams. A

more detailed discussion of these uncounted costs are included in

my written testimony.

I would like to now turn to the Wilderness Society’s GIS analysis

of oil and gas in roadless areas. Using a GIS intersection analysis

of oil and gas plays with roadless areas, we estimate that roadless

areas contain 4/10th of 1 percent of the nation’s oil resources and

6/10ths of 1 percent of the gas resources. These numbers are estimated using USGS mean data.

These are the technically recoverable resources, which drop significantly when financial and economic factors are considered. Assuming companies would only extract those resources that would

yield a profit, 73 and 55 percent respectively of the oil and gas is

financially recoverable. When nonmarket costs from erosion, loss of

habitat, et cetera are accounted for, these numbers drop even more.

58

With respect to the actual impacts from the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, it is important to note that 41 percent of the

roadless areas already had management prescriptions developed

through normal planning processes with local and national input

that prohibited road construction. As such, examining the impact

of the roadless rule should focus on the 59 percent of roadless areas

where management prescriptions were actually changed.

In addition, 759,000 of roadless areas with high oil and gas potential are already under lease and would not be impacted by the

roadless rule. The remaining land, much of which is on steep

slopes, has been available for leasing for 60 to 70 years with little

or no interest from industry. With more than 380,000 miles of road

and the potential capability of slant-drilling to pump oil and gas

four to six miles from a road, it is questionable whether road access

is really a significant issue and whether there will be any negative

impacts at all in terms of oil and gas. When these factors are considered, the negative impacts from the roadless rule are much,

much less than have been estimated by the oil and gas industry.

And, as importantly, when estimating economic impacts it is

vital to examine the net effects of the rule, fully accounting for the

benefits; for example, the fishing and hunting benefits cited earlier

by Mr. Moyer.

While economics should not drive public land management, when

net impacts are considered I would agree with the conclusion of the

Forest Service that the benefits of the Roadless Area Conservation

Rule far outweigh the costs.

And finally, with respect to the current spike in energy prices,

the quantities of oil and gas in national forest roadless areas are

very small and will have absolutely no impact on energy prices that

are set by global market forces. In addition, the oil and gas in

roadless areas cannot be added to current production for at least

five to 10 years.

Currently undiscovered gas reserves and expected growth in

these reserves account for 42 percent of on-shore gas supplies in

the U.S. It is these resources, the financially feasible gas resources

in and around the already-discovered reserves, that have the potential to impact short-term energy prices, not the unknown small

quantities of undiscovered gas resources in roadless wildlands far

from existing pipelines.

Thank you for your time.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Morton follows:]

Statement of Peter A. Morton, Ph.D., Resource Economist, Ecology and

Economics Research Department, The Wilderness Society

I am Dr. Peter Morton, Resource Economist in the Ecology and Economics Research Department for The Wilderness Society, a 200,000-member national conservation group that focuses on public land issues. I appreciate the opportunity to

testify today regarding potential effects of oil and gas resource development in national forest roadless areas.

The Forest Service Roadless Area Conservation Rule has raised concerns by some

over the economic impact of prohibiting road construction on domestic energy supplies. The environmental impact statement for the rule presents a good overview of

the rule’s potential effects on oil and gas development, including some detailed information on reasonably foreseeable development activities. The objective of this testimony is to evaluate the impacts—both positive and negative—of the Roadless Area

Conservation Rule to provide decision-makers with additional information relevant

to the current debate.

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Economic Impacts from the Roadless Rule

The Roadless Area Conservation Rule conserves approximately 58.5 million acres

of the public estate managed by the U.S. Forest Service. Conserving these roadless

areas will provide for multiple uses, multiple goods and services, and multiple economic benefits for current and future generations. Roadless areas provide

backcountry recreation opportunities, represent critical habitat for fish and wildlife—including threatened and endangered species, provide the scenic backdrop for

motorized and non-motorized visitors outside roadless areas, generate ecosystem

services such as carbon sequestration, natural pest control and watershed protection

for local communities, and preserve the option of protecting additional wilderness

for future generations. A letter from the Ecological Society of America (Attachment

1), the world’s premier society of professional ecologists, underscores the scientific

justification for the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

Although roadless wildlands are highly valued by society, without formal markets,

the benefits of wildland conservation are difficult to quantify in economic terms. As

a result, non-market wildland benefits are typically under-produced by private landowners responding to market signals. This is a serious shortcoming as certain functions of nature, although they have no market value and their benefits are only partially understood, are necessary to keep America’s market economy running. Public

lands can help correct market failures by sustaining roadless wildlands that cannot

survive the market forces driving private land use decisions. The failure of markets

to protect roadless area benefits provides the economic justification for implementing the roadless rule.

The record number of public comments received by the Forest Service in support

of the roadless policy provides empirical recognition and support for the multiple

uses and benefits generated from roadless area conservation. While no quantitative

estimate of the benefits of the rule was provided in the Roadless EIS, the Forest

Service believes the benefits of the rule outweigh the costs (USDA Forest Service

2001, Regulatory Impact Analysis). In a more sophisticated analysis, Loomis and

Richardson (2000) estimated that in their current, unroaded condition, the 42 million acres of Forest Service roadless wildlands in the lower 48 states can be expected to provide almost $600 million in recreation benefits each year, more than

$280 million in passive use values, and nearly 24,000 jobs. The authors also estimated annual benefits from roadless area ecosystem services to include between

$490 million and $1 billion worth of carbon sequestration services as well as $490

million in waste treatment services. Estimating the net impacts of the roadless rule

should fully account for the benefits of conserving roadless areas as well as the potential costs with respect to the decline in quality and quantity of the other multiple

uses generated by the public estate as a result of exploiting energy resources.

The Ecological Footprint of Oil and Gas Exploration and Drilling

Oil and gas drilling operations leave behind a large footprint on the landscape—

a footprint that extends well beyond the several-acre drilling sites. Beginning with

exploratory activities, large trucks with seismic surveying equipment crisscross the

landscape using a crude system of poorly designed roads with at times little consideration for wetlands, storm water runoff or critical habitat. Exploratory drilling operations then require more large trucks with drill rigs using a network of constructed roads to access drill sites. If the exploratory well is determined to have no

potential for production, the well is plugged, but the landscape scars remain. Depending on the agency with oversight, there is typically little enforcement or - monitoring of environmental regulations. In addition, no surety bonds are required for

restoration or clean up.

If the well has potential for production, the well is cased with pipe and cemented

(in an attempt to prevent oil and gas from seeping into nearby aquifers), and the

drilling rig is replaced by a well head. Electric or gas powered motors are used to

power the pumps that collect the gas at each well and to power the series of 24-

hour compressor stations that pressurize gas for pipeline transport from the wells

to customers in distant markets (WORC 1999). Many drill sites also involve the construction of sediment ponds and retention reservoirs to collect storm water drainage

and store the ground water brought to the surface as a result of the drilling and

extraction operation—the latter process is called dewatering. Injection wells are

sometimes used to dispose of the water produced and to enhance oil and gas recovery—an action that may necessitate additional drilling of a few to hundreds of injection wells throughout the field (Gauthier-Warinner 2000). The ecological footprint

not only extends across the forest and range landscape, it also penetrates to shallow

aquifers as well as aquifers thousands of feet below the earth’s surface.

60

Water and the Uncounted Costs from Oil and Gas Extraction

The major uncounted environmental cost associated with oil and gas drilling concerns water. National Forest roadless areas provide important watershed protection

services for downstream communities, services that are negatively impacted by oil

and gas drilling. In the lower 48 states, 55% of the watersheds that contain IRAs

provide water to downstream facilities that treat and distribute drinking water to

the public (LaFayette 2000, Watershed Health Specialist Report).

