U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

42–836 u WASHINGTON : 1997

AMERICAN HERITAGE RIVERS INITIATIVE

OVERSIGHT HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

ON

OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION’S AMERICAN HERITAGE RIVERS INITIATIVE

JULY 15, 1997, WASHINGTON, DC

Serial No. 105–36

Printed for the use of the Committee on Resources

(
(II)

COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES

DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman

W.J. (BILLY) TAUZIN, Louisiana

JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah

JIM SAXTON, New Jersey

ELTON GALLEGLY, California

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado

JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland

KEN CALVERT, California

RICHARD W. POMBO, California

BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming

HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho

LINDA SMITH, Washington

GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, California

WALTER B. JONES, JR., North Carolina

WILLIAM M. (MAC) THORNBERRY, Texas

JOHN SHADEGG, Arizona

JOHN E. ENSIGN, Nevada

ROBERT F. SMITH, Oregon

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

KEVIN BRADY, Texas

JOHN PETERSON, Pennsylvania

RICK HILL, Montana

BOB SCHAFFER, Colorado

JIM GIBBONS, Nevada

MICHAEL D. CRAPO, Idaho

GEORGE MILLER, California

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts

NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia

BRUCE F. VENTO, Minnesota

DALE E. KILDEE, Michigan

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American

Samoa

NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii

SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas

OWEN B. PICKETT, Virginia

FRANK PALLONE, JR., New Jersey

CALVIN M. DOOLEY, California

CARLOS A. ROMERO-BARCELO ́ , Puerto

Rico

MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York

ROBERT A. UNDERWOOD, Guam

SAM FARR, California

PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island

ADAM SMITH, Washington

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts

CHRIS JOHN, Louisiana

DONNA CHRISTIAN-GREEN, Virgin Islands

RON KIND, Wisconsin

LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas

LLOYD A. JONES, Chief of Staff

ELIZABETH MEGGINSON, Chief Counsel

CHRISTINE KENNEDY, Chief Clerk/Administrator

JOHN LAWRENCE, Democratic Staff Director
(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held July 15, 1997 ..................................................................................... 1

Statement of Members:

Chenoweth, Hon. Helen, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Idaho, prepared statement ....................................................................... 10

Hansen, Hon. James, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Utah ............................................................................................................... 1

Prepared statement ................................................................................... 3

McHale, Hon. Paul, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Pennsylvania ................................................................................................. 14

Miller, Hon. George, a Representative in Congress from the State of

California, prepared statement of ................................................................ 5

Pallone, Hon. Frank, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the State

of New Jersey, prepared statement ............................................................. 6

Pickett, Hon. Owen B., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Virginia, prepared statement ................................................................... 64

Statement of Witnesses:

Babbitt, Hon. Bruce, Secretary, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, DC ..................................................................................................... 26

Glickman, Hon. Dan, Secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC ..................................................................................................... 28

McGinty, Kathleen A., Chair, Council on Environmental Quality, Executive Office of the President, Washington, DC ............................................. 24

Prepared statement ................................................................................... 69

Additional material supplied:

American Heritage Rivers Initiative, frequently asked questions and answers .............................................................................................................. 94

Council on Environmental Quality, Briefing Paper, American Heritage

Rivers Initiative ............................................................................................ 65

Proposal with Request for Comment ....................................................... 84

Letter to Hon. Don Young from Ms. McGinty ................................................ 83

Letter to Kathleen McGinty from various Members ..................................... 67

Webb, Hon. Wellington E., Mayor of Denver, Resolution No. 51, submitted by ........................................................................................................ 81
(1)

OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION’S AMERICAN HERITAGE RIVERS INITIATIVE

TUESDAY, JULY 15, 1997,

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:30 p.m., in room

1324, Longworth House Office Building, Washington, DC, Hon.

James Hansen, [member of the Committee] presiding.

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES HANSEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF UTAH

Mr. HANSEN. The Committee will come to order. Chairman Don

Young has asked me to chair this hearing at this time. I am Jim

Hansen. I represent the first district in Utah.

This morning, the Committee will hear Administration testimony

on the controversial American Heritage Rivers Initiative. This oversight hearing is the result of tremendous public outrage and concern expressed to the Congress during the past several months and

the need to have accountability for the Federal agencies undertaking this activity.

This Committee has jurisdiction over the Council on Environmental Quality, the Department of the Interior, and the Forest

Service under the direction of the Department of Agriculture. This

hearing will raise serious questions about Federal agency participation in and the coordination of this initiative throughout the United

States and may very likely lead to further Congressional oversight

hearings in order to provide the American public an opportunity to

express their concerns on this issue.

This hearing this morning was postponed from the original date

of June 26, 1997, at the request of the Council on Environmental

Quality. Furthermore, through negotiation between this Committee

and the Council on Environmental Quality, the testimony of these

five Administration witnesses was agreed to, although this Committee originally requested that all 12 Federal agencies involved in

the implementation of this initiative provide testimony.

We appreciate the attendance of Kathleen McGinty, Secretary

Bruce Babbitt, Secretary Glickman, and we haven’t had the opportunity to have our former colleague, Mr. Goodman, before us before. It is a pleasure to have him here. Dan was a joy to work with

on legislation, and I think we accomplished some good things, and
2

the Administration appointees before the Committee this morning

and look forward to their testimony.

The President first mentioned the American Heritage Rivers Initiative during the State of the Union Address on January 4, 1997.

The basic thrust of the American Heritage Rivers Initiative is that

the President will designate by proclamation ten rivers during the

calendar year with the potential for an unlimited number to follow

at a later date. Rivers will be nominated by communities submitting plans to a Federal interagency task force that will make recommendations to the President.

This vague and broad statement which has no prior coordination

within the executive branch has resulted in the Council on Environmental Quality coordinating this initiative within the Cabinet

and involving at least 12 Federal agencies. This far-reaching initiative involves designation of Federal, State, and private lands in ten

so-called American Heritage Rivers that will encompass hundreds

of miles of shoreline involving multiple overlapping city, county,

and State jurisdictions, and in fact, international boundaries.

For example, the Council on Environmental Quality documents

specifically refer to the potential of designating the entire length of

the Mississippi River under one U.S. Army Corps of Engineers district, and hundreds of miles of the Rio Grande River forming the

boundary between Texas and Mexico.

The Committee on Resources has the Congressional jurisdiction

over designation of Federal lands, wild and scenic rivers, trails,

wilderness, recreation areas, and heritage areas, among other considerations.

The Committee and the Congress sometimes take decades to

reach consensus on these designations and eventually pass laws

authorizing the establishment. The unauthorized proclamation of

such areas by the President will at a minimum create confusion

with the American public, and at worst, is a direct challenge to

Congressional jurisdiction and authority.

Following the May, 1997, publication of notice on the American

Heritage Rivers Initiative in the Federal Register, this Committee requested an extension of the public comment period for 90

days until September 9, 1997. On June 20, 1997, the Administration provided for only 60 more days of public comment until August

20, 1997. Today, this Committee formally requests an additional 60

days of public comment until October 20, 1997. This time will allow

the American Public and local and State elected officials to have an

adequate opportunity to address this issue.

Media and press reports, private citizens and organization accounts, Council on Environmental Quality documents requested by

this Committee all reveal that a disturbing case for Federal agency

misconduct seems to be developing. Meetings were held with limited public notification and involvement. Special invitation only

meetings were held and State governmental agencies have not been

involved. Furthermore, there are reported instances of Federal employees promising enhanced or priority funding for rivers designated under this initiative.

The Administration has informed this Committee that there are

no fiscal year 1997 or fiscal year 1998 funds specifically authorized

or appropriated for this American Heritage Rivers Initiative. How-
3

ever, documents provided by the Council on Environmental Quality

describe a Federal program that will be created by executive order

issued later this summer that will require reprogramming of over

$2,000,000 of agency funds for this initiative.

For instance, the so-called river navigator position will cost over

$100,000 per designated river and will be utilizing Federal employees. Staffing and meetings for a so-called blue ribbon panel will

cost over $300,000. In addition, the long awaited tool box of agency

information on resources available to designated rivers will cost

over $300,000 in staff and production costs.

The staffing estimates do not account for the Federal employees

currently involved in the Federal interagency task force but does

reflect that these Federal employees are involved full-time on this

project.

I am increasingly concerned with the Administration’s arrogance

and abuse of unilateral Presidential actions. The creating of the illconceived Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, cutting

huge land deals on the Headwaters Forest and the Crown Butte

Mine were all examples of executive actions taken without Congressional approval.

This Committee has already demonstrated that the monument

was purely politically driven, and all you have to do is go down and

spend months on it as I have, and you will see that.

Moreover, now the Administration wants Congress to bail them

out of the Headwaters and Crown Butte land deals because once

the political advantage of this announcement wears off, there is no

substance to these actions, and now, this new river initiative that

again appears to be politically motivated.

Yes, once again, documents provided by the Administration reveal that politics is a major consideration in the designation of

these rivers.

I don’t believe there is a Member of Congress who does not believe in conservation; however, this Nation believes in the democratic process that provides for debate and refining of ideas.

This Committee looks forward to the testimony we will receive

from the distinguished panel this morning. The Committee members have many questions to ask following your prepared remarks,

so I hope that your schedules have been arranged to remain until

we have completed all questions from members of the Committee

for the record.

[Briefing Paper on Council on Environmental Quality’s American

Heritage Rivers Initiative may be found at end of hearing.]

[Statement of Hon. James Hansen follows:]

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES V. HANSEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE

STATE OF UTAH

Good morning. The Committee on Resources will come to order.

This morning this Committee will hear Administration testimony on the controversial American Heritage Rivers Initiative. This oversight hearing is the result

of tremendous public outrage and concern expressed to the Congress during the past

several months and the need to have accountability for the Federal agencies undertaking this activity.

This Committee has jurisdiction over the Council on Environmental Quality, the

Department of the Interior, and the Forest Service under the Department of Agriculture. This hearing will raise serious questions about Federal agency participation

in, and coordination of this initiative throughout the United States, and may very
4

likely lead to further Congressional oversight hearings in order to provide the American public an opportunity to express their concerns on this issue.

The hearing this morning was postponed from the original date of June 26, 1997,

at the request of the Council on Environmental Quality. Furthermore, through negotiation between this Committee and the Council on Environmental Quality, the testimony of these five Administration witnesses was agreed to, although this Committee originally requested that all 12 Federal agencies involved in the implementation of this initiative provide testimony. We appreciate the attendance of Katie

McGinty, Secretary Babbitt, Secretary Glickman and the Administration’s appointees before the Committee this morning, and look forward to their testimony.

The President first mentioned the American Heritage Rivers Initiative during his

State of the Union Address on February 4, 1997. The basic thrust of the American

Heritage Rivers Initiative is that the President will designate, by proclamation, 10

rivers during this calendar year, with the potential for an unlimited number to follow at a later date. Rivers will be nominated by ‘‘communities’’ submitting plans to

a ‘‘Federal interagency task force’’ that will make recommendations to the President.

This vague and broad statement, which had no prior coordination within the executive branch, has resulted in the Council on Environmental Quality coordinating

this initiative within the Cabinet, and involving at least 12 Federal agencies. This

far-reaching initiative involves designation of Federal, State and private lands into

10 ‘‘so called’’ American Heritage Rivers that will encompass hundreds of miles of

shoreline involving multiple overlapping city, county, and State jurisdictions, and in

fact, international boundaries. For example, Council on Environmental Quality documents specifically refer to the potential of designating the entire length of the Mississippi River under one U.S. Army, Corps of Engineer District, and hundreds of

miles of the Rio Grande River forming the boundary between Texas and Mexico.

This Committee on Resources has the Congressional jurisdiction over designation

of Federal lands, wild and scenic rivers, trails, wilderness, recreation areas, and heritage areas, among other considerations. This Committee, and the Congress, sometimes take decades to reach consensus on these designations, and eventually pass

laws authorizing their establishment. The unauthorized ‘‘proclamation’’ of such

areas by the President will, at a minimum, create confusion with the American public, and at worst, is a direct challenge to Congressional jurisdiction and authority.

Following the May 19, 1997 publication of notice on the American Heritage Rivers

Initiative in the Federal Register, this Committee requested an extension of the

public comment period for 90 days, until September 9, 1997. On June 20, 1997, the

Administration provided for only 60 more days of public comment, until August 20,

1997. Today, this Committee formally requests an additional 60 days of public comment, until October 20, 1997. This time will allow the American public and local

and State elected officials, to have an adequate opportunity to address this issue.

Media and press reports, private citizen and organization accounts, Council on

Environmental Quality documents, requested by this Committee, all reveal that a

disturbing case of Federal agency misconduct seems to be developing. Meetings were

held with limited public notification and involvement. Special invitation only meetings were held and county and State governmental agencies have not been involved.

Furthermore, there are reported instances of Federal employees promising enhanced

or priority funding for rivers designated under this initiative.

The Administration has informed this Committee that there are no fiscal year

1997 or fiscal year 1998 funds specifically authorized or appropriated for this American Heritage Rivers Initiative. However, documents provided by the Council on Environmental Quality, describe a Federal program that will be created by Executive

Order, issued later this summer, that will require reprogramming over $2 million

of agency funds for this initiative. For instance, the ‘‘so called’’ river navigator position will cost over $100,000 per designated river, and will be utilizing Federal employees. Staffing and meetings for a ‘‘so called’’ blue ribbon panel will cost over

$300,000. In addition, the long awaited ‘‘tool box’’ of agency information on resources

available to designated rivers will cost over $300,000 in staff and production costs.

The staffing estimates do not account for the Federal employees currently involved

in the Federal interagency task force, but does reflect that these Federal employees

are involved full time on this project.

I am increasingly concerned with this Administration’s arrogance and abuse of

unilateral Presidential actions. Creation of the ill-conceived Grand StaircaseEscalante National Monument, cutting huge land deals on the Headwaters Forest

and the Grand Butte mine, are all examples of Executive actions taken without

Congressional approval. This Committee has already demonstrated that the monument was purely politically driven. Moreover, now the Administration wants Congress to bail them out on the Headwaters and Crown Butte land deals because once

the political advantages of the announcement wear off, there is no substance to
5

these actions. And now, this new Rivers Initiative that again appears to be politically motivated. Yes, once again, documents provided by the Administration reveal

that politics is a major consideration in the designation of these rivers. I don’t believe there is a Member in Congress who does not believe in conservation; however,

this Nation believes in a democratic process that provides for debate and refining

of ideas.

This Committee looks forward to the testimony we will receive from this distinguished panel this morning. The Committee members have many questions to ask

following your prepared remarks, so I hope that your schedules have been arranged

to remain until we have completed all questions from Members of the Committee

for the record.

Mr. HANSEN. I ask unanimous consent that the former member

of this Committee, Doc Hastings, be allowed to sit on the dais. Is

there objection?

Hearing none, so ordered.

The gentleman from California, Mr. Miller.

Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would ask unanimous consent that the statement by Mr. Pallone of the Committee

be inserted in the record.

Mr. HANSEN. Without objection.

Mr. MILLER. And that my statement be inserted in the record in

its entirety.

I just wanted to say that I welcome our distinguished panel of

witnesses here today, and I strongly support the American Heritage Rivers Initiative. I believe that this is an important initiate to

try to coordinate State, local, and Federal efforts at watershed

management and helping local communities to reach a consensus

on how we manage the rivers.

This theme of management of these water resources has been explored in the Water Policy Review Commission on which I sit as

a member, and we have been taking testimony from local communities about the management of these rivers.

Obviously, there can be no discussion of American history, American culture, or American heritage without the discussion of America’s rivers, and unfortunately, too often, we find too many of our

rivers in serous trouble because of a lack of coordination, the lack

of local input, and the lack of good decisionmaking processes. Hopefully, this initiative will bring to these watersheds and to these

communities the help that is necessary so that we might engage in

better decisionmaking about our rivers.

I look forward to the testimony of the witnesses.

[Statements of Hon. George Miller and Hon. Frank Pallone follows:]

STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE MILLER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE

STATE OF CALIFORNIA

Good morning. I want to welcome our distinguished panel of witnesses here today.

I hope they will be able to dispel some of the rumors that have been circulating regarding the American Heritage Rivers Initiative.

The American Heritage Rivers Initiative has grown into a government-wide effort

to improve communication about Federal rivers programs, and to coordinate Federal

agency activities affecting rivers. I don’t think anyone could fail to support the goals

of improved communication and agency coordination. I hope that this Initiative

achieves these goals and increases public awareness of Federal resources for river

conservation.

In addition, I applaud the effort to work with local communities to determine local

needs for river conservation. In several places in the West, local watershed councils

have proven that citizens working together can be effective in reaching consensus

on managing rivers. Many of the best decisions about river management come from
6

local watershed groups working together with State and Federal agencies. This

theme is being explored in some detail by the Western Water Policy Review Commission, on which I sit. I expect that the Commission will strongly recommend expansion of these efforts.

I am pleased to see that the Administration has chosen to extend the comment

period on the American Heritage Rivers Initiative. The public has expressed considerable interest in this program, and further public comment is warranted. However,

I hope that the extended comment period will not lead to indefinite delays in coordinating agency efforts on rivers. Making Federal programs work together is an objective that the Administration should pursue regardless of other factors affecting this

Initiative.

I look forward to the witnesses’ testimony. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK PALLONE, JR., A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM

THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to welcome Ms. McGinty, Secretary Babbitt, and Secretary Glickman and thank them for coming today to provide us with

information on the American Heritage Rivers Initiative currently being developed

by the Clinton Administration. This promises to be an important and useful initiative for river communities around the country and I look forward to hearing their

testimony.

I would like to take this opportunity to say a few words of support for the American Heritage Rivers Initiative.

Our country has been built around our Nation’s rivers. From the very beginning,

rivers served as an essential means of transportation, and therefore as a conduit

for trade and commerce. Rivers have provided endless recreational opportunities.

They have also provided an important national aesthetic.

The goal of the American Heritage River initiative is to support communities in

their efforts to restore and revitalize the economic, historic, cultural, recreational,

and environmental values of their rivers. Under this new initiative, communities

will nominate themselves to be selected as American Heritage Rivers, and the President will designate 10 such rivers in his next State of the Union Address.

The American Heritage Rivers Initiative acknowledges the critical role that rivers

have played in America’s development. Perhaps more importantly, however, the

American Heritage Rivers Initiative also acknowledges the role that these rivers can

still play in the continued growth and enhancement of river-front communities nationwide. And for that reason, I am very excited about the prospects of this initiative and its potential for improving the quality of life of a lot of people in this country.

While this is an initiative based on rivers and the restoration and revitalization

of river related resources, it is really about people and communities. It is the local

communities that must voluntarily nominate their river, create partnerships among

affected groups to ensure broad based support for the nomination, identify common

goals, and develop a plan to achieve those goals. In this way, the American Heritage

Rivers Initiative helps communities at the local level to work together to realize

their own goals and improve their communities in ways that they themselves have

chosen.

And that is why there is a lot of support for this initiative at the local level. The

U.S. Conference of Mayors has already endorsed the Initiative. And I know that my

office has been contacted by local officials from the district that I represent who are

very interested in the initiative and who plan to nominate the Raritan River to be

an American Heritage River, a nomination that I would welcome and wholeheartedly support and one that I think would be well deserving of the honor.

I think the bottom line here is that the American Heritage Rivers Initiative is

going to help communities to focus their own resources, better coordinate Federal

assistance, as well as to leverage sources of non-government assistance in order to

conduct economic development, historic preservation, environmental restoration, and

educational and recreational activities along our Nation’s rivers. And that is something that I think deserves widespread, bipartisan support.

Again, I would like to thank Ms. McGinty, Mr. Babbitt, and Mr. Glickman, as well

as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers for coming here today and I look forward to hearing their testimony.

Thank you.
7

Mr. HANSEN. I thank the gentleman from California. I can see

that we have quite a few members here, and I am sure more will

be coming.

I am sure most of you have opening statements. We have a lot

of ground to cover and a lot of witnesses, and we have our two secretaries and the chairman of the counsel. I would appreciate it if

we could be brief in our opening statements.

I will start in the order they arrived. Mr. Hill.

Mr. HILL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for holding

this important oversight hearing.

As with most Federal programs, this initiative seems well intended, particularly for those communities that are interested in

finding new tourism opportunities. However, as with all proposals,

the devil is in the details.

A lot of questions need to be asked today. For example, will the

American Heritage Rivers Initiative serve as a simple nonregulatory purpose or is it an incremental approach that will lead to more

infringements on local sovereignty and individual property rights?

Moreover, what effect will this have on the American taxpayer,

particularly when Congress has not authorized the initiative?

Mr. Chairman, I strongly believe we need to find answers to

these questions on behalf of the American people and the people of

Montana. They deserve nothing less than accountability from the

Congress and from the White House.

I look forward to closely examining the proposal and hearing

from our distinguished witnesses.

Again, Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Mr. HANSEN. The gentlelady from the Virgin Islands.

Ms. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just briefly, I think it is

a great initiative which the President announced during his State

of the Union Address. It is community-based, denominated, and

still coordinates the efforts of many Federal agencies, and it is yet

another program to help rebuild America’s towns and cities as well

as restore some of our important natural resources.

As I welcome the panelists and look forward to their testimony,

I think about a river out of our Virgin Islands, the Salt River, the

only point within the United States where Columbus actually was

known to have landed. It is a great historical area and a valued

natural habitat.

While we had not planned to restore the entire river, the estuary

is in need of restoration and protection, and it has the potential for

wonderful recreational tourism and educational development. I

wonder if it would qualify for this program, and I hope that during

the course of this morning, that could be answered for me.

I am pleased to join you, Mr. Chairman, and the rest of my colleagues and welcome our panelists this morning.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. The gentleman from Nevada, Mr. Gibbons.

Mr. GIBBONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Very briefly, I want to

thank you and the leadership of this Committee for having this

hearing here today.

I welcome the guests who are going to be testifying as well. I

think that the purpose of this hearing, of course, should be to answer some of the questions that we have as Members of Congress
8

as to whether or not such a designation as this should be actually

authorized by Congress, should it be an administrative procedure,

whether or not there was sufficient time given to the public of this

country to have sufficient input into the process.

As a result, I will be very interested to hear some of the answers

that are going to be proposed here today in relationship to those,

and I welcome the opportunity to participate in this hearing.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Pickett.

Mr. PICKETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the interests of time

and hearing what our witnesses have to say today, I will submit

my statement for the record.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. The gentleman from Idaho, Mr. Crapo.

Mr. CRAPO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief also, but

I do want to associate myself with the chairman’s remarks and to

also indicate that it is of great concern to me and my constituents

that we now face yet once again in this arena the same battle

which we seem to fight constantly these days, and that is whether

all wisdom does flow from Washington.

I can tell you that I have just come from a meeting where we

have been discussing some of the water and river issues in my community, and if you want to see how another Federal task force or

a federally managed program can foul up a river system, just take

a look at the Columbia River system in the Pacific Northwest.

The last thing we need is another Federal initiative to move Federal management into decisions of this type.

I have introduced legislation that would require the Federal Government to comply with State substantive and procedural water

law with regard to the allocation, management, and use of water,

and it is of concern to me that this initiative not only seems to

move back toward the approach of saying that all wisdom comes

from a federally managed task force, but it seems to say that that

wisdom which some seem to think flows only from Washington now

flows only from the executive branch in Washington.

It appears to me that we have a lot of important questions to answer today about not only the wisdom of this initiative at all, but

how it has been proposed in a manner which excludes Congress

from any effective involvement in development of policy regarding

the management of the Nation’s rivers.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. The gentleman from Colorado, Mr.

Schaffer.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The people in my

State are quite concerned over the initiative, but I think not so

much because they know of many details. There were not that

many disclosed, quite frankly, but because of the manner in which

it was introduced and suggested in the Congressional Record, given

a very short period of time for public comment, and that it has

really caused a number of folks that I represent to view this whole

initiative with some degree of skepticism, that also taken in light

of what has happened in our neighboring State with the Grand

Staircase-Escalante heritage program there done in large part

without the knowledge of the Congressional delegation, the Governor, the members of the legislature and their home State, and in
9

fact, announced from a neighboring State, not even from the State

that was affected.

There are several examples like this that we have heard, the discussions about reintroduction of grizzly bears in Idaho to the objection of members of that State’s entire delegation in that case, almost, as I recall, unanimous opposition in the State legislature.

In Kentucky as well, this biosphere initiative has in the same

way encouraged the opposition of the Kentucky State legislature,

yet these initiatives continue to move forward and be presented by

the Administration as represented here today, portions of the Administration represented here today, and it is for those reasons

that I think that the citizens and taxpayers throughout the country, rightly so, view these programs and this initiative with great

skepticism and hopefully, as a result of this hearing here today, we

will be a little bit more knowledgeable about the intent and the objectives of the Clinton Administration.

Mr. HANSEN. The gentlelady from Idaho, Mrs. Chenoweth.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have been outspoken on this issue, this initiative since I first read about it in the

Federal Register, and it is no secret that I am adamantly opposed to it.

I think my colleague from Idaho very clearly stated what our

western perspective is. It seems like every time I open the Federal

Register, there is a new effort by the Federal Government to become the nanny of the western resources. From the Forest Service

and the Bureau of Land Management’s proposed law enforcement

regulations which is a direct assault on the Constitution in many

ways to the lock-up of billions of dollars in resources over the

Escalante National Monument set-aside which took private rights

and State property, I am very disturbed and very suspicious, and

we have a right to be.

Today, we examine the American Heritage Rivers Initiative initially proposed May 19, 1997, with only a 3-week comment period

which was thankfully extended. The American Heritage Rivers Initiative creates a new entity called the river community which is not

defined to propose a new designation.

It establishes a river navigator, a Federal official, to help guide

the river communities through the designation process. Interestingly, this river navigator is tabbed to be a GS–13 to a GS–15 to

the tune of a salary of up to $100,000 a year—all, Mr. Chairman,

without Congressional authorization.

Ten rivers per year, the possibility of ten rivers per year, ten

times river navigators, at $100,000 salary per year is $1,000,000

just in salary—per year. The river navigator’s tenure is 5 years.

That is $5,000,000 plus ten additional rivers per year. The numbers start adding up pretty fast into the millions.

The last time I checked, the Constitutional role of Congress is to

authorize the funds, and I don’t remember authorizing $5,000,000

per year for river navigators. Do you, Mr. Chairman?

Probably the most offensive and alarming issue here is the scope

of area covered by these nominations. A designation may include

the length of the area whether it be an entire watershed, the

length of the entire river, and may cross jurisdictional boundaries,

as you stated.
10

This can literally mean by definition from mountaintop to mountaintop, and given that the Mississippi River drains approximately

40 percent of the U.S. mainland, 40 percent of the U.S. could conceivably be an American Heritage River.

Mr. Chairman, whether this designation has legal teeth or not is

not the issue. The issue is private and State property rights and

self determination and State determination. The Idaho Constitution and Code, like many western States, expressly claims all waters within its boundaries as State’s waters. How can we allow the

Federal Government to designate something it doesn’t own?

If the Clinton Administration is truly serious about American

Heritage Rivers, let us take the $5,000,000 they are taking from

other on-the-ground programs and clean up our historical surroundings. It is an embarrassment to this Nation when people from

around the Nation and around the world come to the capital of the

United States to watch people pull fish from the tidal basin with

blisters on them and open sores and to watch garbage and tires

floating around as one gazes out from the historic Thomas Jefferson Memorial.

The Anacostia and the Potomac Rivers are historic and certainly

part of our heritage. The rivers were used by explorers and settlers

to trade with Native Americans, by the British in an effort to hold

on to the colonies, and by the architects of our capital city to bring

marble and granite into Washington to build the Federal city, and

the Hudson Bay and other places full of history need our attention.

I would suggest to the Clinton Administration that they take on

these projects first, and when they have brought these projects up

to a standard that they are satisfied with, that can then be the

measuring standard by which they measure all other rivers that

they wish to take into this particular program.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a full statement that I would

like to enter into the record with your permission.

Mr. HANSEN. Without objection.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you.

[Statement of Hon. Helen Chenoweth follows:]

STATEMENT OF HON. HELEN CHENOWETH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM

THE STATE OF IDAHO

Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing on this very important issue.

From the perspective of the western States, I have to ask the question: When is

enough, enough? It seems every time I open the Federal Register, there is a new

effort by the Federal Government to become the nanny of western resources. From

Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management proposed law enforcement regulations—which would have thrown out the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments—to

the Utah Monument—which locked up billions of dollars in resources including over

of billion dollars of Utah’s school children—the Clinton Administration’s appetite to

control western resources appears insatiable.

(And certainly there have been many programs in between: the Interior Columbia

Basin Ecosystem Management Program; the introduction of grizzly bears into Idaho

over the strenuous objections of the Governor, the legislature and Idaho’s congressional delegation; the Uniform Action Guidelines for the Sawtooth National Forest

designed to end grazing; the Owyhee Resource Management Plan, again, to end

grazing; the illegal July 2, 1996 USDA memo to illegally end salvage timber operations in violation of congressional intent; Forest Service efforts to end historical jet

boating in Hells Canyon; EPA’s Idaho water quality standards; takings of water for

bull trout and salmon—the list literally goes on and on. When is enough, enough?)

Today, we examine the American Heritage Rivers initiative. Proposed on May 19,

1997 with only a 3-week comment period initially, the initiative proposes to des-
11

ignate ten rivers per year as American Heritage Rivers. It creates the fictional entity ‘‘river community’’ which is not defined—to propose a designation. It establishes

a ‘‘river navigator,’’ a Federal official to help guide the river community through the

designation process. Interestingly this ‘‘river navigator’’ is tapped to be a GS-13 to

GS-15 to the tune of up to one hundred thousand dollar salary—all without congressional authorization.

Mr. Chairman, 10 rivers per year, times 10 river navigators at a hundred thousand dollar salary per year is one million dollars—just in salary. The river navigator’s tenure is 5 years, that’s five million dollars, plus 10 additional rivers per year.

The numbers start adding up pretty fast. Millions upon millions of dollars, just in

river navigator salaries. Last I checked, the Constitutional role of Congress is to authorize the funds. I don’t remember authorizing five million dollars per year for

river navigators. Do you, Mr. Chairman?

Additionally, the ‘‘river community’’ is only vaguely defined. Who is a member?

In today’s environment, when an individual in Maine can protest each and every

timber sale in Idaho with a mere postcard, I am left with little comfort as to who

is a member of the river community! Additionally, the ambiguous definition includes

‘‘. . . parties . . . that support the designation and the goals of American Heritage Rivers.’’ This is truly amazing to me. This definition leaves absolutely zero room for

detractors—the private land owner who objects to his land being included in the

designation has no voice in the so-called ‘‘river community.’’ Private property rights

are again under attack by the Clinton Administration.

But probably the most offensive issue here is the ‘‘Scope or Area Covered by Nomination.’’ A designation may include ‘‘the length of the area, whether it be an entire

watershed, the length of the entire river, [and] may cross jurisdictional boundaries

. . .’’ Mr. Chairman, this can literally be mountain top to mountain top. And given

that the Mississippi River drains approximately 40 percent of the U.S. mainland,

40 percent of the U.S. could conceivably be an American Heritage River.

Mr. Chairman, whether this designation has legal teeth is not the issue. The issue

is private property rights and self-determination. The Idaho Constitution and code,

like many western States, expressly claims all water within its borders as Idaho’s

water. How can we allow the Federal Government to designate something it doesn’t

own? It is the height of arrogance! Additionally, the designation will become nothing

more than a tool by environmental extremists to further lock-up resources and control or take private and State property.

The proposal purports to utilize a Federal ‘‘Good Neighbor’’ policy and to more effectively and efficiently coordinate and deliver Federal support to the community.

These are laudable goals and I am pleased to know the Clinton Administration is

trying to be a ‘‘Good Neighbor.’’ But why does it take this proposal? Shouldn’t the

Federal Government already be a ‘‘Good Neighbor?’’ Shouldn’t the Administration

already be striving for efficiency? Is this proposal a tacit admission that the Clinton

Administration is not striving for these goals?

If the Clinton Administration is truly serious about American Heritage, let’s take

the five million dollars they are robbing from other on the ground programs and

clean-up our historical surroundings. It is an embarrassment to this Nation when

people from around the Nation and world come to the Capital of the United States

to watch people pull fish from the tidal basin with blisters and open sores, and to

watch garbage, tires and debris float around as one gazes out from the historic Jefferson Memorial. The Anacostia and Potomac rivers are historical, and certainly

part of our ‘‘heritage.’’ The rivers were used by explorers and settlers to trade with

the Native Americans, by the British in an effort to hold-on to the colonies, and by

the architects of our capital city to bring marble and granite into Washington to

build the Federal city. And the Hudson Bay and other places full of history need

our attention. We’ve got a ‘‘good neighbor’’ trying to tell the west how to live its life,

when it can’t even take care of its own backyard.

Mr. Chairman, I introduced H.R. 1842 to stop this ill-conceived program, and I

urge my colleagues to join me.

Lastly, Mr. Chairman, in closing I’d like to quote the seminal U.S. Supreme Court

case on western water law, the 1978 California v. U.S.: ‘‘The history of the relationship between the Federal Government and the States in the reclamation of the arid

lands of the Western States is both long and involved, but through it runs the consistent thread of purposeful and continued deference to State water law by Congress.

[Indeed], to take from the legislatures of the various States and territories the control

of water at the present time would be something less than suicidal. If the appropriation and use were not under the provisions of State law, the utmost confusion would

prevail.’’ Mr. Chairman, I couldn’t agree more. When is enough, enough?

Thank you Mr. Chairman.
12

Mr. HANSEN. The gentleman from New York, Mr. Hinchey.

Mr. HINCHEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. First of all,

I want to express my appreciation to you for holding these hearings

and thereby giving us an opportunity to look into this very important subject of American rivers.

I want to say that I have been excited about this program ever

since the President announced it in the State of the Union Address

earlier this year. I think it is a terrific idea and one that ought to

be supported by all of the American people.

I can tell you that the people in my district do support it. In the

intervening period between his announcement of the program and

today, my district office has had numerous calls from people on a

bipartisan basis, Republicans and Democrats, even the State government in New York, which of course is currently a Republican

State government with Republican Governor, strongly supports the

program and has spoken out in favor of it much to their credit.

Most of the support that we have seen has come from nonpartisan organizations, environmental, civic, other organizations

stretching all along the Hudson River, excited about the prospects

of this program, looking forward to it, and hoping that the Hudson

River will in fact merit the designation of one of America’s National

Heritage Rivers. It is a very, very exciting program.

Of course, there have been those who have raised the specter of

government control which of course in the context of this particular

program is nonsense, but it is not the first time that we have heard

that.

When I was a member of the State legislature, I initiated a program creating the Hudson River Valley Greenway which is a multicounty project that stretches all along the Hudson River, all along

its tidal length at least as far north as the Federal dam at Troy,

about 150 miles. In that particular context, people raised the specter of government control. Of course, it wasn’t true, and that program has survived, and people understand that.

Even in the context of the designation of the Hudson River as an

American Heritage area last year, which came through this Committee, Mr. Chairman, for which I and the people that I represent

are very grateful for the fact that the Hudson River was designated

an American Heritage area along with a number of other areas

around the country. I think that that was a marvelous, very strong

step forward in celebration of the great heritage of this country in

providing an opportunity for people to become better acquainted

with the American Heritage.

This program, I think, is a great one. I have seen in the course

of my tenure in public service an enormous improvement in America’s rivers as a result of the clean water program and the Safe

Drinking Water Act. The quality of America’s rivers have improved

enormously.

Unfortunately, in the 1980’s, the Clean Water Act funding was

changed and as a consequence cut back rather sharply, and so the

progress that was made in earlier years has been slowed down. The

kind of things that Mrs. Chenoweth talked about just a few moments ago are the result of that.

If we had continued to fund the clean water program at the rate

that it was originally envisioned and which was supported by ear-
13

lier administrations, we would have rivers today that although

they are a lot cleaner than they were, would in fact be even cleaner

than they are. We need to go back to that program and reassess

it. I hope that this Congress will address itself to that issue, that

we will adequately fund those programs.

Is the gentleman signaling me?

Mr. MILLER. I just want to know if the gentleman would yield

for a moment when he is done.

Mr. HINCHEY. Yes.

Mr. MILLER. I just want to say that the heritage corridor area

that you spoke of that we dealt with last session is interesting, because it started out much the same way with an awful lot of opposition from people. But when we started to run out of time in the

session, there was no end to members that wanted to make sure

that their local communities in fact received that designation.

In this session, we now have one of the strongest opponents of

that legislation seeking extra-legislative measures by which to get

an area included that he fought so hard last year to get excluded.

I think when people start to understand the nomination process

and the work that local communities go to to get this designation,

I think we will find that ten rivers will be a limitation, given the

interest of local communities and Members of Congress.

Mr. HINCHEY. I thank the gentleman for that observation. I

think it is very important. My time is almost over. I will just end

by again saying to the representatives of the Administration here,

my thanks to the Administration, my thanks to the President for

this initiative.

I think it is an extraordinarily positive and powerful one, and I

hope that the Congress will address itself to it. There will be no

impediment to its enaction because I think the American people

want this project and they want it badly.

Mr. HANSEN. The gentlelady from Washington, Mrs. Smith.

Mrs. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I have had a different experience. My phones have been ringing off the hook in my

district offices from all over the State of Washington with people

very concerned who happen to live along the Columbia River.

They have watched several Federal initiatives take their property. One whole section cannot use their property even though

these people have paid taxes for years. They can’t even paint their

own homes the color that would be their choice because it is within

so many miles, not even visible of the river.

It has gone so far that they are wondering what this next Federal intervention will be, because you see, when the Federal Government does this, it starts losing reasonableness. The common

sense of the people who also love the river, rely the river for families to be able to eat. This is the area that I come from.