Greatly increased drilling activity for coal bed methane is having profound real

life impacts on many families and communities in the West and illustrates well

some of these impacts. In order to ‘‘release’’ the methane gas from coal beds, enormous amounts of ground water must be pumped from coal aquifers to the surface.

The water discharged on the surface comes from shallow and deep aquifers containing saline-sodic water. The total amount of water produced from individual coalbed gas wells is generally much higher than that from other types of oil and gas

wells (USGS 1995). Coal bed methane wells in Wyoming and Colorado discharge between 20,000 to 40,000 gallons per day per well, onto the ground surface (Darin

2000). The disposal of the water produced with coalbed gas not only affects the economics of development, but also poses serious environmental concerns. Water disposal can vary from inexpensive methods, such as discharge into streams, to more

costly alternatives, such as underground injection and surface discharge after water

treatment.

The amount of water discharged from CBM wells in Wyoming has skyrocketed in

recent years, increasing from approximately 98 million gallons (300 acre feet) per

year in 1992, to 5.5 billion gallons (17,000 acre feet) per year in 1999 (Wyoming

State Engineer’s Office cited in Darin 2000). The discharging of 17,000 acre feet of

water in the arid west is wasteful in the short-term (generally an acre-foot of water

will supply a family of four for one year), and has potentially devastating economic

impacts for affected communities in the long-term. Dewatering of deep aquifers may

upset the hydrologic balance, eliminating or reducing the availability of this water

for future agricultural and domestic uses, as well recharge for shallow aquifers and

surface water.

The discharge of ground water can deplete freshwater aquifers, lower the water

table, and dry up the drinking water wells of homeowners and agricultural users.

Monitoring of wells maintained by the BLM in the Powder River Basin, Wyoming

already indicates a drop in the coal aquifer of over 200 feet (WORR 1999). The

short-term economic costs include drilling new, deeper wells for current and future

homeowners, ranchers and farmers, assuming successful wells can be found and/or

the costs of relocating families to new homesites. If the freshwater aquifers do not

fully re-charge, the long-term economic costs to affected landowners, homeowners,

communities, and states across the west could be severe, including the foregone opportunity (option value) to use aquifer water in the future.

The water discharged from oil and gas wells is highly saline with a very high sodium absorption ratio (SAR)—a ratio that affects how water interacts with soil.

Water with a high SAR can permanently change chemical composition of soils, reducing soil, air and water permeability and thereby decreasing native plant and irrigated crop productivity. Test results from water discharged from CBM wells from

3 sites in Wyoming all revealed SARs exceeding a level that could result in a 30-

40% decrease in plant productivity (Powder River Basin Resource Council 2000).

The discharge of tens of thousands of gallons of ground water transforms many

streams that normally flow intermittently only during spring runoff or after storms

into all-season streams (Powder River Basin Resource Council 2000). The influx of

water has resulted in deep channel scouring, erosion, and increased sedimentation.

Increased sedimentation in streams can negatively impact native fisheries found in

mainstream drainages with increased likelihood and financial costs from fishery restoration projects. The discharge of water into intermittent stream channels damages

native flora and fauna not adapted to year-round water and promotes the spread

of noxious weeds such as Scotch burr and Canadian thistle. The change in native

vegetation composition, combined with the increase in noxious weeds, negatively impacts threatened and endangered species and other wildlife, as well as cattle. The

loss of native species and the spread of noxious weeds across the west has enormous

economic costs to the public and private interests.

The landscape is also impacted from the retaining ponds or reservoirs constructed

to store the water discharged from the drilling operation. The constructed earthen

dams and retaining ponds destroy additional habitat and introduce artificial structures to the landscape. Habitat and homes on property nearby reservoirs also have

potential flood risk from structural failure of the poorly designed, quickly built retaining ponds and reservoirs during storm events, for example.

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And finally, drilling for oil involves ecological risks and potential economic costs

associated with blowouts—the catastrophic surge of the highly pressurized fluid

from the drill hole that can cause fires, loss of life and property, and the potential

contamination of surface drinking water sources. To reduce the number of blowouts,

rotary drilling operations typically inject a fluid of drilling muds into the drill hole

in order to lubricate and cool the drill bit. While reducing the number of blowouts,

the drilling fluids themselves create a risk of contamination of adjacent freshwater

aquifers (Gauthier-Warinner 2000).

The Uncounted Costs from Drill Sites, Pipeline and Road Infrastructure.

The exploitation of unconventional gas resources (e.g. continuous-type and coalbed

methane) will require hundreds of thousand of wells to be drilled. Exploiting the gas

in continuous-type deposits will also require drilling a significant number of wells,

as these deposits are randomly distributed. Based on existing technology, the USGS

indicates that nationwide approximately 960,000 productive wells will be required

to recover potential gas reserve additions of 300 trillion cubic feet. However the

habitat loss would not end there as extrapolation of present-day success ratios indicates that that roughly 570,000 ‘‘dry’’ holes would have to be drilled in addition to

the productive wells—for a total of 1,530,000 drilling sites on public and private

lands. Based on an industry report in Alaska (cited in NPC 1999) while past drilling

pads consumed about 65 acres of habitat, recent operations average less than 10

acres. If we assume 5 acres per drilling pad and 1,530,000 drill sites, exploitation

of just the continuous-type gas deposits would consume approximately 7.7 million

acres of habitat on public and private land across the nation. As noted by the USGS

(http://energy.usgs.gov/factsheets/GIS/gis.html), ‘‘land-use planners are not in a good

position to determine the societal impacts of the drilling (density) that would be necessary if these continuous reservoirs of (tight) gas were exploited.—

In order to bring gas to market, thousands of miles of pipeline must also be constructed—extending the impacts of gas drilling far from the actual drill site. There

are currently more than 270,000 miles of gas transmission pipelines and another

952,000 miles of gas distribution lines. The National Petroleum Council (1999)

projects a need to build 38,000 and 255,000 miles of additional transmission and

distribution pipelines, respectively, by 2015.

Oil and gas exploration also requires roads that increase ecological costs and invite cross-country travel and habitat damage by ORVs. Oil and gas drilling often

require daily vehicular trips to monitor and maintain wells and pipelines. The increased traffic disrupts wildlife, may result in more road kill, and diminishes quality

of life for local residents. The linear deforestation associated with road construction

degrades habitat and fragments travel corridors needed by wildlife species such as

grizzly bears, wolves, and other large, wide-ranging predators. Roads become conduits for non-native species that displace native species resulting in significant mitigation costs for taxpayers. Roads, by providing access, increase the frequency of

human-caused fires. Humans cause ninety percent of all wildfires in the national

forests; more than half of those wildfires begin along roads. In addition, roads increase the damage to historical, cultural and archeological resources due to increased ease of access.