We have a little problem with those from other States around the

Nation saying that they have to move in the Federal Government

to take care of our beautiful State. We have cooperative agreements with other States of Idaho and Oregon. We care deeply. This

is our State. My grandchildren fish on the river. We boat on the

river. Most of my family relies on the river.

We not only don’t share the values of the President. We share

the values. Where we differ is this, do we believe that we care more
14

than the President for where we live? Does he really believe that

we are so irresponsible, we who live in those two States, that he

has to bring in 12 Federal agencies?

I guess this is the question I am going to be looking to have answered today. If this program is indeed voluntary as it says, nonregulatory, community-defined, and honorary, why do we need the

Federal Government, in fact 12 Federal agencies, involved in this?

We really love our State. We care for our environment. Our family plans on living there for many years, and I just can’t believe

that the President who lives here cares more about it than we do.

I will be looking for that answer during the testimony and looking forward to reassuring the folks in my State that they are not

going to just see the big hand of government from the East Coast

come again, tap them on the shoulder, and say we certainly know

best.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HANSEN. The gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Duncan.

Mr. DUNCAN. I have no statement, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. We have two Members of Congress who

are with us who we would like to hear from, Mr. McHale from

Pennsylvania. We will turn the time to you and then to Doc

Hastings from Washington.

STATEMENT OF HON. PAUL McHALE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA

Mr. MCHALE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and distinguished

members of the Committee. I am honored and pleased to be here

this morning. I will have a formal statement for the record, but if

I may in the next 5 minutes, I would like to simply summarize my

testimony.

Although my testimony is going to focus on one river, the Lehigh

River, I think in many ways the story of the Lehigh is the story

of our Nation’s rivers. My purpose in appearing before the Committee today is to warmly and enthusiastically endorse the American Heritage Rivers Initiative.

The distinguished author, Norman McLane, once wrote, ‘‘Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.’’ That

phrase describes not only a wonderful book, it also describes my

congressional district, a region of eastern Pennsylvania shaped socially, economically, and environmentally by the Lehigh River.

A good friend of mine, Dennis Shaw, once wrote the following description of the Lehigh, ‘‘With its headwaters in the Pocono plateau, the Lehigh River drains an area of approximately 1,364

square miles containing parts of present day Berks, Bucks, Carbon,

Lackawanna, Lehigh, Luzerne, Monroe, Northampton, Pike, and

Schuykill Counties.

The river flows south and east for 75 miles before joining the

Delaware, the forks of the Delaware, in Easton, Pennsylvania.

More than 1,000,000 citizens live and work within the Lehigh watershed.

Mr. Chairman, my commitment to the protection and the restoration of the Lehigh River is not based on an abstract study of history. Within the past month, I have canoed the Lehigh’s rapids,

fished its waters, camped on its banks, and hiked more than ten
15

miles along its shores. I have lived within a mile of the Lehigh

River my entire life.

We are a community defined both literally and symbolically by

the Lehigh River. The Act of Assembly of the Pennsylvania House

of Representatives dated March 6, 1812, defined Lehigh County as

follows, ‘‘That and all that part of Northampton County being within the limits beginning at the Bethlehem line where it joins the Lehigh River; thence along said line until it intersects the road leading from Bethlehem to Lehigh Water Gap.’’

Literally, the county where I live is defined by the Lehigh River.

Modern history along the Lehigh reflects a checkered past, including long periods of short-sighted greed, unsustainable consumption,

and environment abuse.

Mr. Chairman, today in my brief testimony, I am not going to

give you a complete environment or social history of the Lehigh

River, but just let me point out a couple of critical dates.

In 1740, David Nitchman was the first European to come and

settle in our community. At that time, the area where I now live

was described as follows, ‘‘It was wild and a forest, at a distance

of 50 miles from the nearest town, and only two houses occupied

by white people. No other dwellings were to be seen in the whole

country except the scattered huts or wigwams of Indians.’’ Here

they commenced a settlement, Bethlehem. That is my home town.

That is where I live today. That is not some Federal abstraction.

That is the community in which I am raising my children.

On May 6, 1772, a record catch of 5,300 shad were harvested in

the Lehigh River about a half-mile from where I live today, but in

1829, we turned a corner. It was a year of decision, in some ways

positive and in some ways quite negative.

John James Audubon, the distinguished naturalist and artist,

spent 6 weeks in the upper Lehigh painting and studying that portion of the river, but in that same year, the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company constructed a dam at the forks of the Lehigh

where it flows into the Delaware River, permanently impeding the

flow of shad and their annual migration up the Lehigh.

By 1872 when coal had been discovered in northeastern Pennsylvania, 1,000 canal boats travelled the canal parallel to the Lehigh

River transporting that coal to Philadelphia and New York, and

there were consequences from that.

By 1953, there were no shad caught in the Delaware. By 1968,

the pollution block in Philadelphia meant that the shad could not

spawn as they had historically spawned up the Delaware.

By 1970, we again turned a corner with the passage of the Clean

Streams Act. In that year, the pollution of the Lehigh had become

so bad that an entire five-mile stretch of the river would not sustain aquatic life.

I remember what that was like 25 years ago. I witnessed a river

that had become an open sewer.

In the past two decades, we have seen a river restored. Having

spent 200 years destroying the natural beauty, the water quality,

and the aquatic life of the Lehigh River, our community has recently dedicated itself to a more worthy goal, 40 years of river restoration.
16

Where do we go from here? The Lehigh River is now part of the

National Heritage corridor with modest annual funding through

the Department of the Interior. There was a management action

plan that was approved in 1994, and I strongly support the continuing efforts in the private sector as well as the public sector to

restore this great river.

All of the existing public and private efforts to protect and restore the Lehigh River will be dramatically reinforced by the American Heritage Rivers Initiative.

Mr. Chairman, if I may with your indulgence, have one more

minute.

I believe that this program is the single most important conservation effort proposed to date by the Clinton Administration.

The more efficient and effective delivery of existing Federal services and expertise, the sharing of river restoration experience, and

the availability of river-related data via the Internet and a well

planned web site will prove to be a tremendous aid in the environmental protection, recreational improvement, and economic development of the Lehigh River.

The American Heritage Rivers Initiative is in the conservation

tradition of Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and Rachel Carson.

It deserves the support and the funding of Congress.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, we who live, work, and are raising our

families along the Lehigh recognize that there is a reason why our

region has become known worldwide as the Lehigh Valley. In the

words of Norman McLane, a river runs through it.

[The information referred to may be found at end of hearing.]

Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the opportunity to appear.

Mr. HANSEN. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from Washington, Mr. Hastings.

Mr. HASTINGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate the

courtesy that the Committee has given me to sit here.

I want to just mention a couple things real briefly. I live, of

course, in an area where the Columbia River flows through, and

specifically in the tri-city area, we would like to enhance our river

shore there, and there was a consultant that came through and

suggested very strongly that perhaps the local community look at

the Heritage River Initiative that is being proposed.

I sent a letter to them and said, we don’t know what really is

in there before you pursue this. Maybe you ought to look and see

what it is all about.

I just received letters back from one of the commissioners, and

actually, it is signed by all the commissioners in one of the counties

that is impacted, Benton County, and if I may quote one sentence

here, they say this, ‘‘Much of this activity,’’ regarding the American

Heritage Rivers Initiative, ‘‘has taken place with very little public

information or understanding about the initiative or its potential

ramifications,’’ which I think is true.

There is another local organization that is looking into this, because there is a suggestion that has been made that tourism will

increase. We have a tri-cities visitor and convention bureau that

has been very active for 25 years in this area. They sent me a letter and they just make this statement, and I will quote, ‘‘The infor-
17

mation we have received has made us less inclined to pursue the

President’s initiative.’’

Now, the reason I mention this, and this kind of reflects the comments that I have heard certainly on this side of the aisle, as we

go down this path, is that the question that at least the local people have in my view, and I would like to know if—certainly, I will

listen to the testimony to see if this could be answered, is the unintended consequences that happen because we have legislation that

is supposedly warm and fuzzy and nice for local areas, but as we

go down the line, something changes, and I just may add with my

friend from Pennsylvania and his testimony, clearly from his perspective, this is a conservation initiative. Clearly from his perspective.

I can tell you from the west if that is the main initiative, then

I have some great doubts that this ought to be a conservation initiative. Clearly, we don’t understand where the Administration is

going on this, and I would certainly like to see that clarified.

Mr. Chairman, thank you again for the courtesy and I look forward to the testimony that will be forthcoming.

Mr. HANSEN. The gentleman from Utah, Mr. Cannon, my colleague from the third district.

Mr. CANNON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Like many of my colleagues, I also have considerable concerns about the real import of

the American Heritage Rivers Initiative.

Americans today unfortunately do not place a great deal of trust

in the Federal Government. Much of their cynicism is fueled unfortunately by experience.

For instance, last fall, this Administration in order to pick up a

few votes in California disregard the law, the Utah congressional

delegation, and the people of Utah in secretly crafting a massive

1,700,000-acre national monument in southern Utah, entirely within my district.

All of this was done in the dark and without any public input.

No wonder my constituents are cynical about this latest proposal

by the Administration. This proposal is built on the premise of

trust us. We in Utah know about Federal agencies and their false

assurances and empty promises.

My fear and that of my constituents is that this program is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt by the Federal Government

to grab more regulatory power. This hollow program offers no new

money for real solutions for these communities.

Instead, the initiative as proposed by Council on Environmental

Quality would give participating communities $100,000 to hire a

government bureaucrat, and for what purpose? To help clean up

rivers? No. To help restore historic landmarks or landscapes? No.

In fact these bureaucrats, so-called river navigators, have one

primary purpose, slopping at the Federal trough for possible taxpayer funds.

America’s rivers and associated communities do need improvements, but the solutions will come from our communities, from our

people, and not from river navigator-types.

This initiative offers our towns and cities no real answers, no

real plan. That is why the American Heritage Rivers Initiative and
18

the river navigators should be set on the appropriate course—

downstream.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. The gentleman from Hawaii, Mr. Abercrombie.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Do you

suppose we might take advantage of the fact that Mr. McHale is

here and perhaps question him inasmuch as he just testified? Is

that in order, as opposed to making statements at the moment?

Mr. HANSEN. Would you repeat your question?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I said, do you suppose we might take advantage of the fact that Mr. McHale is here testifying?

Mr. HANSEN. Mr. McHale has already given his testimony, but

you have 5 minutes. If you would like to have an interchange with

Mr. McHale, by all means, use your time.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you very much.

Good morning, Mr. McHale.

Mr. MCHALE. Good morning, Neil. How are you?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Very fine, thank you.

In your statement, I missed the first part of it, and you may have

covered it, but I want to refer to something that Mr. Hansen and

I believe others have commented on, and to get your reaction.

Obviously, you are in favor of carrying forward with this initiative. Now, taking into account or accepting for conversation sake

that this may not have gone through all of the examination and

analysis that would be required, and that the Committee’s hearing

today and possibly subsequent hearings is entirely in order to accomplish the legislative goals, is it your contention that this is

something that we should fund in addition to whatever funding

may already be associated with various departments, whether it is

the Council on Environmental Quality or the Department of the Interior or the Forest Service subdivisions within it?

The reason I ask the question is that Mr. Hansen has pointed

out that if I understand it correctly, now there will be reprogramming of already authorized and appropriated funds, and I don’t

think that is a good idea necessarily, or I think it is certainly something that should be examined. I think that Chairman Hansen has

pointed that out.

So for conversation sake, if we accept the idea that the Heritage

Rivers is a good idea, is it your contention that we should authorize

and appropriate new funds to do that, or is the reprogramming you

would accept at this stage?

Mr. MCHALE. My study of the program would indicate that the

vast majority of the funding can be reprogrammed.

What we are talking about here is not the creation of a new bureaucracy or the creation of new statutory authority. We are talking about the more efficient administration and delivery of existing

Federal programs.

For that reason, I think that existing funding would for the most

part be satisfactory, but I, as an individual Member of Congress,

would vote for additional funding as necessary to supplement the

existing funding, although I suspect that amount of funding would

be very modest.
19

I would simply say to Mrs. Chenoweth and other friends and colleagues who are skeptical about this program, I strongly support

your belief that this program should never be imposed upon you.

I think you deserve credit that there is an extended period of comment on this program.

Once we complete that analysis, however, for those parts of the

country such as my own that would very much at the local level

like to participate in this program, so long as we adequately protect

you from any imposition of the program, why not allow us to participate?

Our rivers in the northeast have experienced for the most part

a degradation that fortunately has never been inflicted upon the

rivers of the northwest.

We have a major challenge ahead of us in restoring those rivers,

and this program can be a very significant aid in that process.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. McHale, I would like to followup on that

point.

While there may be some trepidation on some of the members’

parts with respect to the implementation of this program, isn’t it

the case or would it not be the case in many instances that absent

Federal assistance, local resources might not be sufficient to be

able to handle the difficulties that might be encountered in comprehensive regional considerations that might come up with respect

to the restoration, et cetera.

Mr. MCHALE. That is absolutely correct. We have a 75-mile

stretch of river along with 1,000,000 people live. That is nearly

equal to the population of most of the States that are represented

before me.

We have a large concentration of population along a stretch of

river that has received heavy industrial use over the last 100

years. We have three major cities, Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton, that are attempting to coordinate that restoration and revitalization effort.

All we want is advice from the Federal Government. We want

those who will come in with that expertise and at our request and

to the degree that we solicit, step into our community and assist

us in a partnership that will ultimately clean up, restore, and economically develop a river, the like of which simply doesn’t exist, for

instance, in the State of Idaho, a magnificent State where I am

about to travel in 2 weeks, and where I have spent a great deal

of time.

The rivers of Idaho are very different from the rivers of Pennsylvania. We have silt, we have mine drainage. We have had a century of pollution where we are making major strides to clean up

that pollution, but clearly in that process, the Federal Government

can be a partner.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HANSEN. I will recognize the gentleman from Tennessee who

did not use his time before for questions.

Mr. DUNCAN. I just have one question. Paul, do you have any objections to or problems with the Congress voting on this before it

is done rather than doing it by executive order without the Congress voting on it?
20

Mr. MCHALE. Jimmy, I want to protect our rivers, and I want to

do it in a way that encourages debate, encourages congressional

participation. Certainly in terms of funding, Mrs. Chenoweth is correct. We hold the power of the purse, and I think that gives us an

adequate safeguard on the substance of the legislation, but I have

to smile.

We heard references earlier from Mr. Cannon and some other

folks about a President taking unilateral action. The President of

the United States acting without the consent of Congress and in

fact, deliberately attempting to circumvent the will of some Members of Congress, took executive action to protect the natural resources of the United States.

I am not referring to Bill Clinton. I am referring to Teddy Roosevelt. Read his autobiography. What is objected to today is precisely what Roosevelt did nearly a century ago, and with the wisdom of hindsight and history, we now recognize that Roosevelt fortunately protected the natural resources of our Nation so that we

of this generation might be able to enjoy them.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you.

Mr. HANSEN. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Peterson.

Mr. PETERSON. I have no comments at this time.

Mr. HANSEN. The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Jones.

Mr. JONES. No comment, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HANSEN. The gentleman from Puerto Rico.

Mr. ROMERO-BARCELO ́. No comment.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. I guess that covers——

Mrs. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, just one question.

Mr. HANSEN. If we may, we will recognize the gentleman from

California and the gentlelady from Washington, and then let us get

on with the witnesses, could we please?

The gentleman from California.

Mr. MILLER. I guess, Mr. Chairman, that Paul is a witness here,

so we can ask him questions, right? He is a witness.

Let me just ask you, the way you frame this bill and the way I

understand it, let me see if we are clear on this.

My understanding is that local communities at some point are

going to make a decision to nominate a river for participation.

Mr. MCHALE. Not only must they nominate, but in evaluating

those applications, the level of local public support is the decisive

factor in determining whether or not an individual river will be so

designated as an American Heritage river.

For instance, in our case, the Republican mayor of Allentown

who watched the State of the Union Address came to me immediately after that address and said, Paul, this is a wonderful opportunity for the Lehigh River. We are attempting to develop an entire

management plan for that watershed. Could you please do what

you can to intervene with the Federal Government so that we at

the local level by nominating our river can have it be designated

as one of the first ten.

I really don’t think and I appreciate the sensitivity and respect

it, but I really don’t think that the issue will be the imposition of

the status on any local community. I frankly think you are going

to see enormous competition among all of the potential rivers to be

designated for those ten that will be actually be chosen.
21

I don’t think anyone will have this designation forced upon them.

Mr. MILLER. As I see the record developing, it starts to appear

that you are essentially almost going to have to have a consensus

in the local community.

Mr. MCHALE. Yes. From what I have read, and of course, the Administration witnesses can amplify this, I can’t imagine that a

river would be chosen for this program over the objection of the

local Member of Congress.

Mr. MILLER. Maybe we should give the local Member of Congress

the veto, and we will find out strong they are.

Mr. HANSEN. That is an excellent idea.

Mr. MILLER. That would be a great idea. We have kind of been

here before. I mean, we have scenic highways, and we have heritage highways, and we have now heritage corridors. We had a lot

of early opposition to these things, and then hindsight, people in

communities decide they made the right decision.

I remember being up in the Rocky Mountain National Park out

on the back side of it. They have a scenic highway designation that

was hard fought coming up to one of the rivers there. An old fellow

got up out there from his bar, and he fought this. He led the local

organization, he put up all the window signs, he organized the

ranchers, said that this was a Federal land grab and so forth. But

it was a fact of life a couple years later. When we were in this

meeting out there trying to work out who was going to feed the

wildlife in the national park, the farmers or the Federal Government, somebody asked him what he thought now about that scenic

corridor, that scenic highway, and what was the best thing about

it. He said the best thing about it was it puts butts on his barstools

in the bar that he runs.

The fact of the matter is what local communities have found out

if they do comprehensive planning, organization, and promotion,

that many of these assets become huge economic engines for activity and for income for these communities and these designations.

I think you are right. I think there is going to be serious competition to try to get in under the wire of ten. And I also think that

those of us who have lived on rivers and watched all the disjointed

decisions by all of the Federal agencies, all the lack of communication between the agencies, it would be wonderful to have a navigator.

I am just going through a base closing. I went through one before. We didn’t have any help from the Administration. This Administration, we have a navigator for that base closing and you

know what? Every time the city and the county and the local agencies have a problem, they go to that fellow from the Navy. He

works it out with the Fish and Wildlife Service; he works it out

with the State of California; and we are so far ahead of schedule,

it is making our heads spin. That is the difference in how you can

approach this.

We see it in brownfields. We see it in all kinds of approaches

where communities have been left to fend for themselves, and now

somebody comes along and offers help, and somebody wants to act

like it is some grand conspiracy.

Fine, opt out, but I think you are going to find that communities

are going to want to opt into this. We are asking for $500,000,000
22

to restore the river that runs by my congressional district because

of a lot of individual disjointed decisions that have been made in

the past, and nobody thought about the comprehensive impact, and

now, we have an ecological disaster. Thank you, Paul.

Mr. MCHALE. Thank you very much.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. The gentlelady from Washington will

be our last question, and then we are going to go to our witnesses.

The gentlelady from Washington is recognized for 1 minute.

Mrs. SMITH. Thank you. I think as I listen to this discussion and

as I was listening to you, you said it OK because we looked at history for the President or other authorities to step outside the balance of power of the Constitution, which I call breaking the law.

As a budget person, that is my background both at the State and

corporately. If I take this amount of staff, and I have the document

of the staffing, and I take it out of other areas and I put it to a

new area, I am stating they are overstaffed; the other areas are

overstaffed.

Now, this Administration testified they needed more people in

these areas, so what they are saying now is we are going to take

them out of other areas to start this new program; therefore, the

President has decided to replace Congress in the Constitution. That

is not OK.

Do you believe these other programs are overfunded enough to

transfer all this staff or are you really saying, and this is a little

bit disturbing as a colleague, that we can step aside as a Congress

and say yes, whether it be a Republican or Democratic president,

that they can start a new program; authorize it, knowing full well

that they are violating the separation of powers where Congress is

supposed to authorize so we protect the people at home from one

person having all the power?

I very rarely hear another official say it is OK in history, therefore, it is OK now to violate the Constitution, so I guess I have to

ask you as a colleague, what other programs and areas do you believe that the President should be able to step out and say I am

going to start a program without a vote of Congress, because we

might be setting a precedent here that there will be others coming

and saying we don’t need Congress. You might not have to run

again.

Mr. MCHALE. Mrs. Smith, I have taken an oath to the Constitution of the United States as a member of the State legislature, a

Member of Congress, and as a United States Marine on more than

a dozen occasions throughout my lifetime.

I have to say that respectfully, your paraphrase of my testimony

was wholly inaccurate.

We have the power of the purse under Article I of the Constitution. No chief executive, Bill Clinton or anyone else, should have

unilateral power.

We have considerable authority through the appropriations process to approve or disapprove action taken by a President of the

United States. I was simply pointing out with historic accuracy

that in the autobiography of Teddy Roosevelt, the kind of action

that has been undertaken by President Clinton and has been criticized in this committee room today was precisely the same action
23

that Teddy Roosevelt undertook and about which he wrote with

pride.

One hundred years later, if Roosevelt had not taken that action,

almost a century later, we would not enjoy the forests of the northwest that were protected from greed and extravagance and consumption, but for Teddy Roosevelt’s intervention.

We have enormous power under the Constitution. I praise Mrs.

Chenoweth, although I would never vote for her bill. It is constitutionally proper in that she seeks to terminate funding in the exercise of our authority under Article I of the Constitution.

I believe the President, and you may disagree with his decision,

but I believe the President can exercise authority under Article II

that allows him to create this program. We then decide under Article I whether we are willing to pay for it.

Mrs. SMITH. Then I guess the answer you have is this should not

go forward unless Congress votes for it, and I think that——

Mr. MCHALE. For the money for it, yes.

Mrs. SMITH. [continuing] is the point I wanted to get to, that he

has authorized a new program. He does not have the money by his

own testimony and those that are coming before us, because they

have said they don’t have enough money in their programs; therefore, this cannot go forward constitutionally.

As you said, you took an oath to the Constitution without a vote

of Congress, and that is the point I want to make. We can vote

here, but should we only need one person, the Founding Fathers

would have chosen a king. Therefore, I am going to be objecting unless we debate this and we all decide to start this new program or

not in the Congress.

That is probably the most important thing that we address

today. I appreciate your support of the rivers. I also support the

rivers, but I also support the Constitution and don’t believe we

should step aside just because it is convenient for the moment or

because historically someone else did it. Thank you.

Mr. HANSEN. We appreciate Mr. McHale coming before us our

good friend from Pennsylvania, and the comments that you have

made.

Mr. MCHALE. Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Mr. HANSEN. We will go to our witnesses. I am going to editorialize for 30 seconds.

This is to my good friend from Pennsylvania. I, too, have great

feelings about Teddy Roosevelt, one of my heroes in life. He had

the 1906 antiquity law, however, we have a park bill in 1915 and

1916; the 1969 NEPA; the 1964 wilderness; and 1976 FLPMA,

which in my opinion give 1,000 times more protection than what

President Roosevelt did, even though I think he was right in what

he did, and I applaud his actions.

I think we have much better laws now to protect. In fact, if anything, the 1906 antiquity law takes away protection as we have

seen in southern Utah.

With that, we will excuse you and ask our next panel to come

up. We are very honored to have with us our two Secretaries, the

Honorable Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the United States Department of the Interior; the Honorable Dan Glickman, our former colleague, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We are
24

honored to have Kathleen McGinty, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, and we appreciate our three witnesses being

with us.

Dan Glickman, who is probably the most articulate person on

tort reform on light aircraft that I have ever met in my life, and

we are grateful for all three of them.

Kathleen McGinty, we will start with you.

STATEMENT OF KATHLEEN A. McGINTY, CHAIR, COUNCIL ON

ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY, EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE

PRESIDENT, WASHINGTON, DC

Ms. MCGINTY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the

Committee for the opportunity to testify today on the very important American Heritage Rivers Initiative.

Mr. Chairman, this initiative represents a historic opportunity to

support efforts to revitalize the communities that surround

3,500,000 miles of rivers and streams that flow throughout our Nation.

American Heritage Rivers focuses on the powerful link between

healthy rivers and healthy communities. As prescribed and called

for by the National Environmental Policy Act, this initiative is

built on the fact that environmental, cultural, and economic goals

are inextricably linked and that citizens’ voices have to be central

to Federal action.

Why rivers? Because, Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee,

as Mayor Richard Riordan has said of the Los Angeles River, ‘‘Rivers often represent the heart of our city or community’s spirit. Rivers, with their beauty, their history, their lore, their economic

force, provide a centerpiece, an organizing principle around which

disparate elements of a community can come together to work toward the economic, cultural, and environmental revitalization of

their place, their home.’’

Mr. Chairman, I have had the privilege and opportunity of seeing

this happen in every part of our country. My own home town is

Philadelphia.

Twenty years ago, the Delaware waterfront was no place you

wanted to be, crime and drugs, trash and decay. But as the bicentennial of our Nation approached, that river captured the imagination of Philadelphians. It had a story to tell, we realized, Penn’s

Landing, George Washington’s crossing; it was part of what made

our city and indeed, our country, great. Philadelphians were determined to take that waterfront back, push the pushers out, revitalize the historic buildings. Revitalizing that waterfront then compelled ideas to take back Front Street, Second Street, Third Street

with the result that all of downtown Philadelphia, now 20 years

later, is thriving and whole and very much alive.

Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1969 was voted America’s dirtiest

city. Today, Chattanooga is hailed as a miracle city, as one of

America’s most livable, and where did it all start? With the inspiration of a high school student who said, hey, the Tennessee River

is a pretty unique and wonderful resource. Why don’t we celebrate

by putting a first-of-its kind fresh water aquarium on its banks?

Chattanooga did, and now that aquarium, and indeed, the entire

city, is world-renowned.
25

St. Paul, Minnesota, I just visited there with Mayor Norm Coleman and some 20 other mayors of the upper Mississippi, Republicans and Democrats alike, who gather because of their tremendous enthusiasm for this initiative. Mayor Coleman has taken to

calling St. Paul, St. Paul on the Mississippi, and will tell you in

no uncertain terms that reconnecting that city with its wonderful

river was the single most important factor that enabled him just

recently to convince a major software manufacturer to locate in the

heart of the city, bringing jobs back into that city. The river restored makes that city an attractive, exciting, unique, and extremely compelling place to be.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to offer some declarative statements

on what this initiative is and what it is not.

It is 100-percent voluntary. Communities don’t have to participate, and once participating, can opt out at any time. It is 100-percent locally driven. This is purely bottom-up. Whether to participate and to plan for participation are completely under the control

and in the hands of local citizens.

It is 100-percent nonregulatory. There are absolutely no new regulatory requirements or restrictions of any kind that will come as

part of this program.

It is 100-percent in compliance with and indeed compelled by the

National Environmental Policy Act. Through this initiative, environmental, economic, and social concerns are finally being integrated and brought into one coherent whole in a way that is designed and driven by local communities.

It is also 100-percent directed by the President and Vice President’s effort to reinvent government. The initiative is a directive to

Federal agencies better to serve the citizens that the meet, to do

more with less, to cut red tape and bureaucracy so citizens can access resources that they pay for in an efficient and effective way.

What this initiative is not, it is not an attempt by Federal agencies to take on new authorities and responsibilities. Rather, it is an

effort to execute current authorities as those agencies are already

directed to do, that is, in a coherent and coordinated way, in a way

that most responsibly expends taxpayer’s dollars, in a way that

most efficiently and effectively serves the citizens of this country.

It is not an attempt to take anyone’s private property. Private

property rights will in no way be adversely affected through this

effort. To dispel any notion to the contrary, language on protecting

private property rights penned by President Reagan will be included in the final program.

Finally, this initiative is not a program of the United Nations. No

foreign government or governmental entitles are involved in any

way, either directly or as some have been concerned, by way of deploying surveillance systems of some kind. There is just nothing of

the kind involved in this initiative.

Mr. Chairman, we have consulted far and wide on this initiative.

This has been a very open and public process. First, of course, the

President announced it in the State of the Union so that all could

be aware.

Second, we immediately established a home page and a hotline

on this initiative, and we have received 31,000 hits to that home

page.
26

Third, we have held more than a dozen meetings in every region

of the country where hundreds of people representing every walk

of life, business, agriculture, arts, and education; Federal, State,

local governments; and environmental concerns all participated.

Fourth, we have sent senior Administration officials to every

meeting we have been invited to by others on this initiative. Mayors, Members of Congress, the American Farm Bureau, property

rights groups, the Western States Coalition, to discuss this program and there have been at lest ten such meetings, Texas, Washington State, Iowa, Missouri, et cetera.

Fifth, we published a Federal Register notice seeking comment

on every aspect of this program and we have now extended the

comment period so now we will have received more than 90 days

of comment on the program.

Sixth and finally, we have had at least 14 meetings on this program on Capitol Hill.

Mr. Chairman, this ia a positive initiative. It is based on principles this Congress and this Committee have espoused. It is locally

driven. It cuts bureaucracy and red tape. It brings economic and

social concerns in environmental decisions. Purely and simply, it is

government at the service of citizens.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[Letter to Kathleen A. McGinty may be found at end of hearing.]

[Statement of Kathleen A. McGinty may be found at end of hearing.]

[Letter from Kathleen McGinty to Hon. Don Young may be found

at end of hearing.]

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. Secretary Babbitt, we will turn the

time to you, sir.

STATEMENT OF HON. BRUCE BABBITT, SECRETARY, U.S.

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. BABBITT. Mr. Chairman and Committee members, I appreciate the chance to come back and appear before this Committee

and I would like briefly to describe for you the roots of my involvement in this program.

It really began back in 1995 when this Congress was taking a

wrecking ball to the environmental laws of this country. I responded by leaving town for considerable periods, because I felt

that it was really time to get out and reconnect with the American

people and see what I could learn about how the environmental

laws of this country were being used.

I very quickly discovered that there was something new happening in this land, and you have already heard from the Congressmen and from Katie about this phenomenon.

Citizens all over this country are turning back to rediscover their

heritage and their roots in the rivers that nourish their communities and that are entwined in the history of this country.

I spent 3 days going up the Hudson River that summer in the

area described by Mr. Hinchey, and I saw a remarkable renaissance in communities like Poughkeepsie, Troy, and Peekskill where

waterfronts are literally being revived, and what I heard from the

citizens of those communities was that part of that grassroots success in Poughkeepsie was their ability to go to the Department of
27

Housing and Urban Development, not in Washington, but at the

local level and to commandeer HUD resources and put them to use

for their vision.

Up in Troy, I heard from a community, which has restored its

waterfront, about how they had gone to the Environmental Protection Agency and brought those programs down and connected them

with that river. I heard communities talking about the Corps of

Engineers and how the Corps, at their request, had joined in these

partnership efforts.

I spent a summer day on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, floating down to Harrisburg and then floating further down

where I saw, as the Congressman intimated, on the Lehigh River,

a most extraordinary sight of that river. The shad runs are now

proliferating up that river, and what the citizens in those communities told me was that they had gone to the Fish and Wildlife

Service and to the National Marine Fisheries Service, not in Washington, but in their own communities and the State of Pennsylvania and said, you are the Federal Government, but you are here

to serve us, and we are going to show you want we need in this

community.

Several months ago, actually in June of this very year, I was out

on the Cuyahoga River at the request of Congressman Regula. I

had visited the Cuyahoga a year before, because I wanted to go

back to where the river burned and to see what had been happening out there in the last few years.

Of course, what I found, where the river burned was a lake restored, and out on the Cuyahoga, I saw an entire new riverfront

development. I saw fishing boats out on the mouth of that river.

I saw blue herons sweeping down across the river in search of a

meal.

Congressman Regula took me upstream, 100 miles upstream, to

a national recreation area. Beyond that were the headwaters of the

Cuyahoga. I listened and met with citizens who told me that as

part of their effort to restore their river, they had gone to the National Park Service—to the rivers, trails and conservation division

of the service—and to the heritage and historic preservation groups

and brought them into the community and said, we want you to direct your efforts in aid of our vision, and it is happening. The communities are driving it. They came to this Congress last year and

had their efforts translated into legislation in the form of a heritage conservation area.

Two more examples, because unlike the Congressman from Pennsylvania, I believe these are western issues, and I want to tell you,

as a westerner, I believe that western communities are as interested in this President’s initiative as any communities in the east.

I was out in Seattle during the course of the summer at a place

called Piper Creek, which runs through suburban Seattle where I

saw an entire high school and its teachers with their kids out on

Piper Creek saying we believe we can restore the salmon running

out of Puget Sound up Piper Creek into Seattle. They took me out

one summer day, and they actually showed me that the salmon

had returned for the first time within memory of anyone in Seattle.

I said how did you do that, and they said we went to the Environmental Protection Agency and got assistance at our request to
28

clean up a wastewater treatment plant. Then we went downtown

to the Fish and Wildlife Service and said what do we need to do

to get the salmon spawning in this stream.

Lastly, I would like to say just a word about the McKinsey River

in Oregon. This is a tributary of the Willamette River which runs

right by Eugene and several other cities. The citizens have come

together and formed what they call a watershed council. It has on

it county commissioners, representatives of the local utility companies, educators, citizens, and representatives from, I think it is

Weyerhaeuser, but, at any rate, a local forest products company.

They have set out to restore the entire river. It is a magical place

when you see the steelhead and the salmon spawning and they

were in danger of losing them. They are out there restoring wetlands, planting alders and poplars along the banks of the river,

working with the county to put together a riparian protection plan.

I asked them what can we do, and they said, Mrs. Smith, they

said we don’t need any programs, any new programs. What we

need is access to existing resources. They said, we have gone to the

Forest Service, the Natural Resource Conservation Service, and

they are helping us do this. We have gone to the Bureau of Land

Management, and they are helping us inventory the landscape

around this river, and we have received some help from the USGS.

They are providing us hydrographic data sets and maps.

It was at that moment that I realized what this concept is about.

It is not about new programs. It is, as Katie McGinty said, about

empowering citizens to access existing programs. You have voted to

help them, and we are reconnecting with their effort.

That is, of course, the reason that the President in his State of

the Union address—I would like to showcase these examples, and

I would like to help local citizens get better access to these resources by coordinating their availability. And it is in that spirit

I come here simply to recite my experience and to say I think this

is an important moment in which this Congress, by helping us with

these programs, can come to the aid of your constituents all over

this country.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Secretary Dan Glickman, we will turn the time to you, sir.

STATEMENT OF HON. DAN GLICKMAN, SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, WASHINGTON, DC, ACCOMPANIED BY JOHN ZIRSCHKY, ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF CIVIL WORKS, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY,

WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. GLICKMAN. Thank you, Jim. It is an honor to be here and

to be here with so many people that I served with before.

I would just make a couple comments. I hear a couple of things

being said today. One is, I hear from some folks about this distrust

of the Federal Government, and I served 18 years in this body. I

understand that. I would hear that from time to time myself.

The other issue which my colleagues have talked about is the

issue of empowerment, which is there are communities in this

country who do use the resources that the taxpayers of this country

pay every year to try to help themselves, and the goal is to try to
29

find a way to give them the right to choose how to spend the money

in the most effective way possible.

How do you blend those two things? What we are trying to do

is to take a program to focus existing Federal resources on helping

communities achieve their vision for a rivers future, not the government’s vision, their vision, existing resources achieving their vision, empowerment.

In a way actually, it reduces the kind of distrust there is of the

Federal Government because it gives them the power.

Let me tell you, I am involved with an issue on the empowerment zones. Many of you in this room have experienced it. We have

a couple in particular, one in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, and

one in the Mississippi Delta where what we have done is taken existing resources in very distressed, poor areas and given to the

communities the power and the authority to spend existing dollars,

use existing laws to help them track jobs, improve their environment, rebuild education systems where appropriate, taking the programs that were there that were rather hodgepodge and uncoordinated and saying to them, you decide how best to coordinate those

programs. You talk with your representatives from the Mississippi

Delta or south Texas and they will tell you that for the first time,

we actually have those programs coming together in a rather

meaningful way to see economic development.

In a sense, the American Heritage Rivers program is like an empowerment zone for rivers, to give people the authority at the local

level to spend those dollars and to coordinate those resources as

much as possible. We call it a river navigator, but I would call it

a river facilitator to cut through the red tape and help obtain technical assistance and funding from existing Federal programs.

The Natural Resources Conservation Service provides most of the

technical assistance on private lands in this country, stream bank

restoration, riparian restoration, those kinds of things, working

with landowners on a positive basis. The Forest Service and other

agencies do the same thing.

What this does is provide one-stop shopping, so that people can

come to basically one place with the mindset and the innovation at

the local level and say how best can we use these Federal resources. This is something we are trying to do at USDA generally.

Historically, we have had several shops out there and every

county in America advising farmers and ranchers how to do certain

things, and oftentimes, you would get conflicting advice. What we

are trying to do at USDA service centers around the country is to

in fact put in one office folks that serve our farmers and rural communities so that the full range of Federal help is there.

In a sense, that is what we are trying to do here on the American

Heritage Rivers Forum. We do that in our urban resources partnership, which is done and many people in this room and others have

seen this program because it places resources directly in the hands

of communities together to decide how best they can improve their

areas in the urban parts of this country in terms of resources.

It is the same kind of thing that we do here, so what USDA will

do is use our Forest Service, our Natural Resources Conservation

Service, our extension service, our farm service agency and other
30

parts of rural development to help with funds and technical knowhow.

We have agencies as does Secretary Babbitt known around the

world for successfully disseminating the latest science-based technologies, information, land management practices, to help landowners and communities utilize their resources in a responsible

way, but it is the local communities that are going to decide basically what is the responsible way to use these. It is not the Federal

Government. We have funds and technical assistance to help people to do that.

I want to repeat a few things before I stop. This program is not

a new regulatory program. We will continue to support voluntary

community-led grassroots efforts.

It is not an expensive new program. We can use existing funds

to get this done, just using them in a more effective way, and it

is not a new legal mandate. The initiative will operate within already existing programs and legal authority. No new authorizations are asked for or are needed.