Roads also increase sediment deposits in streams resulting in reductions in fish

habitat productivity. In addition to keeping sediment from access roads and drill

sites of community water sources, roadless areas protect communities from mass

wasting (e.g. landslides). Mass wasting from landslides and debris flows is a key

source of sediment, particularly in western forests, and many of the roadless areas

are at high risk from landslides. In Colorado and Wyoming, for example, over

1,146,000 and 645,000 acres of roadless areas, respectively, have high susceptibility

to landslides (Table 3). While landslides are a natural process, management activities like road construction and logging accelerate the incidence of mass wasting by

several orders of magnitude (Swanson 1971, Anderson and others 1976, Swanson

and Swanston 1976, Sidle and others 1985, Swanston 1991). For example, a joint

FS and BLM study in Oregon and Washington found that of 1290 slides reviewed

in 41 subwatersheds, 52% were related to roads, 31% to timber harvest, and 17%

to natural forest (USDA Forest Service 1996 cited in LaFayette 2000, Watershed

Specialist Report). The Forest Service concluded that the Roadless Area Conservation Rule ‘‘would have a considerable beneficial effect on water quality, particularly

in Regions 1 and 4.’’ (the Northern Rockies)

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The uncounted economic costs from road construction for oil and gas drilling include increased ORV monitoring costs, increased frequency and costs of stream restoration projects, increased noxious weed mitigation costs, increased damage to archaeological sites and the decline in future benefits from visiting these sites, increased water treatment costs for downstream communities, and increased road

maintenance and closure costs for taxpayers. On average, the annual maintenance

cost of a mile of road is about $1,500 per mile (USDA FS 1999). Each new mile of

road added to the FS transportation system competes for limited road maintenance

funding, as Congressional funding is less than 20% of the funding necessary to

maintain the existing road infrastructure. One must seriously question the wisdom

of building more roads when current roads can’t be maintained, and each year’s

unmet maintenance needs increase the backlog as roads deteriorate and the costs

of repairs increase over time.

Examples of the economic costs from energy exploitation are summarized in Table

4 and should be included as part of the discussion on the net impacts from the

Roadless Areas Conservation Rule. While many of these costs are difficult to estimate, academic and federal agency economists have made great advances in developing methods to value non-market costs and benefits. Included in the table are

methods available for estimating the economic costs, to drive home the point that

these costs are quantifiable and should be included in the economic calculus. Many

heretofore-unquantifiable wildland benefits and costs are now quantifiable and

available to agency officials responsible for developing the policies and procedures

for guiding public land management. We therefore strongly encourage the USGS to

internalize non-market costs into the cost functions used to estimate economically

recoverable resources.

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Preliminary Analysis of Oil and Gas Resources in National Forest Roadless Areas

As indicated by the Forest Service in the EIS for roadless rule, it is very difficult

to evaluate the reasonably foreseeable potential for oil and gas development in

Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs). While significant energy resources underlie some

IRAs, there has been very little interest in leasing or drilling in roadless areas or

other national forest lands. It is wildly unrealistic to estimate the potential economic impacts of protecting IRAs based on total quantities of oil and gas resources

in IRAs. That is like estimating timber industry impacts based on the total number

of board feet of timber in IRAs - a pointless exercise that would result in a grossly

inflated and inaccurate economic impact estimate. While the EIS does not include

extensive data on oil and gas resources in IRAs, it presents a realistic picture of

the overall economic effects of prohibiting roads.

As a starting point in evaluating economic effects, The Wilderness Society undertook an assessment of the energy potential of federal lands in general and roadless

areas specifically. The assessment included a GIS analysis of the oil and gas resources in national forest roadless areas for 6 states in the Intermountain West.

These 6 states were selected as they represent the states with major oil and gas

plays and they have significant acreage of national forest IRAs. Following are some

preliminary results; we expect to have final results later this spring.

Data

We obtained data from the USGS 1995 National Assessment of United States Oil

and Gas Resources, which divides the U.S. into eight regions and subdivides those

regions into 72 geologic provinces, with each province containing a number of individual plays. Plays are defined by the USGS as a set of known or postulated accumulations of oil or gas that share similar geologic, geographic and temporal properties. A separate GIS coverage for each of the 199 plays in the six western states

(North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico) was obtained

from the USGS in ARC/INFO export format (Weller 2001). These coverages define

the boundaries of the oil and gas plays. The National Inventoried Roadless Areas

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(IRA) GIS coverage was downloaded in ARC/INFO export format from the USDA

Forest Service Roadless Area Conservation website. This dataset contains all National Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs) for the lower 48 states.

Methods

A Geographic Information System (GIS) and ARC/INFO software were used to determine the area of overlap between IRAs and oil and gas plays. The IRA coverage

was clipped to the boundary of each of the six states in the study area to create

an IRA coverage for each state. The state IRA coverages were then intersected with

each play that falls within that particular state to identify the IRAs that overlap

with each play. Plays could not be appended into a single oil and gas play coverage,

because different plays are located within different geologic formations, and therefore their geographic boundaries often overlap each other.

The results of the intersection analyses were then used to calculate the number

of acres of each play that lie within IRAs, as well as the number of acres of each

individual IRA that overlap with different plays. The total acres of each play were

also determined in order to obtain the percent of each play that coincides with IRAs.

In order to estimate technically recoverable oil and gas resources in IRAs we multiplied the percentages by the estimated oil and gas resources for each play, taken

from the USGS 1995 Assessment. Economically recoverable resources within IRAs

were then estimated using a model based on the financial cost functions and recovery rates developed by the Attanasi (1998). Our estimates are based on the USGS

mean value for each resource. USGS mean values represent the expected value and

provide the best, unbiased estimate of oil and gas resources.

Results for Technically Recoverable Resources

The technically recoverable oil in national forest IRAs for the 6 states in the intermountain west are reported in Table 1. The technically recoverable resources are

those that may be recovered using existing technology without regard to cost or

profit. For this report, oil totals include both petroleum oil and gas liquids from conventional and unconventional sources. The 754 million barrels of technically recoverable oil represent only four-tenths of one percent (0.4%) of the nation’s oil resources.

The technically recoverable gas in the IRAs in the 6 western states is reported in

Table 2. The 8.7 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of gas in IRAs represents six-tenths of one

percent (0.6%) of the nation’s gas resources.

Results for Financially Recoverable Resources

The financially recoverable resources are that part of the technologically recoverable resources that can be recovered with a profit. To be considered financially recoverable the market costs of gas recovery must be less than or equal to the gas

price (Goerold 2001). When financial criteria are considered, the oil and gas actually

recoverable drops significantly (USGS 1998). For the lower 48 states, only 38 and

39 percent of the technically recoverable undiscovered oil and gas, respectively, can

be extracted profitably when oil is $18 per barrel and gas is $2 per mcf (thousand

cubic feet). At $30 per barrel and $3.34 per mcf, two-thirds of the technically recoverable oil and gas is financially profitable to recover (Attanasi 1998).

Financial recovery rates are even less for unconventional oil and gas resources

(continuous-type gas and coal bed gas) than for the conventional resources. For continuous-type gas, only 7 and 15 percent of the technically recoverable gas is financial to find, develop and produce at $2/mcf and $3.34/mcf, respectively (Attanasi

1998). For continuous-type oil accumulations at $18 and $30 per barrel, about 7 perVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:26 Jan 11, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00070 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 71552.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: HRESOUR1
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cent and 50 percent, respectively, of the technically recoverable oil is financially feasible to exploit (Attanasi 1998). For unconventional coal bed gas, about 30 percent

of the technically feasible gas is financially recoverable at $2 per mcf, while at $3.34

per mcf, the financial portion increases to slightly more than 50 percent (Attanasi

1998).

The financially recoverable oil in IRAs on the national forests is shown in

Table 1. Assuming oil prices of $18 or $30 per barrel, oil in the IRAs of these 6

states would meet total U.S. oil consumption for approximately 21 or 29 days, respectively (e.g. 552/18.92=29). When financial factors are considered the quantity of

gas available also drops dramatically (Table 2). At $2 and $3.34 per thousand cubic

feet (mcf), the financially recoverable gas in these IRAs would meet total U.S. gas

consumption for approximately 2 or 3 months, respectively.