Last week, this Congress approved a bill, and I believe it came

out of this Committee, if I am not mistaken, the Quincy Library

Group’s pilot project. I was actually very much involved in that. I

went out there to Quincy Library Group and talked with them 2

years ago, right after I came to this job, and they said to me they

had environmentalists, they had timber people, they had local community people, and they said we would like to come together to see

what we can do locally to best manage our forests.

All of you working with them and working with a variety of

groups approved a bill 429 to one, I believe, which is a demonstration of how people with divergent groups, local communities, can

draw down and lay down their proverbial swords and work together to develop a plan that provides environmental and fire protection and keep some timber mills open as well.

I guess what I am saying is that the communities are very diverse out there. They are not all of one mindset. They are going

to sit down together and try to develop a consensus to get this

done.

We think this proposal has a great opportunity to empower local

communities to use resources in a much more effective way than

they are doing right now. Thank you.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you very much. I appreciate the testimony

of the panel.

I am going to recognize the members in the order they came in

from majority to minority, and I would appreciate it very much if

you would stay within your time. Mr. Miller.

Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to commend

you for your testimony and for the process that you have undertaken, and thank you for extending the comment period, but for the

process that you have undertaken on behalf of this initiative.

Again, the suggestion has been made that somehow, this is a

surprise, that this is—I guess if you weren’t listening to the State

of the Union, that somehow, this has snuck up on everybody. I look

at the list of organizations, the national organizations that you

have notified, from the forest products people, the pulp people all

over the different States, river basins; the Governors’ association;
31

the National Rifle Association; the sporting goods manufacturers;

the tribal councils of all the various States and regions and their

organizations; local regulatory agencies and planning associations;

towns and townships; various educational and environment organizations; various nonprofit organizations; all of the water interests;

the petroleum industry, the refiners’ association; the people that

basically were brought up around the river communities.

We have all used these rivers at different times for different purposes. And a lot of communities are now rethinking what is the future of their river, and what can be restored and as communities

have changed, what additional values can be brought to the river

or how have values changed in the communities from the way the

rivers were used in the past.

I just think that again, this is a very, very welcome initiative.

Good portions of our Nation are going through this kind of rethinking as they are trying to build livable communities, as they are trying to get on that list of good places to retire, good places to live,

a place to take a vacation.

If you walk by the magazine racks in an airport, the lists are out,

because it is the beginning of summer—where to spend your

money, where to take a vacation, where to get away from it all,

where are you safe. Whether they are big urban cities on big rivers

or whether they are small towns looking to see how they can

change from one economy to another, they want to engage in this

process.

I think to have the Federal Government suggest that we are

going to try to come in a cooperative manner rather than sitting

back and waiting for you to come up with an idea, then we will

whack it around for a few months and bounce it around, and tell

you we will get back to you later, that we will get in on the ground

floor is exciting.

It is exciting. In fact, probably this initiative, as creative as it is

for the Federal Government, it is probably a little bit behind what

is going on in local communities. But it brings some very added direction in terms of instructing these agencies to try and work together for the benefit of these communities. If the resources of

somebody in a position like the navigator can be created, that is

a godsend when you are trying to do this kind of comprehensive

planning.

I just think that the fact that again, we have two of the lead

agencies, departments, right here in front of us that have an awful

lot to say about the life cycle of these rivers, from the headwaters

to the oceans, between the Interior and Agriculture, there is an

awful lot you can do to help communities. There is an awful lot you

can do to just sort of go along with business as usual.

We would prefer that you try to help the communities, and I

guess there will be an effort to knock this off the track. That seems

pretty clear. I only hope that Members of Congress fully understand, Ms. McGinty, as you have pointed out, the voluntary nature

of this: the fact of the community seeking these resources, seeking

this help, that that is the initiator. It is not the Federal Government coming in and directing them how to do this or not do this,

but there is certainly ample evidence that there is a lot of enthusiasm in the various river communities for a program of rehabilita-
32

tion in some instances or just recognizing the culture and history

of these rivers.

I come from the San Francisco Bay area, and we come in through

the Delta from the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, and one

of them is dead and runs into the ground, and the other is in a lot

of trouble. In the State, we have obviously put a lot of value on

these rivers in the last couple of years. With the help of the Federal Government, as I said, we are talking about $500,000,000 to

try to go back and correct some of the mistakes that everybody now

acknowledges were made.

I think if we would have had a process like this in the beginning

where we could have thought about in a comprehensive way what

some of the results might have been, how much money we could

have saved, and maybe some of the parts of that river community

that could have been preserved.

We used to have a wonderful Italian fishing community, commercial fishing industry, that just went by the wayside because we

weren’t smart enough about the refineries and their impacts on the

rivers. Today, we have cleaned up the river, but there is nobody

left to fish in it in terms of the skills and the talent.

There is a lot to be learned from this initiative. I would hope that

people would give it very, very serous consideration. I certainly applaud the President for this and for the time and effort that the

three of you have put into this to make a very, very user-friendly

effort by the Administration.

Thank you for your testimony.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. The gentleman from Montana, Mr. Hill,

is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. HILL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Coming from the State

with the original river that runs through it, Montanans take great

pride in their rivers and as a matter of fact, have taken great

strides in making sure that our rivers are protected. I think we

have among the most difficult, if you will, or toughest water quality

standards in the Nation.

I just have a few questions, and I will start by saying that with

all the success stories that you have outlined, perhaps that would

make the most compelling argument that you don’t need this program rather than that you do need it.

I can certainly see that in many instances, people believe that

the myriad of bureaucracy that we have in the government makes

it difficult to solve problems when people want to draw together to

do that.

Katie, you have held briefing sessions around the country on this

program, as I recall. Is that correct?

Ms. MCGINTY. Yes. We have had formal meetings in more than

12 places in every region of the country.

Mr. HILL. Have you done any briefing sessions at all in Montana

with any groups on this issue?

Ms. MCGINTY. I could get back to you on that. I don’t know off

the top of my head that one has been in Montana, but there certainly has been one in that region of the country.

Mr. HILL. I would appreciate if you would make that information

available for the record.

Ms. MCGINTY. Sure.
33

Mr. HILL. I would also be curious about who got invited to those

meetings and how the list of people that was invited was selected

and that sort of thing so we would have that for the record.

If I could just ask a few questions about this being a collaborative process, because I am a big proponent of the collaborative

method of dealing with, I guess, what you would say is the gridlock

with regard to the conflict between economic and environmental

policy with regard to the country.

When you talk about seeking designation, would, for example,

you insist on having the Governor of the State’s support before you

would designate a river in a State a heritage river?

Ms. MCGINTY. A central element of this program is that any applications that come forward, and again, they come forward from

the grass roots needs to show broad-based support and a central

piece of that will be the support of elected officials.

Mr. HILL. But would the Governor’s support be important, do you

think?

Ms. MCGINTY. It would be of extreme importance.

Mr. HILL. So if the Governor was opposed, would you say that

that would automatically suggest to you that you don’t have broadbased public support?

Ms. MCGINTY. I would say that would be an extremely high hurdle for that particular river.

Mr. HILL. How about local governments, county and city governments? Would you be seeking the county and city governments—

would that be a necessary element?

Ms. MCGINTY. Again, this is bottom-up, so we will be seeking no

one on this, but if an application comes forward, we would very

much expect to see, and the Federal Register notice is very clear

on this, letters of support or endorsement from a broad spectrum,

including local representatives and locally elected officials.

Mr. HILL. So if local governments were opposed and a citizens’

group wanted a listing, in your judgment, would that rule out then

a listing designation?

Ms. MCGINTY. I think it would make it very difficult. That would

be an extremely high hurdle for that particular application.

Mr. HILL. And the citizens’ group that we are talking about,

these grassroots groups, do you have in mind or do you intend to

have in the rules that there be local government officials represented in these citizens’ groups in terms of both seeking the designation, and then if the designation is sought, setting the goals,

and also hiring, for example, the coordinator? Would you see that

local government people—in your view, would local government

people have to be part of that process?

Ms. MCGINTY. It would be extremely important, and that is

noted in the Federal Register again. I guess I would note on that

point as well that the Conference of Mayors, for example, has

unanimously passed a resolution in support of this initiative, so we

have been reaching out to make sure that local government entities

are very well aware of this program.

Mr. HILL. One last question. One of the things that I heard in

your testimony and in Secretary Babbitt’s testimony was a discussion about restoring waterfronts and rivers that have problems.
34

Those of us in the west, of course, see the resource of water a

little differently. Because we have protected our water, we look

upon water and these rivers, of course, as potential for economic

development, the use of the water and the use of the water areas

as opposed to restoring them.

Are you going to make a commitment here that you will be working with those of us in the west where we want to see development

of our water resources, that this effort will be an equal effort to

helping us if our local communities want to develop those resources

as opposed to just focusing on restoring environmental damage that

has occurred in the past?

Ms. MCGINTY. Absolutely, and the central focus of this initiative

is to show the integration between economic and historic and cultural factors with the environment, what was typically thought of

only as an environmental issue to show the interlinkages between

economic and cultural-social factors with environmental issues.

Mr. HILL. Certainly, I think we can all agree that the resource

of the U.S. Government can solve problems or compound them, and

it is my hope that if you go forward with this program, that it will

be solving problems, not compounding them.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HANSEN. The gentleman from Nevada, Mr. Gibbons.

Mr. GIBBONS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I need some

help in understanding some of the definitions that are in this proposal.

First of all, tell me exactly who would be included or what is included in the river community? Is it just a section of a river or is

it the whole river? What happens when there is a conflict between

one party of one section of the river wanting this designation and

someone else upstream, downstream, wherever it may be, not

wanting this? What do you see as the river community? Who is

going to compose that river community?

Ms. MCGINTY. Certainly not the Federal Government. This again

will not be a top-down command-and-control, one-size-fits-all.

It——

Mr. GIBBONS. I understand that. That was part of your testimony.

Ms. MCGINTY. Yes.

Mr. GIBBONS. On the local level, who is going to be in this river

community?

Ms. MCGINTY. It will have to be a broad and diverse constituency

of people who not only have an interest in but live in or are connected to or are a part of that community.

Mr. GIBBONS. Let me give you an example. For example, if I

went to my colleague, Mr. Hill’s, State and went fishing on the

Missouri River, I am a user of that river. Am I now part of that

river community because I use it as a recreationist or some other

part of that river exercise? Can I then say or petition the government as a user of that river to have it included?

Ms. MCGINTY. That is not at all what we have in mind. The

thought behind this is people who find that community and call

that community their home.
35

Mr. GIBBONS. So you would say residents along the river would

have the ability to choose whether or not that river would be designated.

Ms. MCGINTY. We would be looking for very strong and lasting

connections to the area that——

Mr. GIBBONS. Fishing is a strong and lasting connection to me,

so you are going to say that that is not a qualification.

Ms. MCGINTY. If you came to the table with an application that

was supported by a broad spectrum of people who have lived there

for 100 years or who have lived there or are going to call this their

home for 100 years, that would make a difference.

Mr. GIBBONS. So a special interest can’t just waltz into your community without local support and get it designated.

Ms. MCGINTY. Right.

Mr. GIBBONS. Right. How many river communities along a

stretch of river do you envision?

Ms. MCGINTY. Again, that will depend on how many communities are interested in pursuing an application.

Mr. GIBBONS. Now, if we had the Missouri River, and say we had

ten river communities seeking application for designation as an

American Heritage river, would we then have ten river navigators

for each one of those communities?

Ms. MCGINTY. Not necessarily. Each of those river communities

would have identified to them a river navigator. Now, whether or

not that river navigator could serve more than one community, I

think would have to be dependent upon the complexity of the

issues that are being faced and the demand on the person.

Mr. GIBBONS. Technically, you are saying there could be?

Ms. MCGINTY. Could be, again, depending on the circumstances,

but also could not be.

Mr. GIBBONS. The river navigator has the ability to evaluate

local solutions to local problems. Does that evaluation include being

able to change the local community’s desires or their solutions to

the environmental problems?

Ms. MCGINTY. No, the river navigator will have no decisionmaking authority of that kind.

Mr. GIBBONS. Secretary Babbitt, you have thought about this

American Heritage River program for about 7 months now, haven’t

you?

Mr. BABBITT. Well, Congressman, since, I would say the beginning of 1995 actually.

Mr. GIBBONS. So 2 years, a little over 2 years now. Name for this

Committee the top ten rivers that you are going to recommend

under the American Heritage Rivers Initiative.

Mr. BABBITT. Well, in all modesty, Congressman, I don’t think I

am going to make the recommendation. It is not my function.

Mr. GIBBONS. Well, you have thought about it. You have envisioned them, you have talked about them, and you have some out

there. Can’t you tell this Committee? Why won’t you tell this Committee the ten you would recommend?

Mr. BABBITT. The reason I can’t tell this Committee, Congressman, is because that is not the idea of this program. The idea of

the program is to say to communities around the United States, if
36

you are interested in this program and if you have all of the stakeholders in your community interested, make your case.

Mr. GIBBONS. Well, there are some rivers——

Mr. BABBITT. Don’t you see that——

Mr. GIBBONS. I see your position, but I say there are some rivers

that deserve a higher priority. The Hudson might have a higher

priority than the Boise River in Idaho.

Mr. BABBITT. But in my testimony, the point that I made repeatedly was, what this is really about is about responding to local

needs expressed compellingly by local people. That is from where

it has got to come.

I could point you to a lot of really interesting river restoration

issues. For example, in the west, if you were to go up to Henry’s

Fork in Idaho, you would see a really remarkable group of people

working together there. They are all over the landscape. They are

in every state, and it is a powerful, grassroots movement which I

think involves the very best of the American tradition.

The irony is that we have a Republican bench here voicing skepticism and outright opposition to a concept which you should be

embracing because of its obvious and powerful orientation to empowering local communities.

Mr. HANSEN. The time for the gentleman from Nevada has expired. As we are a little heavy on the Republican side, I am going

to take one more Republican, and then we will go back and forth,

if that is all right with everybody. That is what we have done in

the past.

Staff tells me that we have two folks here that are good for information we may want. Mr. Robert H. Wayland, Director of the Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds, Office of Water of the

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. We have two additional

chairs on either end. Maybe we could put these folks up, and Mr.

John Zirschky, Acting Assistant Secretary of Civil Works, Department of the Army in Washington, DC. Maybe we could ask those

two folks to come up for questions.

We will go to Mr. Crapo for 5 minutes, and then the gentlelady

from the Virgin Islands for 5 minutes.

Mr. Crapo, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. CRAPO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Babbitt, I would

just say you are correct about the significant progress we have

been making on the Henry’s Fork in Idaho.

The concerns that we have are that we have been able to do that

without this initiative, and we are concerned frankly that perhaps

this initiative would put the Federal Government in charge of the

very process that has helped us make such good progress. We want

to make sure that it works right and is facilitated properly.

That is the reason for a lot of these questions. Ms. McGinty, I

think I will focus my questions on you to speak, because I believe

you have the expertise and understanding of the development of

this, and most of my questions are going to be somewhat technical

as to how it operates.

The first question is, who is in the American Heritage Rivers

Federal interagency team? Who is that?
37

Ms. MCGINTY. Well, it would include representatives of the 12 or

13 different agencies who are coming together to be part of this initiative. If you would like, I could read those off.

Mr. CRAPO. No, I just wanted to understand it. The way I read

the documents, it sounded like it was Federal officials.

Ms. MCGINTY. I am sorry, Federal?

Mr. CRAPO. It sounded like it was a group of Federal officials

representing the agencies.

Ms. MCGINTY. Exactly right. That is what the interagency team

is. Yes.

Mr. CRAPO. I know that there have already been questions here

about the river community, but bottom line, after you look at all

the qualifications and who might qualify to be in it and so forth,

who picks the river community?

Ms. MCGINTY. There will be a process through which the applications again, which come from the communities themselves, will be

reviewed by at least the interagency team, but this is a question,

a specific question that we have posed for public comment, what is

the best process we might put together for the final selection of

which rivers should be part of the program.

Mr. CRAPO. I will give you my public comment on that right now,

and it gets back to the Henry’s Fork that has been working out in

Idaho, and that is, if you have a Federal team picking who the

community representatives will be, that doesn’t quite to me sound

like the community-based decisionmaking that will work.

Ms. MCGINTY. Let me be clear, Congressman, I am sorry. At the

end of the day, the selection process will not select the local community or the local plan or who at the local level participates. The

only question is, when we receive, which has been commented on

before, what I think will be many, many more applications than

the ten rivers we imagined, how do we pick our way through all

of those applications to select the ten that we can focus on, and

that is a question that we have posed for public comment, who

would be the best panel or body of people to help us make that decision.

Mr. CRAPO. I think the question I am trying to get at then is

whatever the title is or the name is, we are talking here about community-based decisionmaking.

Ms. MCGINTY. Yes.

Mr. CRAPO. I want to be sure that the people who live in the

community are the ones who choose who is in their community. Is

that going to happen under this initiative?

Ms. MCGINTY. Yes, that would absolutely be the case.

Mr. CRAPO. So we are not going to have a Federal team or a Federal official who says yes, this person is in the community, this person is not.

Ms. MCGINTY. No, we will not define the community, referring

back to the earlier questions.

Mr. CRAPO. Then I assume that to participate with the Federal

Government in this initiative, some river community has to become

qualified to be a river community. Who decides what river community is qualified to be the river community?

Ms. MCGINTY. What we are looking for is a broad spectrum of

people.
38

Mr. CRAPO. But you are looking. That is my point is not what

you are looking for, but who makes that final decision?

The reason I ask is because we are having a dispute in Idaho

right now on another watershed where two groups are competing

as to which one is the community that gets to be involved in the

collaborative decisionmaking process.

I want to know, when that happens, do you or does a Federal official decide under this initiative who is the river community?

Ms. MCGINTY. That may be a very good example of the broad

support that will be looked for as these applications come forward.

If it is the case that there is this significant disagreement in the

community, that would be an application, I would think, that

would have a very high hurdle to overcome.

Mr. CRAPO. But the bottom line is, it would be decided here in

Washington.

Ms. MCGINTY. It would probably be fatal to it. What is decided

here in Washington is only among the applications that we no

doubt will receive, which ones can we focus on first, but the details

of who is a member of the community, what does the community

envision as its future, what tools, what assistance from the Federal

Government does the community want and does the community not

want, that will be purely and wholly in the province of local citizens.

Mr. CRAPO. One last question, and I really should have spent my

whole 5 minutes on this one, and that is, it seems to me that if

we are going to try to facilitate—you and I have had many communications about the problems of managing the Columbia River system, and it has all of the problems, I think, that any river system

could present.

Is this new decisionmaking body or this new effort going to actually have authority to make decisions like Endangered Species Act

decisions, or will that still be decided in the current system that

we have under Federal law?

Ms. MCGINTY. All according to the current system. There is no

new authorities that are presented from this program.

Mr. CRAPO. My time is up. I would like to explore with you why

it would help to add another Federal regime on top of the current

system and not change the current system, but I guess I will have

to do that at another time. Maybe I can meet with you and we can

discuss that.

Ms. MCGINTY. I would be happy to.

Mr. CRAPO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. The gentlelady from the Virgin Islands.

Ms. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your testimony and I do share your enthusiasm for this initiative. I have

three questions.

Ms. McGinty, you said that there were about 31,000 hits on the

American Heritage web page. About how many of them were opposed to the initiative?

Ms. MCGINTY. I would have to respond in terms of exact numbers, but we have received overwhelming statements of support on

this initiative. I mentioned the Conference of Mayors unanimously

voting in favor, and in fact, that resolution was introduced by a

western mayor, Wellington Webb, from Denver, Colorado.
39

We have just received significant amounts of positive interest

and support for the program.

Ms. GREEN. Thank you. Going back to the question that I raised

in my opening statement, I am not sure who would be best to answer this, but is there any requirement that might preclude Salt

River from being designated if we chose to apply? Maybe Secretary

Babbitt.

Ms. MCGINTY. Is there anything that I would be aware of now

that would preclude the application?

Ms. GREEN. Yes.

Ms. MCGINTY. I would be aware of nothing, but I enjoyed very

much your recitation of the history of that river.

Ms. GREEN. Finally, I am at a loss, and maybe you can help me

to understand why and where does the objection to this initiative

come from, because it recognizes and it supports the bond and the

romance that people have always had with their rivers, which has

been memorialized by many of our great poets.

It protects the resource, it is locally driven, it cuts Federal red

tape, it encourages broad public comment, and it revitalizes our

towns and cities, so I don’t know—I am trying to figure out where

the objections come from.

Ms. MCGINTY. Well, we have been a bit surprised ourselves. We

have extended the public comment period to make sure that anyone who has a view gets a chance to comment, but as I reflected

in my testimony, there have been some who have been afraid, for

example, that the United Nations is somehow involved in this program which we have been trying very clearly to dispel any notion

that that is the case.

I don’t know where ideas like that originate, but we certainly

find them troubling and want to be of service to dispel those kinds

of misapprehensions.

Ms. GREEN. Thank you. No further questions.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. Just the order that I have coming in,

next on the Republican side would be Smith, Chenoweth, Duncan,

Cannon, Schaffer, Doolittle; on the Democratic side would be Hinchey, Abercrombie, Romero-Barcelo ́, Kildee, and Faleomavaega. If

anybody wants to argue with that, switch with your neighbor, if

that is the case, and John Peterson.

John, I think you are just in front of John Doolittle, so I know

this is tense information for all of you, but I will get to you, believe

me.

The gentlelady from Washington is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mrs. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It sounds like there is

a lot of consensus, and one thing that I listened to the passion of

Mr. Babbitt about the community efforts, and I share that passion.

I have traveled the State and worked with any different groups in

my region and other parts of the State.

The community successes are so great, but there is a joke in the

communities, and it is about a farmer, but they often apply it to

themselves. There is a knock at the door, and the culmination of

this joke is, we are the Federal Government and we are here to

help you.

It isn’t really a very funny joke, because many of them have so

many overlapping Federal interventions, and they are already suc-
40

ceeding when they can get us with our good intentions out of their

way.

I don’t even question your passion or your good intentions, but

you stated, as did Mr. Miller, who is now gone, all of these success

stories that happened from individual initiatives, State cooperative

efforts, and now, all of a sudden, we have decided we are going to

add another person.

I did want to clarify that to you, that it is the question of adding

another layer. Does that really bring it together or does it cause

more questions? Is the Columbia River Gorge up first? Is the environmental action up first? Is the issue of tributaries up first?

We have so many different layers. Now, you say you are going

to cooperate and help coordinate, and it only will come from our

State, but what we found in the Columbia River Gorge is that

those that were—by the way, the word connected scared the soup

out of me, connected, that they hiked in the Columbia River Gorge.

Very few of the folks that are administering that program really

have much to do with the taking of property that has happened,

as you can’t even use your property in the Columbia River Gorge.

But diverting back to my concern, it is very hard for all these

communities that finally succeed when the Federal Government, no

matter how well intentioned you are with another agency or another passion from your heart, to really believe that if they are already being successful, that they need your passion.

With that, I am going to turn back, Mr. Babbitt, to some budget

questions, because that is my heart. I am very concerned about the

budget.

I have heard you testify about increasing people for environmental programs, increasing budgets, and how there is not enough

money. I also believe that comes from your heart, but I guess my

question is, you are asking for, and I have the budget—are you

going to ask for specific FTEs for the navigator position? If so, how

many? Do you plan to submit a reprogramming request to the Congress for the use of the funds for an unauthorized program?

Could you give me a preliminary on what your budget is going

to look like in the request for this new program? Then would you

tell me, being that you have too much money in other programs,

which ones you are going to reduce the FTEs on in the other programs, because again, you have testified so eloquently on not having enough money and then traveled the Nation saying that you

didn’t have enough money.

So share with me why you have too much money now that you

can start another program.

Mr. BABBITT. Congresswoman Smith, I appreciate your compliments on my eloquence.

Mrs. SMITH. I think I said passion, but eloquence is fine.

Mr. BABBITT. Passion. Let me see if I can translate that into just

a couple of detailed observations.

The first one that I would like to re-emphasize to you is that this

kind of approach is grounded indeed in what is already happening,

and it is a very new way of looking at how communities can

achieve their results, because decisions are not made by the agencies. Decisions are made by the community who in the process of

working on river restoration inevitably turns to the Fish and Wild-
41

life Service, the Park Service, and the Environmental Protection

Agency. There is a profound revolutionary distinction here, because

for the first time, this Administration is saying to communities, you

are in command. You go to those Federal agencies and tell them

what you want. It seems to me that that should be enormously appealing.

Now, what have we learned in places like the Willamette Valley?

Let me tell you what I have learned from those experiences.

When a community which has set out to restore its watershed

begins to look around and say, we need a hydrographic data set

from the geological survey, we would like a watershed analysis, a

hydrologist, actually, from the Bureau of Land Management. We

would like a grant from the Natural Resources Conservation Service. We would like some help from the Corps of Engineers.

It gets pretty confusing, and what we have actually already

found is that it is very helpful to say to those communities, we are

going to put John Jones from the Fish and Wildlife Service at the

other end of the telephone.

Mrs. SMITH. Mr. Babbitt, we are going to have to conclude. I am

understanding what you are saying. I don’t understand why it has

to be done with this action as you have it now.

My question isn’t being answered. I have the spreadsheet on the

expected FTEs needed for this new program. I understand your desire to coordinate, although from my experience, we are already

doing it and very successfully so.

Would you please tell me where you are going to show us that

you are going to shift FTEs, that is the employees—you are hiring

a bunch of new employees, what agencies you are going to shift

them from, or are you going to ask for an appropriation? If so,

would you please put that in writing, because, see, we are supposed

to pay the bills of the country, and we are supposed to authorize

programs, and even though you think this is right, we probably

should debate whether or not this new program is started.

If you would give us the budget numbers for that, that is what

I am really asking for.

Mr. BABBITT. Let me just briefly tell you what I might do and

then refer you to Ms. McGinty.

If push comes to shove, I think what I would probably do is call

up the person from the Fish and Wildlife Service who is answering

the phone in that river valley and say keep doing what you are

doing. You are now the river navigator.

Mrs. SMITH. So you would say the people that were providing a

service before of answering the phone now would become the river

navigator, so we really didn’t need the person answering the

phone?

Mr. BABBITT. Quite to the contrary. We do need the person answering the phone, and that is why they are answering it right

now.

Mrs. SMITH. We are just going to rename them something else

now, retitle them, but how could they spend all their time as a

river navigator when we needed them so desperately for answering

the phone before?

I guess what we need to do is, you describe why we don’t need

the other services and why we need the new program. Again,
42

please, give me in writing where you plan on reducing other services and adding this new one.

Mr. BABBITT. I would be very happy to order Ms. McGinty to provide you those figures.

Mrs. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Babbitt.

Mr. HANSEN. The gentlelady’s time has expired. The gentleman

from New York. Mr. Hinchey.

Mr. HINCHEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It seems to

me that some of the opposition at least to this program seems to

be fairly even-handed.

On the one hand, some people are afraid that their communities

will be designated and their rivers will be designated. Then on the

other hand, they are worried that somebody else may be designated

and thereby get the benefits that they won’t. It is kind of an interesting situation.

The points that you made in your testimony about the voluntary

nature of this project are, of course, ones that need to be emphasized again and again, because I think it is those points that precisely answer some of the criticism or what seems to be the criticism.

I am wondering, in the short period of time since the President

announced the program and now, what kind of indications have

you had of support from communities around the country? What

kind of inquiries have you had for information? Even what attempts have there been to make application for the program up to

this point?

Ms. MCGINTY. We have had extensive statements of support for

the program. I have mentioned the mayors’ resolution, but in addition to that, mayors in different parts of the country are coming together themselves. In the upper Mississippi, there are some 20

mayors who are coming together voluntarily to say we think that

this can be a great economic driver for us if we get this label and

this kind of exposure on this program.

In addition to that, we have heard from a diversity of interests.

Local government, yes, but business concerns, environmental and

recreation concerns, people from all different walks of life have

been interested in this program.

Mr. HINCHEY. Have there also been expressions of fear, even outrage, about some of the implications that are imagined to flow from

a project like this?

Ms. MCGINTY. There have been some, and we have been determined to do our best to be responsive to those concerns. For example, just on Saturday, I traveled to Washington State to visit with

a group called the Western States Coalition, a property rights

group, that I know Congresswoman Chenoweth spoke to the night

before I did.

We are making ourselves available to every group, no matter

what their viewpoint, to share with them every piece of information

we have and to get their ideas on how this program can best be

formulated.

Mr. HINCHEY. And you have addressed this on a number of occasions, but I want to give you an opportunity to do so again, and

that is, with regard to concerns about the regulatory nature of the

program, my understanding is that this is not a regulatory pro-
43

gram at all. This is a program that does not vest in anyone any

new regulatory authority, but merely seeks to coordinate more effectively and more efficiently those activities that are being conducted by the Federal Government often in cooperation with State

and local governments, and to bring the services that are deemed

by virtue of present law necessary for the benefit of the people to

flow to those constituencies more readily and more effectively.

Ms MCGINTY. That is exactly right, and the President is—there

has been concern raised that the public isn’t well enough aware of

this program. The whole point here is to shine a spotlight on resources that are already out there, that the citizens of this country

pay for, but they have little or no idea that they are there to be

of service to them.

We are highlighting it for specifically that reason so that citizens

know about it and have an ability to access it.

Mr. HINCHEY. There is, I think, a great deal of concern and interest and support for this program, especially perhaps in the eastern

part of the country, because as Representative McHale observed, it

is precisely the rivers in the eastern part of the country that have

been the most abused for a longer period of time.

Secretary Babbitt makes the point that there are rivers also in

the western part of the country and the people in that part of the

country are equally concerned about the health and vitality of their

rivers.

I know that there has been a lot of attention paid, say, for example, to the Columbia River basin, and people there are concerned

about it. Perhaps, Mr. Secretary, you would like to speak to the

kinds of activities that the Federal Government has engaged there

in the Columbia River basin and how a program like this might

help to coordinate those activities and improve them.

Mr. BABBITT. Congressman, just a couple of thoughts. I grew up

alongside the Colorado River. That is a river which no longer

reaches tidewater. It is not as if there hasn’t been some development going on in the west.

We are dealing in the California Bay delta with the San Joaquin

River which doesn’t make it to the delta.

I do think that the restoration issues in the west are surprisingly

similar to the issues in the east. I would say as a generalization

that east of the Mississippi we tend to be dealing with industrial

pollution as the No. 1 issue. West of the Mississippi, we tend to be

worrying about water quantity and efficient use and how it is we

balance irrigation, hydropower, and fish runs with maintaining

instream flows or adequate protection of all the other values.

Mr. HINCHEY. I thank you all very much for your testimony and

your candid answers to these questions. Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Mr. HANSEN. The gentleman’s time has expired. The gentlelady

from Idaho, Mrs. Chenoweth, is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Mr. Chairman, I would like to answer Mr.

Hinchey’s question since the Secretary didn’t.

What the Federal Government is planning on doing to the Columbia River is bypassing dams and taking that working river and

no longer allowing us the ability to have low cost hydroelectric

power. You noticed the Secretary didn’t want to answer your question.
44

I do want to say that in the west, we have working rivers because we are a working State. We also have enough rivers in our

roadless and wilderness areas to put four eastern States inside our

wilderness areas, so we have rivers of all kinds.

Mr. HINCHEY. Would the gentlelady yield?

Mrs. CHENOWETH. I will yield on your time, sir.

I do want to say that I have before me an executive order that

was drafted, Ms. McGinty, and so whether we have the consent of

Congress or not, I guess the President is going to go ahead and do

this by executive order.

It states that NEPA and FAQA give him the ability to combine

12 agencies and their resources and all the rules and regulations

that empower these agencies to embark on this new program.

I do not find anywhere in NEPA or FAQA the authorization for

the President to embark on this kind of program. I would like for

either you or Mr. Babbitt to give us a written opinion as to where

the authority lies in these two statutes that he cited.

I also want to refer, Ms. McGinty, to your statement where you

indicated that some people are worried about this being brought on

by the United Nations, and I do want to say that I have not heard

anyone, anyone in this body talking about this project being connected with the U.N. This is not an issue involving the U.N. It is

an issue involving States’ rights and private property rights.

You also indicated there was nothing about aerial

photography——

Ms. MCGINTY. Surveillance.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Well, you are very good at wordsmithing, but

in your Federal Register publication, you do talk about aerial

photography. There are enough photographs of our rivers done by

various agencies over the years that certainly the results of those

photographs and satellite surveillances could certainly be used

without having this in the Federal Register.

People who have been concerned about aerial photography probably have a reason to be concerned if it is in the Federal Register.

I do want to say that you talk about there being no new regulations and no new agencies, but Ms. McGinty, we are sitting here

facing two people who sit on the President’s Cabinet, and I imagine

you sit in on it quite often.

We are talking about three people who say there will be nothing

new, and yet you are proposing to bring 12 agencies to bear on

helping communities become empowered.

With all the rules and regulations behind them to enforce with,

we don’t exactly feel sanguine about this. We don’t believe that you

are really going to empower communities, and while my good colleague, Congressman McHale from Pennsylvania, talked about

President Roosevelt had to deal with the greed of the time when

people misused our resources, yes, he did.

But indeed, this is what is happening as I listen to this testimony. You are proposing to use funds that this Congress has allocated for certain specific purposes, and holding out the carrot of the

dollars to certain communities, you are appealing to the nature of

wanting more Federal dollars in certain communities.
45

I think that would be fine if this particular White House were

as concerned about balancing the budget, making sure that we can

allocate the scarce resources and scarce tax dollars into Medicare

and Social Security, and the needs of humans. This is almost a situation of Marie Antoinette saying if the peasants don’t have bread,

let us give them cake.

The problem is that when we find, and I agree with Mrs. Smith

about the fact that the Secretary, Mr. Babbitt, spoke very eloquently and passionately about floating from the rivers in the east

or the midwest into the west, floating down the McKinsey and into

the Willamette Valley, but sir, with all due respect and I really

mean this for the office that you hold, I suggest you spend time on

the tidal basin, truly, or in the Anacostia River. Truly, I do. This

is the government’s city, and this is where you can set the example.

Let us clean up our own house first and then look to the other

areas that may need to be cleaned up.

We already have the clean water standards that the areas that

you talked about have already apparently responded to to a degree,

because they are restoring without this American Heritage Rivers

Initiative, communities are restoring themselves.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. The time of the gentlelady has expired.

The gentleman from Hawaii, Mr. Abercrombie.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Babbitt, I

can’t remember your entire background. I don’t believe you are necessarily an engineer, but one of the points was made in this past

admonition with respect to States’ rights, property rights, expenditures and balancing the budget.

If I wasn’t mistaken in there, I heard the phrase low cost hydroelectric power. If I am not mistaken, doesn’t a lot of that low cost

hydroelectric power come as a result of Federal expenditures to see

to it that people who are the beneficiaries of that get it at a heck

of a lot lower cost than they would otherwise if they were paying

for it themselves exclusively, locally?

Mr. BABBITT. Congressman, I think that is a fair statement.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. OK. Thank you. In other words, there is a

role for the Federal Government, isn’t there, when our House constitutes the Nation’s house, and those of us who might not be the

immediate beneficiaries of something like low cost hydroelectric

power nonetheless help to pay for it, because we all consider ourselves brothers and sisters in this Nation.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. If the gentleman will yield——

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. No, I cannot yield. You can speak on your

own time, I think is the expression.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. That was——

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, would you direct the member,

please, to allow me to have my own time?

Mr. HANSEN. This is Mr. Abercrombie’s time.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Now——

Mr. BABBITT. Mr. Abercrombie——

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. [continuing] Mr. Babbitt, in case you were not

able to hear all of that, is it not the case that there are instances

in this country in which as a result of the utilization of our natural

resources and a combination of Federal dollars that comes from all

of us, do we not regard each other as brothers and sisters in a
46

house that constitutes the United States of America and are quite

willing to help with Federal dollars, tax dollars, different sections

of the country whether we benefit immediately from it or not, because we see it in the Nation’s interest?

Mr. BABBITT. Congressman, I share the sentiment which you

have expressed.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you very much. Now, with regard to

the local recommendations and the heritage rivers, let us get back

to that. I realize it is not always an easy task to determine which

constitutes the voice of a community or communities. I think Ms.

McGinty responded to that. If I understood her point correctly, if

there is contention at the local level or the regional level with respect to the suitability of a river or a river in a region being suitable, if there is contention about that, if there is discussion, that

would probably make it more difficult for them ultimately then to

be recommended, right?

Mr. BABBITT. Congressman, I think that is correct, yes.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Now, with regard to the recommendations,

this does constitute a competition in some respects. That is a fair

statement also, isn’t it?

Mr. BABBITT. Sure.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Many might call, but not everyone will be

chosen at least initially. It may take a period of time.

Now, in that regard then, isn’t the idea of the navigator and this

is a legislative process after all—you are not fixed on this, right?

We could perhaps modify this if there is commentary and testimony in that direction.

But if the case is that we generally come up with what you are

proposing, isn’t the object of the navigator and the object of the

program to make available to local communities services of the

Federal Government which are already being paid for about which

they may not be necessarily be aware? They may not be fully informed, right?

Mr. BABBITT. That is correct.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Along with regulation also comes services,

does it not, and those things are not necessarily always understood

by everybody or immediately available to them.

Would the duty of the navigator be to work something like with

the base closures? I want to draw a parallel there.

We have a base closure coordinator in my area that has been invaluable in terms of running interference between Federal, local,

State agencies and groups acting in terms of good offices and as an

honest broker.

Would you see the navigator in that kind of a context?

Mr. BABBITT. Someone used the phrase facilitator——

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Excellent, facilitator.

Mr. BABBITT. [continuing] which I thought was equally descriptive.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Maybe that is even a good job description for

the navigator.

Last question, and perhaps you could answer it more in writing

to the chairman.