The financially recoverable totals reported above are based on USGS estimates of

economically recoverable resources. The costs that the USGS uses in assessing the

costs of oil and gas production include items such as the direct costs of exploration,

development and production of gas. Not included in the USGS calculus are non-market costs such as the off-site ecological costs and cumulative negative environmental

impacts that might result on a public resource such as a watershed (Goerold 2001).

An economic analysis of benefits and costs must account for non-market benefits

and costs, as well as those more readily observed and measured in market prices

(Loomis and Walsh 1992; Pearse 1990). An economic analysis is conducted from the

viewpoint of society, which should also be the viewpoint of politicians and managers

of the public estate. In contrast, a financial analysis only examines costs and benefits as measured by market price; it is the viewpoint of private industry and is more

concerned with profits or losses.

The USGS economically recoverable analysis more closely resembles a financial

analysis than an economic analysis. A more accurate estimate of the economically

recoverable resources from a public perspective should include a full accounting of

non-market costs. If economic analysis accounted for the uncounted, non-market

costs discussed earlier, the quantities of oil and gas estimated to be economically

recoverable would be much less than reported here.

Energy Impacts from the Roadless Area Conservation Rule are Minimal

As discussed earlier, raw estimates of technically or financially recoverable oil and

gas resources do not provide even a remotely accurate measure of the reasonably

foreseeable economic effects of roadless area protection. For example, the roadless

area conservation rule conserved approximately 58.5 million acres of public

wildlands on the national forests. However, the roadless rule would not change

management prescriptions on 24.2 million acres, representing 41% of the IRAs.

There would be no impacts from the roadless rule on these acres as existing land

management plan prescriptions already prohibit road construction (USDA Forest

Service 2001). The policy discussion on impacts of the roadless rule should therefore

focus on the 59% of the IRAs where management policy was actually changed as

a result of the final rule.

Furthermore, the oil and gas industry has demonstrated little interest in exploiting potential energy resources in IRAs. Because of the downturn in the domestic oil

and gas economy, the amount of National Forest System land under oil and gas

lease dropped from about 35 million acres in the mid-1980s to 5.8 million acres in

1998 (USDA Forest Service 2000). The national forests are not a major supplier of

gas. In 1999, the National Forest system produced about 0.4% of the nation’s gas

supply, with about half of that total coming from Little Missouri Grasslands (USDA

Forest Service 2000). As such the impacts on current and reasonably foreseeable

supply from a change in national forest management are minimal.

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Most roadless areas have been available for leasing for decades. Extensive portions of the lands which the oil and gas industry believes have high potential are

already under lease and therefore would not be affected by this rule. Currently

759,000 acres of IRAs with high oil and gas potential are under lease (USDA Forest

Service 2001). Most of these areas are within the Intermountain, Northern, and

Rocky Mountain regions. Existing leases are not subject to the prohibitions. The

roadless rule would have no effect on existing oil and gas leases. In fact, it provides

for future leasing, with roadbuilding, on lands currently under lease. This exception

will reduce economic impacts on current operators, by avoiding the possibility of increasing the costs of production or precluding future development on the lease if restrictions had been applied at the time of lease extension or renewal.

In addition, just because an IRA is off-limits to road construction does not mean

that underlying energy resources are impossible to develop. The roadless rule could

affect extraction of oil and gas in IRAs in the future where road construction is required. However, this impact can be minimized by the use of extended reach drilling

and other technological improvements that can allow access to oil and gas resources

5-6 miles from the drilling site (NPC 1999). With 380,000 miles of roads and an extended drilling reach of 5-6 miles, it is questionable whether lack of additional road

access is really a significant issue.

Public concerns and environmental safeguards for protecting sensitive lands and

resources are also key factors limiting oil and gas development. While standard

leases govern gas drilling on 59% of Federal land in the Rocky Mountain region,

only 9 percent of the federal land in the region is actually off limits while 32 percent

is subject to access restrictions (NPC 1999). These restrictions are not, however,

without purpose. For example, seasonal closures designed to protect wildlife populations may slow down the rate of gas exploitation but protect the wildlife and other

multiple-uses under which public land is managed. Such protection is warranted

economically, as watershed protection, hunting, fishing and recreation generate significantly more economic benefits to all Americans, including affected residents and

business in the Rocky Mountain Region, than oil and gas extraction. Legislative intent and public sentiment indicate that public lands should not be for the exclusive

use of the oil and gas industries and that managers must attempt to balance the

many uses that occur on public land. Environmental restrictions help internalize the

uncounted costs from oil and gas extraction mentioned previously by protecting

other multiple uses enjoyed by the public.

With respect to energy prices, the quantities of financially recoverable oil and gas

in IRAs are very small and will have no impact on energy prices that are set on

the world market. Extracting or not extracting oil and gas in IRAs will have absolutely no impact on short-term energy prices since IRAs resources could not be

added to current production for at least 5-10 years (USDA Forest Service 2001). In

addition, a substantial amount of undiscovered, unconventional gas resources in the

IRAs are categorized by the USGS as hypothetical resources and are associated with

higher extraction costs than conventional resources. Producers have limited ability

to exploit hypothetical sources within an expedient time frame. The hypothetical nature of much of the unconventional resource underscores the inability of IRA oil and

gas resources to impact current energy prices.

The oil and gas resources that may affect energy prices already exist in discovered

known reserves and in the growth of these reserves. Currently discovered reserves

and expected reserves growth account for 42% of U.S. onshore gas supplies (USGS

1995). It is these resources, the financially feasible gas resources in and around the

already discovered reserves, that have the potential to impact short-term energy

prices—not the unknown and hypothetical, small quantities of undiscovered gas resources in roadless wildlands far from existing pipelines.

Conclusion

Based on our analysis, The Wilderness Society concludes that IRAs hold very

small quantities of oil and gas, and drilling in IRAs on the national forest is economically inefficient and will do nothing to reduce current energy prices for consumers. While economics should not be the driving force behind public policies, we

agree with the Forest Service conclusion that IRAs should be protected from oil and

gas drilling as the benefits of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule outweigh the

costs. While The Wilderness Society also agrees that gas is the bridge fuel for the

future, it is important to recognize that the extraction of gas, a cleaner burning fuel

than coal, involves significant ecological and economic costs. It is important for the

public to be aware of these costs and internalize them into their public land management and energy consumption decisions. The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population but consumes 40% of the oil and 23% of the gas

(USGS 2001). As such there is much we as a nation can do via investments in enVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:26 Jan 11, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00072 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 71552.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: HRESOUR1
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ergy conservation and renewable energy to reduce our consumption, and the ecological and economic costs associated with our consumption levels (NRDC 2001).

We strongly support the Roadless Area Conservation Rule’s prohibition on road

construction for oil and gas development and other forms of resource extraction. At

the same time, we believe the protection of roadless areas should not be used as

an excuse to exacerbate the impacts of drilling for gas next to homes or private

property where the families do not own the sub-surface mineral rights (i.e. split estate). We recommend a programmatic EIS on gas drilling where it is adversely affecting homeowners, ranchers, and communities. Such an approach in needed until

adequate baseline conditions are firmly established and funding is obtained for longterm monitoring and mitigation to assess and minimize environmental impacts and

long-term costs. Such a comprehensive approach is desperately needed in Wyoming

where gas drilling, especially drilling for coal bed methane, is causing extreme damage to water supplies and other environmental values.

References (partial list)

Attanasi, E.D. 1998. Economics and the 1995 National Assessment of United

States Oil and Gas Resources. USGS Circular 1145.

Darin, T. 2000. Coalbed methane coming to a town near you. Frontline Report.

Wyoming Outdoor Council. Spring 2000.