I am still not fully resolved on the question of the reprogramming of funds. I think the chairman has, over and above the policy
47

question, the chairman has a key point to make, it seems, with respect to the question of reprogramming.

I am very ill at ease with the idea that there are funds that could

be reprogrammed if it is going to come at the expense of that which

we have already authorized and appropriated for.

I will say that Mr. Hansen and Mr. Young, as well as hopefully

with the assistance of the minority, have worked very hard to see

to it that dollars and positions are held to exactly where they

should be, that there is not excess in them.

I think Mr. Hansen prides himself on that, and I think that we

need to have more information as to whether reprogramming is

something that would be in order as opposed to additional funding

if we decided to go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. I appreciate the gentleman’s comments,

and hope to followup on your last question.

Mrs. SMITH. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HANSEN. The gentleman from Utah, Mr. Cannon, is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. CANNON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It has been a long hearing, but there are a couple of things that I would actually like to

focus on just for a moment.

From the background documents that you were so kind to provide, Ms. McGinty, to the Committee, it is clear that you expect

many applications for these river projects. Therefore, one of the

tasks you have is setting up criteria for how those would be selected.

One of the documents you provided refers to the selection process

and says the selection committee will recommend more American

Heritage Rivers than can actually be designated, giving someone

else [the President?] a further choice. This could ensure that designated American Heritage Rivers, and then you have three starred

items, or your staff developed three items, and those were either

to serve political purposes are located where agencies can staff

them are diverse [river, landscape, community, geography, et

cetera].

Now, politics of course, a political purpose is broadly stated. Having mayors involved, of course, is certainly important, but would

you also see this as being a forum of where you would consider how

the President appears to segments of the population as being important politically as a consideration?

Ms. MCGINTY. Well, that is not our intention, and again, this effort has been from in every——

Mr. CANNON. Pardon me. The question is, would that be a consideration that would be reasonable in the White House? How does

the selection of this river as opposed to that river affect the President?

Ms. MCGINTY. That would not be a consideration that would influence our view as to which river should or should not be designated an American Heritage river.

Mr. CANNON. You would not consider the implications of Presidential politics in choosing a river?

Ms. MCGINTY. These applications are being derived from the bottom up.
48

Mr. CANNON. Right, but they are going to come and you will be

able to choose them, and you are telling me that you wouldn’t consider the implications of a choice of a river in Presidential politics,

even though politics is clearly a consideration according to your

staff.

Ms. MCGINTY. We will consider whether there is a broad basis

of support——

Mr. CANNON. I don’t want the hierarchy. I only want to know,

will you consider the implications of a choice——

Ms. MCGINTY. We have no intention of making this decision on

the basis of politics, and I personally have spent, I think, more

time with Republican mayors——

Mr. CANNON. If I may, the question is not——

Ms. MCGINTY. [continuing] on this very——

Mr. CANNON. [continuing] a question of uniqueness. Are you telling this Committee that you will not consider Presidential politics

in a choice of rivers when you have a choice between two that are

very close?

Ms. MCGINTY. I will answer again, I have no intention of considering politics in making the decision. This is a program that will

recognize——

Mr. CANNON. Wait a minute. I am not suggesting that politics is

not an appropriate consideration. It clearly is, and that is how we

live in America.

Clearly, your staff has already considered politics an appropriate

consideration. I am only trying to figure out whether you are saying what levels and what kind of consideration you are going to

give to this.

Are you telling this Committee that you will not consider Presidential politics in the process of picking one river as opposed to another where they may be close?

Ms. MCGINTY. Our eloquent Secretary helps me with a single

word answer. Yes, that is what I am telling you, we will not consider Presidential politics.

Mr. CANNON. And yes means no, you will not?

Ms. MCGINTY. Exactly right.

Mr. CANNON. Does that mean you will also not consider congressional politics, how the choice of a river will affect a congressional

candidate?

Ms. MCGINTY. We will consider the views of the elected representatives of the people in question, but I want to——

Mr. CANNON. Please. I have a short time, and I want to cut to

the chase here.

The President just a week or so ago talked about how he can advance the interests of his presidency by gaining control of this

House.

Are you telling me that you will not consider in the process of

choosing between river designations the difference between the effect on congressional races?

Ms. MCGINTY. Yes, I am telling you I will not.

Mr. CANNON. Well, that absolutely strains credibility. You also

told the Governor and the delegation of Utah that you had no

plans, no imminent plans, to designate 1,700,000 acres in southern
49

Utah, and that was clearly political and clearly intended to enhance the position of the President.

Let me just close by saying that Mr. Glickman has pointed out

that this facilitator, which I think is a better term, will have a

tendency to be able to focus the resources that already exist and

enlist the agencies, the Forest Service, the Conservation Service,

the Extension Service, on these kinds of programs. I think that you

used the term using a spotlight or highlighting these kinds of

things.

What you do when you do that is distort the process. You can’t

take resources unless we have overfunded you, Mr. Glickman, out

of the system and put them into this kind of a program without

changing the nature and usage of those resources. You can’t spotlight without distorting.

I was pleased as I finished my opening statement my colleague

from Washington leaned over and said, do you have an opinion on

this matter, Mr. Cannon? The fact is, I have opinions.

I was pleased that the Secretary made his position clear when

he said that the Congress was taking a wrecking ball to the environmental laws of this country. Let me say, I believe in process,

and I believe in the rule of law, and I believe that if we do that,

we will be fine in America, whether we are Democrat or Republican.

On the other hand, the bald statement that Presidential politics

will not be considered in this reallocation of resources around

America I don’t think is credible, and therefore, I think you should

reconsider. Thank you.

Mr. GLICKMAN. May I just make one quick comment?

Mr. HANSEN. Mr. Secretary, go ahead.

Mr. GLICKMAN. Thank you. I think it is important to recognize

again from USDA’s role, we are out there spending a lot of taxpayer resources on important things, and I want to go back.

We have a model—we have a couple models. One is called our

RC&D model; it is resource, conservation, and development model

where we help and facilitate community involvement in conservation projects. That has been going on for a very long time.

The other model is the empowerment zone enterprise community

model, where communities come together, come up with a program,

use existing resources.

If you go to these empowerment zones, enterprise communities,

it is extraordinary what they have done themselves with already

appropriated assets out there deciding for themselves how best to

allocate them, and using our help, to facilitate working through bureaucratic roadblocks, and it works very well.

That is basically what we are talking about here.

Mr. CANNON. May I respond to that, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. HANSEN. Yes.

Mr. CANNON. The Secretary has said he cannot understand why

conservatives and Republicans are opposed to this kind of grass

roots activity.

We are not. We believe in grassroots activity. I think that Mr.

Crapo went to great lengths to describe how a project like this on

the grass roots is working in Idaho.
50

What we are concerned about is the distortion of the political

system through diverting resources one way or another for

facilitators or choosing parts of the Nation as opposed to other

parts in a very broad program that has virtually no controls.

That is the problem. We believe in grass roots, and we also believe that if programs are so bureaucratic they need a facilitator or

a navigator to get through them, that maybe those programs ought

to be eliminated and give the money back to people at the grassroots level so they can choose how they wish to use those resources.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. I will yield in 1 minute, Chris.

This has been an interesting debate, and probably a very intriguing and interesting idea, but we don’t know the details, and frankly, I think it comes down to process.

I am not sure how the process works, and you will have to excuse

us for being just a little suspicious, but some of us, when you talk

about all of the people that you have talked to, we didn’t see that

happen.

As Mr. Cannon brought up about the monument, we were specifically excluded, especially when we are starting to subpoena the

records on this and find out that it was done strictly for political

reasons, and we find out that we extinguish protection, and we

have 1,700,000 acres of rolling sagebrush surrounded by beautiful

parks. It makes a lot of us wonder.

I honestly think when you just said a minute ago, Kathleen

McGinty, that you would consider the views of the representative,

a few months ago, we were not only not considered, we were specifically excluded. Therefore, possibly you can’t blame us for being

a wee bit suspicious.

We would hope that we see a little more openness from the Administration this time. I don’t think we intend to dismiss this proposal out of hand, but we would like to put out the hand of fellowship and work with you, if we could. If we can’t, then we will go

to the mat as we have done in the past, and you know, we have

our tricks in the bag just like you folks do, too, and please don’t

take it personally. I have great respect for all three of you, but I

would hope that we could work together and we can work something out. If we can’t, of course, we will try to put moratoriums and

we will try to block you with money and we will try to block you

with legislation, but please, I would hope that we could somehow

remove the suspicion, but right now, I don’t think there is a good

feeling toward some of our members as has been illustrated today

predicated on past performance.

I have used my entire minute almost, and thank you for listening

to me.

The gentleman from American Samoa. Now, do you think Mr.

Kildee is next or do you want to argue about this?

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. I am not going to argue, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HANSEN. I will recognize you for 5 minutes.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HANSEN. The ranking member of the Subcommittee of Lands

and National Parks.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is not very

often that this Committee has the privilege of having the presence

of two distinguished members of the President’s cabinet, Secretary
51

Babbitt, and certainly, our former colleague, Secretary Glickman. I

am very, very happy to have them both here with us this morning,

and certainly, Ms. McGinty also, representing the Council on Environmental Quality.

Mr. Chairman, I think it was about a month ago that I saw a

full-page article, believe it or not, in the Denver Post outlining the

recent development or establishment of a 9,000 acre national park

in my district. I want to personally commend Secretary Babbitt for

taking the time to go to American Samoa to dedicate this national

park. His presence at this event meant a lot to the Samoan people.

This national park includes a very rare rainforest in our nation.

It has about 55 species of rare birds. It also contains over 200

plants of medicinal value that are now being studied at the National Institute of Health for cancer research.

Secretary Babbitt, I can’t thank you enough for coming to our little island territory. The coral formations that we have in this island territory are among the rarest in the world. These coral formations are about as big as this chamber, this room. I want you

to know that on behalf of the people of American Samoa, we are

very appreciative of your work and your being with us.

I need clarification Ms. McGinty, based on information provided

by you, Secretary Glickman, and Secretary Babbitt, would you say

that as far as the Administration is concerned, the Administration

has not exceeded its authority in any statutory sense, and that you

are acting strictly within the confines of current law. Am I correct

on that?

Ms. MCGINTY. Absolutely, and we feel not only do we have the

authority but the absolute responsibility and obligation to manage

the programs that this Congress has directed us to manage in the

most efficient, effective, and responsible way possible.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Maybe I wasn’t very clear. We keep throwing around ten rivers, and I am sure of the fact that we have hundreds of rivers in our Nation.

Can you explain a little more specifically. You have not selected

the ten rivers. You are in the process of receiving applications from

all sectors of our country. Is ten the magic number or is this just

the beginning, at least for you to consider seriously, in terms of the

President’s initiative on this?

Ms. MCGINTY. It is just the beginning to see if it works and to

take some steps forward and see how that all plays out.

We have not yet begun to receive applications because we have

been going the extra mile to make sure citizens are involved in the

design of the program, even down to the application form and what

it should look like. We are receiving extensive comment on that,

and so we won’t actually even begin to receive applications until

sometime in September.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Maybe this is probably the bottom line of

the concern, not only, I am sure, for our colleagues on the other

side of the aisle, but on this side as well: cost factor potentials.

You are talking about the idea, and I am sure that most Americans support the idea that we need to clean up our rivers. We are

talking about rivers that are connected to chemical plants, rivers

that are connected to nuclear power plants, sawmills, the kind of

situation where, obviously, environmental issues are very, very se-
52

rious, and I am making a similar analogy to the fact that we need

to also clean up America’s nuclear waste.

You are talking about a program that could potentially cost hundreds of billions of dollars. I want to ask our friends, has there

been any cost estimate taken by the Administration on the potential cost, not just for cleaning up ten rivers, but for other rivers

that are just as important. Rivers, not just to the eastern side of

our country, but all over the country? Do you see this as a foreseeable problem? I see that we are kicking around $2,000,000, but I am sure that

this is just the tip of the iceberg. Are you looking seriously at the

cost of this program to the American taxpayer?

Ms. MCGINTY. Not through this program and that is—I appreciate the question because it enables us, I think, to address the

question that has been asked about reprogramming and new programs.

This is only about the better execution of current programs. We

don’t envision new funds of any kind or new programs or new initiatives of any kind. This is just reinventing the delivery service of

current programs.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. So basically, somewhere down the line, the

Administration, if it feels that there will be a necessity for asking

for funds, then it will at that appropriate time come and ask the

Congress for further legislation that will not only enhance the initiative but clarify even more the cost factors?

Ms. MCGINTY. Yes, but again this initiative only seeks to coordinate current authorities and appropriations. There is no intention

to buildup a new initiative or a wholly new program here and seek

new moneys. There is no intention to do that at all.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HANSEN. The gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Schaffer.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. McGinty, you

mentioned, and I am quoting that this is a historic opportunity to

coordinate—I guess this is where the quote ends, a historic opportunity to coordinate the services and efforts of several agencies and

so on.

I would like to ask you what makes it impossible for this kind

of coordination to occur today?

Ms. MCGINTY. It does occur today, and in every instance, it is a

different set of agencies that necessarily need to be brought together, et cetera, but what we have found is that there are communities across the country specifically trying to organize themselves

around rivers and specifically asking in that instance, we would

like to help more easily access the Federal resources that we pay

for.

Mr. SCHAFFER. But what is preventing that to occur to make it

more easily accessible today?

Ms. MCGINTY. Well, this is evidence that it is happening and we

are furthering it along. That is the purpose of——

Mr. SCHAFFER. When you mentioned the word historic, what was

it you were referring to?

Ms. MCGINTY. I could refer back, I guess, to the actual quote. I

said this is a historic opportunity to support efforts of our communities to revitalize their riverfronts.
53

Mr. SCHAFFER. Secretary Babbitt, as I recall, you were present

when the President was in Nevada and signed the executive order

on the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Mr. BABBITT. Yes, in Arizona.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Arizona, I am sorry, I thought it was Nevada.

Since that time, the entire Utah delegation has gone on record

as opposing that particular measure. The Utah State legislature

has, the Governor has. Virtually every elected official representing

that State has gone on record in an official capacity opposing it.

My question to you is, are you supporting or promoting any effort

to repeal that designation in Utah?

Mr. BABBITT. Absolutely not. I support the President’s action.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Let me move up to Idaho for a moment. The grizzly bear reintroduction in that area is opposed by the Governor, opposed by the Idaho legislature, opposed by the Idaho delegation.

Are you supporting any effort to repeal the grizzly bear reintroduction in Idaho?

Mr. BABBITT. I am supporting, Congressman, an ongoing effort,

I think of considerable promise, to structure a local advisory committee for the first time under the Endangered Species Act which

is going to pioneer an entirely new way of working these reintroduction issues. Now——

Mr. SCHAFFER. I don’t want to spend too much time as far as the

details of the program. I am just asking whether there is any effort

that you are supporting to repeal the initiative.

Mr. BABBITT. Absolutely not.

Mr. SCHAFFER. This is for Secretary Glickman, I suppose. The

biosphere program was one that was defended and explained in

front of the Resources Committee recently, and one of the executives and directors in your agency was confronted with the question

of the Kentucky State legislature has in fact opposed that initiative, and I am curious as to whether you or your department is

supporting the repeal of the biosphere initiatives in Kentucky.

Mr. GLICKMAN. I do not believe we have been actively involved

in that issue. I will check on that for you. Not in Kentucky.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Let me ask Ms. McGinty a related question. Let

us suppose that a city within a State secures the American Heritage designation under this Act, and then a State legislature

through a resolution or the Governor or the delegation from that

State requests that the designation be repealed. Will that program

be repealed, that designation be repealed?

Ms. MCGINTY. Well, we certainly would take that extremely seriously, and I would think that that could prove fatal to the initiative, yes.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Do you understand how many of us from western

States may not take great comfort from that assurance here today,

given the explanations you just heard on other programs that have

been initiated in other States where the official opinion stated by

elected officials, Governors, State delegations, has gone ignored?

Ms. MCGINTY. I respect your views, certainly, but the whole

point here is to be responsive actually to other principles this Congress has laid out in terms of locally——
54

Mr. SCHAFFER. I am trying to beat this light here. On May 19,

you submitted to the Federal Register the details of the plan and

gave 21 days for public comment.

Now, the Administrative Procedures Act suggests 60 to 90 days.

Why was 21 days suggested and why May 19?

Ms. MCGINTY. That was on the heels of an intensive 4-month

process that involved public meetings in every region of the country

with hundreds of people participating; 31,000 people accessing and

using the home page that was set up for this; a hotline set up.

It was at the heels of a much longer public process, and again,

it has been extended.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Let me ask, there are many of us who are concerned about private property. In fact, in Colorado and many western States, water rights are allocated as a property right within

our State constitutions.

Let me ask, if the program is truly voluntary as you say and

nonregulatory, would the Administration be willing to write into

the program a mandatory and explicit opt-in provision whereby private landowners along a designated heritage river or holders of

water rights on a river in question could only be included if they

gave their written permission to be included?

Ms. MCGINTY. Well, we are in the middle of receiving broad public comment, and that is something we certainly will consider and

give top priority to as well.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Do you have any plans to include that at the moment?

Ms. MCGINTY. I just don’t want to prejudge the ability of the

public to comment at this point. I think it would be inappropriate

to prejudge the conclusion of a public comment process.

Mr. SCHAFFER. My time has run out apparently, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Kildee.

Mr. KILDEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, both Mr.

Secretaries and the rest of the panel, coming from a Great Lakes

State, Michigan, where Dan, you studied, I understand better than

many the importance of rivers, lakes, and streams to our society.

In 1992, I wrote the law that protected 1,000 miles of rivers

throughout the State of Michigan under a different Act, the Wild

and Scenic Rivers Act, and at that time, my bill was really opposed

by a great number of people. I can recall going to hearings in the

Upper Peninsula. There were signs out, ‘‘kill the Kildee bill,’’ but

what has happened since then is that my legislation is being

lauded by local governments. I get thanks for what I did back then.

Local citizens are lauding it. I think sometimes there is a certain

period of the unknown, and I think that is why we have hearings

like this.

Really, in 1992, I was kind of a bum up there, and now, I am

kind of a hero for helping to help preserve those rivers which do

refresh and refurbish the Great Lakes every day as they pour into

them.

I have been very interested in this bill. I know that Mayor Dennis Archer, who you know very well from the city of Detroit, is

thinking of having Detroit apply for one of the rivers to be des-
55

ignated as such. There would really be an example of the mixed

use which I know you are concerned about.

In some areas, rivers such as the Saba River should be used for

only certain things, not for the commercial ships that come in from

Germany or Sweden as we see on the Detroit River. In the Detroit

River, you can see a Swedish ship coming down, and a German

ship coming down through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence

Seaway. You can find recreational use on that river, you can find

fishing on the river, even speedboat racing on the river, but multiple use, and the city of Detroit is interested in using and upgrading that great waterway, the Detroit River, which is the boundary

between the United States and Canada at that point. To really upgrade its economy with mixed uses. These mixed uses certainly

would fit well into the Heritage bill, would they not?