Ecological Society of America, 1999. Letter to Forest Service Chief Dombeck on

the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

Gauthier-Warinner, R.J. 2000?. Oil and gas development. In: Drinking water from

forest and grasslands: A synthesis of the scientific literature. USFS GTR SRS-39.

S. Research Station.

Harmer, D. 2000. Roadless Area Specialist Report. Analysis of effects for recreation, wilderness, scenic quality, and recreation special uses. USDA Forest Service

Krause, J. 2000. Roadless Area Specialist Report. Effects analysis for the FS Road

System. USDA Forest Service

LaFayette, R. 2000. Roadless Area Specialist Report. Analysis of effects for watershed health.

USDA Forest Service

Loomis and Richardson, 2000. The economic benefits of Forest Service roadless

areas. Report prepared for The Wilderness Society.

Morton, P. 2000. Wildland economics: theory and practice. In: Cole, David N.;

McCool, Stephen F. 2000. Proceedings: Wilderness Science in a Time of Change.

Proc. RMRS-P-000. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service,

Rocky Mountain Research Station.

Powder River Resource Council 2000. Coal Bed Methane News

USDA Forest Service, 2000 Forest Service Roadless Area Conservation Rule,

Final EIS.

USDA Forest Service, 2001. Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis for the Roadless

Area Conservation Rule.

USDA Forest Service, 2001. Regulatory Impact Analysis of the Roadless Area

Conservation Rule.

U.S. Geological Survey, 1995. The 1995 National Assessment of United States Oil

and Gas Resources. CD-ROMs

Western Organization of Resource Councils, 1999. Coalbed methane development:

boon or bane for rural residents? Billings, MT.

[Letter from The Ecological Society of America submitted for the record follows:]

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Mr. PETERSON. Thank you very much.

Mr. Phillips, I missed your testimony but can you explain to us

what kinds of activities you foresee happening on these large

roadless areas and how it will differ what happens on wilderness

areas?

Mr. PHILLIPS. Before I do, it is nice to see you again. I enjoyed

our conversations last year on gateway visitor centers. Hopefully

we can continue that discussion.

Mr. PETERSON. Yes.

Mr. PHILLIPS. The roadless rule, which is under review by the

administration, essentially prohibits construction and reconstruction of new roads. Activities that have occurred in the past on

roads that are currently open will be allowed to continue. Current

leases that exist in the roadless areas would be continued and allowed to renew those leases but only in the leased area.

Mr. PETERSON. What percentage of the 59 million acres do you

think has a lot of roads in them?

Mr. PHILLIPS. Has a lot of roads?

Mr. PETERSON. Yes, substantial amounts of roads, existing roads.

Mr. PHILLIPS. About 2.8 million acres of the 58.5, I believe.

Mr. PETERSON. So a very small percentage has roads in it.

Mr. PHILLIPS. Correct.

Mr. PETERSON. So 2.8 from 59 is 56 million does not have roads.

So I guess my question then is what kind of activity do you see

happening in the 56 million acres that are roadless and will remain

roadless?

Mr. PHILLIPS. They will still be open to many of the multiple use

activities.

Mr. PETERSON. Such as?

Mr. PHILLIPS. Trail use.

Mr. PETERSON. Hiking?

Mr. PHILLIPS. Yes.

Mr. PETERSON. What else?

Mr. PHILLIPS. Mountain biking, snowmobiling.

Mr. PETERSON. Well, not if some people have their way.

Mr. PHILLIPS. And, as I said, existing leases, general leases.

Mr. PETERSON. I am a hunter, fisherman, hiker, but when you

get beyond the age of 35 or 40, I do not find many people go very

far from a road. I guess that is the part that has puzzled me with

this. If this is public land for public use, forgetting all about resources, just public use, if that great percentage of this is still

roadless, in a way I guess we are calling it wilderness.

Most people, and hunters are probably a little less fearful than

the average citizen—if you have ever been up in a small plane in

hunting season and look where the orange suits are against the

white snow, you go a mile from a road and you see very few orange

suits. Go two miles from a road and you may see one occasionally.

Go five miles from a road and you do not see anybody.

Today’s adults are not comfortable that far from a road. They are

not that experienced about being out in the woods in the wilderness. I guess that is the part that bothers me, is are we not locking

it up from public use, period? It would be interesting to look where

five miles would take you but I would say the average citizen

would not go five miles from a road An average young robust citVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:26 Jan 11, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00076 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 71552.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: HRESOUR1
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izen is not going to go five miles from a road. You have campers

and hikers that will go anywhere but they are the minority. That

is just a very small percentage of it population.

Let us be honest. Are we just locking it up for the critters? Is

half the Forest Service for the critters?

Mr. PHILLIPS. I guess the only way I could respond is to say that

there will be a lot of uses that could occur out there.

Mr. PETERSON. Could, but would they?

Mr. PHILLIPS. Depending on your ability to use that land, yes.

Mr. PETERSON. But it is certainly not for senior citizens, who

would be careful about hiking five miles with potential health problems. It certainly is not going to be for people who have not been

taught about the forest and how to get back to where you came

from.

I could get my father lost and he spent a lot of time in the woods

but for some reason he did not have a good sense of direction and

I could get him lost any time I wanted to hiking in the woods because he would just get lost; that is all. I would hear him whistling

pretty soon and he needed help to figure out which hill we went

around to get back out of there.

I guess I was just wanting to make that point, that the roadless

issue sounds good to some people but I guess in my view I think

there is going to be very limited people-use. And I think to take

half of the Forest Service land and lock it up to where it is almost

not usable by the average citizen is a policy I do not think is well

thought through. That is my own personal view.

How will the Forest Service assure legal access to state and private lands within or adjacent to roadless areas?

Mr. PHILLIPS. I think the roadless rule, we have tried to be clear

that there has been no intent to exclude or deny legal access to

people’s lands. So given that, in-holdings, those kinds of private

uses would still be granted access.

Mr. PETERSON. Do you have any estimate on the amount of biomass on the national forest that could possibly be used for energy

production and how much of this is on the roadless areas?

Mr. PHILLIPS. I do not. I believe this Committee addressed that

yesterday in a hearing but I do not have that information. We can

certainly try to get that to you.

Mr. PETERSON. I have an eight-page letter dated July 17, 2000

from the Office of Advocacy of the Small Business Administration

to the Associate Chief of the Forest Service. The letter raises concerns about the adequacy of economic analysis of the draft roadless

rule.

I understand that this watchdog for the small business community continued to work with Forest Service personnel about better

assessing the roadless rule’s economic impacts before the rule went

final. Can you provide for the record copies of any or all correspondence with the Office of Advocacy regarding the Roadless

Area Conservation Rule or broader transportation policy?

Mr. PHILLIPS. Certainly.

Mr. PETERSON. I will submit the letter dated July 17 for the

record.

[The requested materials follow:]

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Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Schaefer, throughout the roadless rule-making process the Forest Service has said that mining is not prohibited; only the construction and reconstruction of roads. Would you

please comment on whether this statement is true?

Mr. SCHAEFER. Yes, Mr. Chairman. My testimony centered on

the mines in Colorado and Utah, all of which are underground

mines. So you have a vision of people underground mining and not

having the need to access the surface but the simple fact is you

have to. You need access to the surface to drill, to explore that coal

seam, make sure of the geology, the quality, and to make sure that

it is a piece of coal that is worth going after and spending the

amount of money that it takes to get the infrastructure.

Also, we have very stringent ventilation requirements for air flow

underground to protect worker health and safety so with that, we

also have to go to the surface and drill ventilation shafts and install fans. We also have to have roads up there to access those fans

and maintain them, as well.

So the simple fact is you do need access to the surface, even with

underground mines.

Mr. PETERSON. And do you think you will have that?

Mr. SCHAEFER. No, it is very clear in the Final Environmental

Impact Statement and in the final rule that road construction and

reconstruction is prohibited on roadless area surfaces.

Mr. PETERSON. Construction or reconstruction?

Mr. SCHAEFER. Road construction and reconstruction.

Mr. PETERSON. Did the Forest Service play any role in the development of the maps you attached to your written testimony?

Mr. SCHAEFER. No, those maps are ones that we developed ourselves. We had tried to obtain that information from the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service. We had the same problem as the attorney general from Idaho had early on where we

asked for maps to show here the boundaries of the roadless areas

were located; we were told that they would be on the website but

the website was not available until after the close of the public’s

scoping period.

Once they finally did post them on the Internet they were on

such a scale that they were virtually impossible to use for depicting

local impacts, to see if we even had a problem. As an example, in

Utah we first saw a map that was given to the Department of Energy by the Forest Service that showed areas, three particular coal

tracts that were impacted, but we had already been told by the

local Forest Service officials that there was no impact and unfortunately we took that at face value.

So we developed these maps and then provided them to the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service.

Mr. PETERSON. If my memory is correct, the first estimates were

30 some million acres and then it was 40 million acres and it ended

up being 58, so there had to be a lot of changes in the process.

Mr. SCHAEFER. I believe there were a lot of changes in the process. We felt like we were chasing a moving target for much of that.

In fact, the maps that you see here, the Colorado and the Utah

maps, took us the better part of a year to develop and present to

the Forest Service and the Department of Agriculture. The Colorado map we finally finished around the first part of November

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2000 and the Utah map was not available until December and that

was after the issuance of the Final Environmental Impact Statement and during the process when they were drafting the final

rule.

Mr. PETERSON. The Forest Service maintains that Forest Service

lands account for about seven percent of the national coal production in ’99. Do you think that is an accurate figure?

Mr. SCHAEFER. I think that number is very low, Mr. Chairman,

and the reason being most of this land is administered by the—the

coal resource itself is managed by the Bureau of Land Management

and there is a mixed surface. A lot of areas there is BLM surface,

Forest Service surface, private surface, but the mineral itself is

managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

As such, the Forest Service I do not believe has a really good accurate way of determining how much coal is actually produced on

their land. For example, in Wyoming we operate the Black Thunder Mine on the Thunder Basin National Grasslands, which is National Forest Service surface. In 1999 that single mine itself produced right about 5 percent of the nation’s supply.

In talking with two neighboring mines that also operate on the

Thunder Basin National Grasslands, an informal survey showed

that just those three mines in Wyoming were up around 8 to 10

percent. Then you put in Colorado and Utah; I think it could be

up in the order of 15 to 18 percent of the total coal supply comes

from Forest Service lands.

Mr. PETERSON. Thank you very much.

Mr. SCHAEFER. Thank you.

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Eppink, the Forest Service Chief’s letter to

OMB dated January 2, 2001 pretty much dismissed the concerns

of the DOE regarding access to oil and gas beneath the roadless

areas of the national forests. How do you account for that?

Mr. EPPINK. I do not know that I can. We presented the study,

DOE and myself, in November to the White House and what happened after that, really I was not privy to that process. I really cannot comment on that. I do not know exactly the procedure.

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Otter? Do you have some questions?

Mr. OTTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And to the panel, my apologies not having been in attendance

here all the time. If I plow some old ground that already been

plowed, if I go over some questions that have already been asked

and you have responded to, my apologies again but it will be for

my information and for some of the questions that I want to ask,

the information that I want to get, it is going to be necessary for

me to ask these.

I would like to start out, if I might, and it is too bad my colleagues from the other side of the bench here are not here because

one of them made a special point of what President Bush and then,

of course, the attorney general, Mr. Ashcroft, has done relative to

the enforcement of the roadless rule and I just want to remind

them and put into the record that during the public comment period then-Vice President Gore and candidate Gore made a statement that the roadless decision was a done deal and that the administration, obviously as far as I was concerned at that point, did

not care about the scoping period or what the testimony that was

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going to be offered by 1.2 or 1.6 or however many people offered

testimony or offered an opinion on the value of the roadless area.

As far as I was concerned, the administration, if represented by

Mr. Gore’s comments, they did not care. It was a done deal in his

terms and all the Forest Service had to do and the analysis, as far

as I was concerned, all they had to do was come out to the end that

was already predetermined.

But I would like to begin my questioning by asking Mr. Morton

of the Wilderness Society, one of the things that concerns us is that

the 65 percent of the land mass of the State of Idaho, and you

heard this number and I am sure you are sick and tired of hearing

it as I am of saying it, but when you lock away 65 percent of the

land mass of an area, that takes away from an economic base; that

takes away more importantly, I think, from a taxing base that supports communities and society and education systems, public

schools, fire departments, police departments, the building of necessary roads, whether they be not particularly those in the roadless

area.

And I think those of us that have all of a sudden brand new discoveries in our area are concerned about the lost potential energy

resources and those things but does the Wilderness Society have

any idea in mind on how we could replace the lost money because

we no longer cut trees in the five national forests in Idaho, which

when we cut the trees, there was a certain percentage of that that

went to construct the elementary schools in the communities that

it affected? It went to help support local systems of government.

And right now, as I have said several times in front of this Committee, I think Idaho is down to around $17.2 million, which comes

out to about 80 cents an acre, whereas all the other private owners

pay $8.80 per acre in taxes per year. If the Wilderness Society suggests that this land belongs to all the people, then you ought to all

pay your taxes, so you ought to be paying $8.80 in taxes a year.

And for the Forest Service alone it would be $173 million.

Can you tell me how I am going to support my local units? Or

do we just wipe them off the map and maybe come up with another

map problem? But do we just wipe, along with the 33 mills that

we have already shut down during the Clinton years in Idaho, do

we just wipe these communities off the map?

Mr. MORTON. Well, I think last year the county payments bill

separated county payments for schools from timber harvesting, so

I think that problem is a little bit ameliorated.

In terms of locking away, I do not think that is quite the right

terminology. I think there are a lot of multiple uses that can still

occur on these lands.

In terms of the lumber mills shutting down, right now you have

an oversupply problem. Wall Street analysts are saying you need

to shut down because there is too much timber on the market, so

I am not sure you can blame the roadless policy for those mills

shutting down. It is a corporate decision based on profit maximization.

And in terms of tax revenues, there have been studies that show

that wilderness areas, property adjacent or nearby wilderness

areas actually have a high property value. So you might think

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about more wilderness in terms of increasing property values and

increasing revenues for those school kids.

Mr. OTTER. Well, unfortunately, if you have lived through one of

these, and obviously you have not or you would not be able to make

that kind of statement, sir, because when you see a city die, when

you see a little town die and generations, five and six generations

of people that have lived and worked in that community, whether

it is on a ranch or in a lumber mill or in a mine or whatever, all

of a sudden that is gone. Those people have to pack up and they

have to go start a whole new life and a whole new generational

process.

I would like to move on to Mr. Moyer. Mr. Moyer, the Wilderness

Society believes that those that are going to use it ought to pay a

little bit more for it, I guess. So how much is Trout Unlimited willing to pay for access to the trout streams in the Clearwater reaches

of the Clearwater National Forest?

Mr. MOYER. I think we would be willing to pay.

Mr. OTTER. Would you care to say how much?

Mr. MOYER. I have no idea how much more we would be willing

to pay. I would just point out, as I did in my testimony, that our

local chapters have worked throughout Idaho on Federal lands to

work with the Forest Service, providing manpower and money to

help the Forest Service conserve trout and salmon resources.

So not only have our members paid the state fishing license fees

but they have put out more and given more back to the resource

in terms of those things that they have put forward to do that. So

I think we have demonstrated that we are already willing to pay

more so than a lot of others are.

Mr. OTTER. Do you have any idea what each member would have to pay in order to come up with $172 million?

Mr. MOYER. I think you are forcing me to try to do math in public, which I vowed not to do.

Mr. OTTER. Must be a graduate of public schools.

Mr. MOYER. You are exactly right about that. But I definitely

think we would be willing to step up and do more watershed restoration than we are doing. Part of the problem is that the Forest

Service does not have sufficient money to help us do that, to get

us going.

Mr. OTTER. Well, I would just like to close, Mr. Chairman, and

thank you both for your responses.

I would just like to close, Mr. Chairman, by saying I am a grand

slam lifetime member of Ducks Unlimited and I am sure, Mr.

Moyer, being with Trout Unlimited, you know what that means. It

is not that I am not committed to the natural resources and to

habitat but along with all the other problems that we have and especially in the Clearwater National Forest, and this is the most pathetic thing that a lot of people do not understand, especially those

east of the Mississippi River, and that is that we have lost the genesis of one of the greatest elk herds in the Pacific Northwest in the

Clearwater National Forest because the habitat is gone. It has

nothing to do with anything except for the fact that the canopy has

grown so close together in the forest that the browse is gone.

And it has everything to do with these same organizations like

those sitting on the end of that table that come in and say we want

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wolves in Idaho and their preferred meal happens to be elk calf.

And in that great herd that once sustained a lot of other herds

around the United States and around the world, that great herd

that once had something like 46 calves per 100 cows is now down

to three on a count by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife this year. Three

calves per every 100 cows of calf-bearing age.

So it is more than just these esoteric things that everybody likes

to talk about. It is real people leaving their real roots and somebody needs to care about that and I wish more than a couple of

people at that table did.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PETERSON. Thank you. I just have to share with my friend

from Idaho that I am from Western Pennsylvania.

Mr. OTTER. I said most of the people— Mr. PETERSON. No, no, no. My district has a county called Elk

in it because it has a very successful elk herd in it. In fact, it has

been growing to the point that they are going to hunt next year

and they have been stalking them in a couple of neighboring counties. They have moved them, not without some controversy, I believe, because when elk get in your farm fields they do a lot of

harm. But we have a very successful elk herd in Pennsylvania in

Elk County. If you are ever over there I will show it to you.

Mr. Moyer, when your organization’s mission to conserve, protect, restore cold water fisheries and their watersheds, how would

you suggest that the Forest Service deal with the forest fuels problems in roadless areas to avoid or reduce catastrophic wildfires? I

do not know whether you have ever flown over one of these wildfire

areas but I have and it is stunningly devastating. I sometimes wonder how it will ever recover. How do we prevent that?

Mr. MOYER. Well, on fire, sometimes that is true but oftentimes

that is not true. Moderate to light fires are very much part of

natural— Mr. PETERSON. That is not what I am asking about. Some of the

fires of the 7 million acres this year, what percentage of those

would you claim were light? I flew over a large area in Idaho and

Wyoming a number of years ago and there was not a blade of

grass; there was nothing alive. The ground was cooked. They were

horrendous fires. The hillsides were sliding into the valleys. The

streams had to be totally annihilated. It was devastation, and we

flew for a long time. I have never seen anything like it.

And this fuel load will not create a light fire; it will create a fire

that absolutely cooks the ground and it will be years before anything will grow there.

Mr. MOYER. My understanding is that the vast amount of the

fuel situations that are out there in the Forest Service are in

roaded areas and not in the roadless areas. I think the problem

that you are talking about is mostly in the roaded areas and especially in the urban forest interface.

The Forest Service did allow for forest health work in roadless

areas. Now whether they allowed enough flexibility for that or not,

I am probably not the best judge but they did allow for harvest of

trees within the roadless areas to take care of fire risk situations.

Mr. PETERSON. I believe some of the most serious fires last year

were in roadless areas. Am I correct, Mr. Phillips?

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Mr. PHILLIPS. In some parts of the country that is correct.

Mr. PETERSON. Okay, thank you.

Mr. Morton, in your written testimony you assert that roadless

areas hold very small quantities of oil and gas. Having heard Mr.

Schaefer’s testimony and having seen his maps, both of which persuasively demonstrate that there are, in fact, abundant energy resources below Colorado and Wyoming’s roadless areas, would you

like to amend your statement?

Mr. MORTON. No, because we did an analysis of oil and gas and

he was talking about coal. In terms of coal, we have about 1.7 trillion tons of coal in the United States. In the Powder River Basin

alone you have almost 140 billion and with annual consumption of

1 billion, you have over 100 years of coal just in the Powder River

Basin.

Given some of the advances in solar technology, coal could actually be obsolete. We may never actually mine all the coal that is

out there. So I would stick with my statement.

Mr. PETERSON. You said coal will soon be obsolete? Is that what

I heard you say?

Mr. MORTON. No, I am saying I have seen economic research

from people that said given the advances in solar technology and

other renewable energies that the production of coal, the use of coal

for energy production could drop dramatically in 20 to 30 years so

we may not even actually get to mining all the coal that is there.

Mr. PETERSON. Would you share that research with the Committee? I am on the Interior Subcommittee and we have been holding hearings and boy, I want to tell you the pie charts 10 years out,

20 years out, I wish you were correct. If you have information that

wind and solar and renewables are going to be that successful and

where and how and the models that are working, I am all for that

but I will tell you that is not the information we are receiving from

this country’s energy experts.

Mr. MORTON. Okay, I will track down a copy of the article.

Mr. PETERSON. For the record.

[Report entitled ‘‘Endogenous Substitution Among Energy Resources and Global Warming’’ submitted for the record follows:]

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Mr. Schaefer, do you want to react?

Mr. SCHAEFER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In our testimony we

did highlight the fact that in Utah there is very much an undeveloped rail transportation system. The power plants that are there

rely almost exclusively on the Utah coal-mining operations for their

future. Most of those mines now are either underlaying or adjacent

to roadless areas. The opportunity for bringing in coal from the

Powder River Basin is simply nonexistent there.

Then as you look at Colorado and Utah coals, those are both

states that have very high-quality bituminous coals, very high in

BTU content as opposed to a Powder River Basin coal, which is

about two-thirds of the BTUs per similar weights per pound.

A lot of the boilers that are constructed in the United States

focus or need a very specific coal quality in which to operate, so as

we ship coal from Utah to Tennessee Valley Authority, they need

that particular type of coal and in many instances cannot burn a

Powder River Basin coal.

We are going to need access to all of our coals across the country—West Virginia, Kentucky, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming—in

order to make this— Mr. PETERSON. Do not forget Pennsylvania.

Mr. SCHAEFER. Pennsylvania. Yes, that is right.

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Eppink, you were hired by the Department

of Energy to analyze roadless during the Clinton Administration.

Mr. EPPINK. That is correct.

Mr. PETERSON. How much impact do you think your analysis had

or how seriously was it taken in developing the final statement?

Mr. EPPINK. I think it was seriously taken. It certainly got a lot

of attention.

Mr. PETERSON. You caught a lot of hell, huh?

Mr. EPPINK. We did the analysis very quickly. We spent about

three or 4 weeks conducting the analysis and probably 3 months

defending it so it got a fair amount of attention, yes.

Mr. PETERSON. I am going to give each of the participants no

more than 30 seconds to make a statement. Who would like to

start? Who is ready to go with 30 seconds? Final comment.

Wait. One final question. That will give you a little chance to

think.

Mr. OTTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

This is a five-part question. No, it is only one question.

Mr. Phillips, in 1914, there was probably one of the most devastating fires ever that went 582 miles through my district in

Idaho. That is the Western District in Idaho. It burned millions of

acres of forest, national forest, went through the Payette, the

Clearwater, the Panhandle—gosh, I am going to forget one and offend somebody, I am sure. But anyway, it burned millions and millions of acres of forest. Most of that under a natural process was

replaced by species of trees that have a lifespan of roughly 90 to

110 years. Is that not right? I just want a yes or no on that.

Mr. PHILLIPS. That is a tough one to answer because you have

a lot of different species in Idaho, depending on the site. If it is

lodgepole pine, that is correct.

Mr. OTTER. Okay, it was lodgepole pine, it was some firs and

some white pine. But the species, the professionals tell me, will live

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to be 90 to 110 years old and that is it. We are right now on that

threshold. That forest is going to start dying. There is nothing you

can do about it.

During that 1914 fire some of that area was so dense; in fact, one

place is called Slate Creek. It is on the tributary to the St. Joe

River. To this very day, Mr. Chairman, nothing grows on Slate

Creek, areas of Slate Creek, because the earth was calcined so deep

that there is nothing there to sustain life, any kind of life. And I

think that whole age factor, which we have not talked much about,

and the natural life cycle of that forest, we are on the threshold,

whether we have a drought or not, we are on the threshold of those

trees just starting to die naturally. Am I right or wrong?

Mr. PHILLIPS. I would say you are right in many of those areas.

Mr. OTTER. Thank you.

Mr. PETERSON. Now 30 seconds. Who wants to go first? Raise

your hand. Mr. Moyer?

Mr. MOYER. I just want the Subcommittees to consider three

things. One is as you look at these roadless areas just consider the

high value for habitat they have for a lot of trout and salmon and

wildlife. Consider that roads damage trout and salmon habitat especially but often wildlife, wildlife habitat, as well.

And three, I think a real area of common ground that we could

work together on is working on maintaining and restoring roads

that are part of this backlog that really need work. That would also

put people to work in those areas that you were talking about, Mr.

Otter, but also restore watersheds and make healthier systems for

fish and wildlife. So those are the points that I wanted to make.

Mr. PETERSON. If your groups are willing to help lobby for the

funds to fix the roads, that will be welcome because I have been

here a few years and that has just been talk in the past. I felt

there was a defense against putting money in the roads budget because it was about roads and rightfully or wrongfully, I think that

not maintaining the roads has probably caused more problems than

anything.

Who is next? Mr. Eppink.

Mr. EPPINK. I just want to emphasize from our study we have

done a number of these studies for DOE and elsewhere. This is one

of the few studies when we concluded that the fact that a vast minority of the roadless areas contain the vast majority of especially

oil and gas resources was pretty striking. I just want to emphasize

that point.

Mr. PETERSON. Thank you.

Mr. Phillips?

Mr. PHILLIPS. I wanted to thank the Committee’s continued attention to the road backlog that came up a number of times today

and recognize that that is a continuing problem. And a reminder

that the roadless rule is still under review until May 12.

Mr. PETERSON. Take your time.

Next? I am just trying to be a little spirited. Go ahead.

Mr. SCHAEFER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just three quick summary points.

When we talk about backlog of maintenance of roads, just to

make sure you are clear that that is an irrelevant discussion with

regard to the coal mining industry because we are solely

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responsible for the reclamation of the roads that we construct and

any other surface disturbance associated with a mining operation.

I reiterate that the Forest Service lands represent a significant

amount of production, coal production, and necessary part of coal

production for this country and our energy needs.

The other one is just to again address the fact that if you want

to shift coal production, say we do not need these existing mines,

the coal can come from somewhere else, that that really ignores the

local communities. The final environmental impact statement correctly noted that the economies of these rural Western towns is relatively inelastic and if you take away these high-paying jobs there

is just simply not anything to back it up.

Mr. PETERSON. You get the final word.

Mr. MORTON. I just want to reiterate that when you look at the

impacts of this policy there are a lot of benefits and you cannot just

focus on the negative impacts.

Mr. PETERSON. Thank you.

I would like to share just a thought with you and then I have

a closing comment here and we are just about ready to conclude.

I have had the privilege of working on the energy issue seriously

for the last few years and about a year and a half ago when it became very apparent that a lot of gas was going to be committed to

making electricity, which has not historically been a part of our energy plan in this country, I predicted to my staff and a few people

that people heating their homes would pay significantly higher gas

bills this year and they did. I do not claim I am some expert about

predicting but I had concerns about that. From two to two and a

half times they paid more for gas this year.

I am here to predict I think next year will be worse and we are,

with our current energy issues—I do not think people in this country really realize that with our current issues and the amount of

gas we have already committed to electric generation, I do not

think there is going to be gas to put in the ground for the winter

season, which is normally how you build up the supply.

And with the inability to repermit hydroplants, with the inability

to repermit nuclear plants and the inability to build a new coal

plant in this country, I want to tell you we are going to face—I

mean California is not going to be alone long; we are going to face

serious energy issues in this country.

When you look at all the charts that go out for 10 and 20 years,

and I looked at them last week and we questioned some of our finest experts in this country, we are in trouble. And when we are dependent on oil from the most unstable part of the world, certainly

not friendly places in the world, this country has gradually backed

themselves into a very difficult energy issue.

And all of those things I mentioned in the very slow projected

growth on renewables, if you look at the big pie chart 10 years out,

20 years out, they are not predicting a lot of growth. I am a big

supporter of hydrogen as one of our futures, personally. I think it

may have more potential than any of the renewables.

But we need growth in renewables. We need our hydro to keep

running. We probably need to upgrade our nuclear and drill for a

lot of oil and gas and dig more coal just to meet the growing needs

in this country because what you are going to do is you are going

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to hit business hard. The businesses in my district that use energy

to melt things, to cook things are having profitless years. A major

paper company in my district, their energy budget took away their

profitability for the year at the end of January.

It has not hit the streets yet. You think Wall Street has been

bad? You wait till some of the lack of profit statements come out

from energy. My greenhouse growers do not expect to make money

this year because of fuel costs. I mean it is going to hit everywhere.

Buying gas in a vehicle is the small part of it. When it starts to

get added in and rolled into the cost of doing business and when

it happens that quickly, there is no way to raise prices and you are

going to find a lot of profitless businesses in this country.

In my view we have an awful lot of work to do and we had better

not argue too much and we had better be able to agree on some

things because in my view we are in serious trouble in energy.

Closing comments here. It is no secret that if you want broad national policies to be accepted broadly you must get a critical mass

of buy-in from the public, both nationally and locally. Polls asking

only whether roadless areas deserve protection while avoiding how

this should be done do not accurately represent the public’s sentiment on this issue. Anyone who really believes that a lasting solution to the roadless debate can be achieved by forcing it through

politically at the national level without substantial involvement at

the state and local level is delusional. I am willing to work with

anyone concerning further protection of roadless areas but never at

the expense of effective local participation. These are not mutually

exclusive goals; in fact, they can only be achieved together.

I want to thank the witnesses on the second panel for their insights and members for their questions. The members of the Subcommittees may have some additional questions for the witnesses

and we ask you to respond to those in writing. The hearing record

will be held open for 10 days for these responses.

If there is no further business before the Subcommittees I want

to again thank everybody for their participation and this hearing

is concluded.

[Whereupon, at 4:42 p.m., the Subcommittees were adjourned.]

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