Ms. MCGINTY. In fact, the mayor has spoken to me about his interest in this, and in his mind, just to pick up what Secretary

Glickman has said, with the wonderful experience that Detroit has

had with the empowerment zone, General Motors coming back into

Renaissance Center, the Ren Cen, he sees this as a very logical extension of that progress.

Mr. KILDEE. Exactly right. The new General Motors building is

right in that renaissance zone. I just drove by it yesterday as I was

coming back from Michigan, and although it is not part of my district, some wonderful things are happening in the enterprise zone

down there.

This would be a great addition to Detroit. I would certainly hope

that it would be a river that would be considered, but I think that

those who think that this going to take a river and negate something in the economy are wrong. The mayor of Detroit recognized

this as something that would be very positive to the economy, this

multiple, mixed use, which that river certainly lends itself to. I certainly would hope that he does apply, and that consideration will

be given to Detroit, because Detroit is making an enormous comeback, and that would be a great thing.

Let me ask a question of Mr. Wayland from the EPA. Can you

cite an example of watershed projects that have achieved environmental results and enjoyed broad community support, such as industry, local government, farmers, ranchers? Can you give us some

examples of some watershed projects that have that support?

Mr. WAYLAND. I would be delighted, Congressman, and there are

so many to choose from that it is difficult to know where to go, Secretary Babbitt earlier spoke about Henry’s Fork, which meets all

the criteria you specified.

I think we are very proud of our involvement in the Clear Creek

watershed above Denver. It is a municipal water supply source for

the city of Denver affected by many abandoned hard rock mining

operations. It had lost its ability to support aquatic life. It is a recreational river which presented some hazard to those who were

looking to shoot its rapids.

The local governments, the State of Colorado, EPA, other Federal

agencies, Coors Brewing Company, many private sector interests

have been working for over 3 years collaboratively to identify an

action plan to undertake the cleanup and protection of that river.
56

It is a very inspiring story and one that we are very pleased to

be associated with. We have a facilitator. She is a Superfund remedial project officer. Holly Flinio is the EPA person who works with

that community and our resources have helped to fund a local

facilitator, Carl Norbeck, who is on the ground. I visited this watershed many times, and I have seen tremendous progress as we look

at people pulling together, and they have enlarged their circle of

interest as they have seen progress build in steady and slow stages

from addressing the most serious problems of ecological contamination to other opportunities that they have a shared vision for.

Mr. KILDEE. Thank you. Before I finish, I would like to commend

Secretary Babbitt for not only your interest in the environment,

but I will take this time to commend you for your interest in the

rights of Native Americans, including your latest statement on the

Interior appropriations bill. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

Mr. HANSEN. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Peterson.

Mr. PETERSON. Thank you very much for coming before us. I consider it a real pleasure as a freshman Member of Congress to have

a chance to visit with two Cabinet people and a top advisor to the

President simultaneously, but time will not allow me to ask you

the questions I would like to.

I would like to share a couple thoughts with you first. As a freshman Member of Congress, I guess I am a little surprised at your

sensitivity to being questioned so hard about this program, and

showing some annoyance that, ‘‘How dare they question this grassroots program?’’

I come from rural northwestern Pennsylvania, the largest rural

district east of the Mississippi. It is mostly timber and mostly

rural. Three beautiful rivers of Pennsylvania flow through my district; so I represent rural America at its best.

When I look at what has happened in rural Pennsylvania and in

the rural west, I would like to share with you, and all of you are

veterans of public policy. You have been around the mill. I guess

that was why I was surprised at your sensitivity to being questioned so severely, because we live by perception.

The perception in rural America, and I don’t mean this in any

personal way, because you are nice people, but people fear Katie

McGinty in rural America. People fear Mr. Babbitt. Because of the

first 4 years of this Administration, rural America is struggling,

and I think the issue that bothers me is the bigger issue. The rural

economy is far more fragile.

We just heard from Mr. Kildee that Detroit loves these ideas and

they are ready to embrace them, but that is a city and urban area.

The rural economy is so narrow, when you lose a portion of it,

you don’t recover the same as an urban-suburban area does. Rural

America is struggling and kind of hanging on by its fingernails in

many parts of this country and in parts of my district, and that is

why there is sensitivety from rural legislators that I think you

need to think seriously about.

We are struggling. The worst policy is a policy that takes away

a person’s job and the right to earn a living and feed their family.

When economies go down, the question of the national monument

had big impacts. Your enforcement of the Endangered Species Act,

some of your property rights policies or insensitivities there, timber
57

issues, recreational policies. All of those, whether we have hydro

power in the future or not, those are all questions that are fearful

in the hearts of rural people.

I guess I would like to share with you why there are a lot of

questions from rural legislators; people in rural America who are

scared of their economic future. What you have to deal with,

whether this is the most perfect program in the world, is history,

and history has been that you have not been as sensitive to how

things have impacted the rural economy as you should have been.

At least that is how people in the fifth district feel.

Mr. GLICKMAN. May I comment, if possible? Mr. Peterson, I understand it. I live with it. I am Secretary of the rural department.

I view myself as an advocate for people who live in underserved

areas that often don’t benefit by population and by industrial development and who often lose access because of banks closing or highways not as good or air service is not there or electric rates are

higher.

This is a big part of what I do, and we spend billions of dollars

a year on water systems, sewer systems, rural development

projects generally.

I guess what I am saying is that rural America needs a spark

to expand, to develop, to create this economic growth that we have

often seen in areas of urban America, and we have to look at different options rather than just all of the traditional options.

One of the great things we have is our advocates up here on Capitol Hill for rural America. It has made a massive difference, but

I go back to this idea.

I went down to the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas, one of the

poorest areas of the country, heavily rural, heavily fresh fruit and

vegetable, in bad shape economically, one of the highest unemployment rates in the United States. They sat down and they said we

got to jump-start rural America. We are going to die unless we do

something different, so they became an empowerment zone.

This is this concept where they got together collaboratively and

they decided what they needed to do to marshall their resources.

Through that, they had been able to do a lot of things on economic

development and new jobs, enhancing their educational opportunities, and in fact, attracting industry from urban America as well.

I want you to know that from my perspective, and I think Secretary Babbitt and Katie McGinty agree, we view this as a way to

facilitate rural America, not hurt it, but help it.

Mr. PETERSON. I guess I could comment that the Agriculture Department was not included in that fear, and this isn’t personal, but

I am serious about the Department of the Interior and some of

your policies.

Rural America is frightened by them, because in the big picture,

they don’t feel that you feel their pain and the fragility of the rural

economy.

Rural America is hurting, and I think that is why you have problems with this proposal, although it may be perfect, is history.

They don’t think you have been sensitive enough to how these proposals in the last 4 years have affected people, not the Agriculture

Department, but the Department of the Interior.

Do you have any comment to that, Mr. Babbitt?
58

Mr. BABBITT. Congressman, I appreciate the intensity of your

concern and your remarks. I indeed believe that there is a substantial amount of real fact and perception out there that needs to be

dealt with, and I guess what I would say is that I think the way

to do that is to try to step away from the broad generalizations and

move toward specifics out on the landscape. I would only say to you

without prolonging this unnecessarily that we have tried very hard

to be site-specific, to get down on the ground, to engage and to kind

of step away from a rhetorical debate which I think simply isolates

us all from each other. I appreciate very much the context and the

insights that you offer. I think they are fair, and I think it is our

obligation to be responsive.

Mr. PETERSON. Ms. McGinty, do you have anything to say?

Ms. MCGINTY. Just a second, to recognize and just to offer at any

time that we can be personally and immediately available to constituents of yours who have concerns. That is our obligation and responsibility, and we will do it immediately.

Mr. PETERSON. In conclusion, I would just like to say that I think

sometimes what is looked at, we get into a political debate and we

shouldn’t because rural America is rural America. Whether it is

Republican or Democrat doesn’t really matter, but rural America is

in trouble economically.

I don’t think that many people will argue with that, and I think

we need to look in the multitude of programs and changes that are

happening simultaneously. A number of them have impacted rural

America, and not positively, and that is the concern we have, and

I will be critical of Congress.

I don’t think this Congress is as sensitive as I would like it to

be to rural issues. I think as I am here a while, people will realize

that I will be outspoken about rural. I was in Pennsylvania State

government and I will be here, because it is where I come from and

it is who I represent.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. Do any of the members have any further questions for this panel?

We will go back over to this side. The gentleman is recognized

for 5 minutes.

Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. I have no further questions, and I certainly

would like to associate myself with the gentleman from Michigan’s

earlier statement in thanking Secretary Babbitt for his sensitivity

and support of Native American issues, which is part of this Committee’s jurisdiction.

We have a saying where I come from when the chiefs meet in

council. After sitting cross-legged for four or more hours, one of the

chiefs will complain that the mat is hot, and so I think with that

statement, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank our two distinguished

members of the President’s Cabinet, Ms. McGinty, our friends from

EPA and the Department of the Army for being here. The mat is

hot, and I think it is time to go home.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. I recognize the gentlelady from Idaho

for 5 minutes.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to followup

on the President’s executive order where he cites NEPA and I will

direct this question to Mr. Babbitt.
59

Since the President has cited NEPA as the tool for his authority

to engage in this program, has the White House planned or have

they completed an environmental impact statement which definitely is clearly required in NEPA for any major Federal action as

has been interpreted by numerous Supreme Court decisions?

Mr. BABBITT. Congresswoman, it is not—I am a recovering lawyer. I am now in a different line of work, but it is not at all clear

to me that this is the kind of situation where an environmental impact statement is desirable or required, but I obviously defer to the

lawyers. The reason, I think, is it is really important to see this

as an enhancement of a whole series of ongoing issues.

I told Congresswoman Smith, for example, that out in Oregon, I

could effectively turn to Katie McGinty and say, there is already

a facilitator out there; we will give them a new title.

This isn’t so much a new program as it is the President of the

United States exercising his power to say to 13 Federal agencies,

I see some good things out there, and I would like to put the

weight of my office on behalf of all Americans behind what you are

doing, and I would like to showcase successful efforts. I would like

to admonish agencies to learn from those efforts, to step up their

efforts, and to be certain that they are facilitating.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. I would be interested in another legal analysis

based on whether this constitutes a major Federal action as defined.

Mr. BABBITT. I will happily direct Ms. McGinty to respond to

that.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. And your budget, right? And whether this constitutes a major Federal action, and based on previous Supreme

Court decisions with regard to that triggering the need for an environmental impact statement.

Ms. MCGINTY. Would you like that comment now? This program

derives from the National Environmental Policy Act, and in fact, it

is an example of what the National Environmental Policy Act requires.

Every agency in every policy, every program, every action they

undertake is directed by the National Environmental Policy Act to

achieve an integration and coherence among environmental, economic, and social considerations.

That has not been, as some of your constituents, I think, would

probably tell you, very effectively exercised in the past. Yes, we

have had some environmental decisionmaking. Has it effectively incorporated economic and social considerations? Not always.

This program is about saying you have got to achieve that integration that NEPA directs you to achieve.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. I think that there is a term that I have heard

the Secretary use. It is called cumulative impact, and this coming

together of 12 or 13 different agencies for a new single purpose, I

believe, would constitute a major Federal action, and that is my

concern. That is how I am framing the question.

I do understand your answer, but I have a concern along this

line.

I have a couple of questions I would like to ask you also, if you

don’t mind. On April 16, 1997, a memo from CEQ about this pro-
60

gram lists the AmeriCorps as one Federal agency that was helping

draft the Heritage Rivers budget proposal.

AmeriCorps is largely an agency that deals with social issues,

such as poverty and education. Does this indicate that the rivers

program will go beyond the environment and engage in social action issues like poverty and hunger?

Ms. MCGINTY. Precisely. Integrating social, historical, cultural,

and economic opportunities into environmental issues to achieve

that integration, yes.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. And what organizations representing private

property owners, if any, did the Administration consult with before

the President announced this program?

Ms. MCGINTY. Well, we have consulted with many organizations

who have private property rights concerns. I personally have had

the representatives of the property rights groups who visited Washington in June in my office.

On Saturday, as I mentioned, the Western States Coalition to

whom you spoke on Friday night, I also visited and spoke with

them on Saturday. We have visited with the American Farm Bureau. They have been part of this. We have accepted every invitation they have sent to us.

Any organization that has raised a concern, we have responded

to it immediately.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. I won’t go on, but just one simple statement.

Most of those people met with you after this was published on May

19, so I think the course was already set. Thank you very much.

Mr. HANSEN. The gentleman from Colorado is recognized for 5

minutes.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This question that you

answered about social and historical and environmental considerations being given great weight with respect to how we manage rivers is of great concern to people in the west, I can assure you.

Again, our Constitution, which is the primary definitive document as to how we allocate and distribute water rights in our State

and other States like it places great weight on the economic aspect

of water allocation and appropriation.

Water rights in Colorado and most western States is a property

right, plain and simple.

I guess my question is, do you believe that it is possible that this

initiative could change the allocation or the distribution of water

rights within a State?

Ms. MCGINTY. No.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Very good. Many people are concerned again

along the lines of the property rights issues that you had described.

They are concerned about the erosion of these rights, and they are

concerned about their tax dollars going to hire Federal bureaucrats

which in fact lobby against them before some county commission or

water board or water court and so on.

I would like to ask, in order to allay those concerns and in fact

reaffirm the statements that you made today that this has no impact on property rights, would the Administration be willing to incorporate a provision prohibiting these river navigators and all

other Federal employees involved in this program from intervening
61

in local zoning and land management decisions involving private

property?

Ms. MCGINTY. We will reiterate and direct in the strongest possible terms, and in fact the terms that we will adopt are President

Reagan’s terms admonishing the agencies about the sanctity of private property rights. Yes.

Mr. SCHAFFER. So having said that, that sounds pretty strenuous, the way you state that, so is there anything that you can see

that would prevent you from prohibiting river navigators and all

other Federal employees involved in this program from intervening

in local zoning and land management decisions involving private

property?

Ms. MCGINTY. The river navigator, facilitator, or whatever we

wind up ultimately calling this person will do only those things

that the local community call on them, ask, request of them to do.

Mr. SCHAFFER. What prevents you from making a commitment

to this Committee today that these river navigators and other Federal employees associated with this program will be prohibited

from being involved in local zoning and land management decisions?

Ms. MCGINTY. I am just trying to be very clear that there is no

part of this program which is about encouraging or fomenting or

setting up a situation——

Mr. SCHAFFER. Having said that, is there anything that prevents

you from making a commitment to this Committee today that you

will prohibit these river navigators and other Federal employees

associated with this program from intervening in local zoning and

land management decisions?

Ms. MCGINTY. I just believe that I would need to understand the

situation that you are pointing to and the problem that occasions

your question more, and I would be happy to visit with you about

it before——

Mr. SCHAFFER. Let me say that your reluctance to essentially

promise this Committee that what you had said earlier about the

sanctity of property rights is very troubling. I went through a

whole litany of examples, and it doesn’t stop with the ones that I

ticked off in this Committee.

Time after time after time, this Administration has ignored the

stated and official policy positions taken by Governors, State legislatures, delegation members. Again, you have stated most emphatically that this will have no impact on private property.

All I want to know is if you can promise this Committee that

these new Federal bureaucrats associated with this program, who

you say will have no impact on local zoning, no impact on land

management decisions, will be prohibited, flat out prohibited from

participating in a county commission meeting or where zoning is

concerned.

Now, there is nothing inconsistent with that request, and what

you have stated on the record here today, yet you are still not willing to make that commitment formally to this Committee. I just

want to know what prohibits you or anybody here from making the

commitment that essentially the statements that you have made

are something that warrant backing them up in the proposal and

making the commitment to the Committee.
62

Mr. BABBITT. Congressman, let me, if I may, give you an example

that occurs to me.

It may well be possible out there somewhere that a Department

of Agriculture official will be involved in a facilitator role. The way

you phrase this, you would be asking the Department of Agriculture to refrain from enrolling private property in the conservation reserve program.

Now, that is in fact a decision that relates to the management

of private property.

Mr. SCHAFFER. No.

Mr. BABBITT. I would suggest——

Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Secretary, I asked it related to this program.

This is a new program that you have proposed.

Mr. BABBITT. Congressman, the whole point is that we have

spent the last 3 hours describing how the purpose of what we are

doing is to facilitate and put together existing programs of which

the Conservation Reserve Program is one.

Mr. SCHAFFER. But with respect to this program and local zoning

and local management decisions involving property rights, your

CRP agents, your other agents in the Federal Government can

make all the testimony they want under current law.

I am narrowing this discussion to the issue that is before us

today and being discussed today, not CRP, not——

Mr. BABBITT. But this program, Congressman, don’t you see,

talks about facilitating a whole series of existing programs, many

of which provide enormous specific benefits to private property

owners and it is your——

Mr. SCHAFFER. So the local zoning and property rights issues and

land management issues are then a part of this. This is maybe—

does this explain the reluctance to make the commitment to the

Committee?

Mr. BABBITT. If it is your desire to prohibit the use of the Conservation Reserve Program of all of the various NRCS programs,

of the grants that are made to private property owners by the Fish

and Wildlife Service, if it is your intention to prohibit private property owners from receiving the benefits of those programs, your

question appears to be to be designed to do that.

I can’t understand why it is that you would choose to do that.

Mr. SCHAFFER. That is an interesting strategy you are trying to

employ here, but it is not going to work and I will tell you why.

It is because the programs that you mentioned, CRP and others,

are specifically authorized in statute. This one is not.

Ms. MCGINTY. This is only going to coordinate programs, each

one of which is authorized and appropriated by this Congress. That

is specifically why there is no request for additional employees.

There is no request for additional moneys or reprogramming of

moneys. This is about efficiently and effectively doing our jobs

faithfully to execute the law.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Chairman, I realize that I have tested the patience of the clock here in limiting my time and I am out of it, but

I would merely say that for those who had some question as to why

there is great reluctance among western States to see this program

go through unchallenged and without any oversight, I hope their

eyes were opened today.
63

Example after example after example has been cited not only by

me but other members of this Committee where this Administration has in fact betrayed the trust of western States, western legislators, western Governors, western elected officials, western delegations of all sorts where the stated official opinion of those States

has been ignored on grand scales time after time after time.

I would just merely say that the Department of the Interior in

particular is an agency that we have tried to trust as often as we

possibly can, but that patience has just been tested far too frequently. The words of the Department of the Interior just ring hollow on western ears, and I think it is unfortunate.

This could have been a good program, I believe, but the attitude

toward western States, the reluctance to essentially make the commitments in front of this Committee to back up the words that

have been expressed I find very troubling and are precisely the reason we are so skeptical about this program in the west.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you. I appreciate the gentleman’s comments.

I appreciate the patience of all of you in being with us. It is very

kind of you to spend your time with us today, and we spend a lot

of ours here discussing this issue.

I think we are going to keep coming back down to the idea of

process. I think it is going to come down to the idea of how do you

step through it. Many of the things that come out of the Administration are very laudatory, and I agree with many of them.

The other side of the coin is that it is the process that bothers

us. Many of us spend a lot of time going into our home States of

Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, and there is a very tremendous

skepticism predicated on some of these areas.

As the gentleman from Colorado pointed out, possibly at the time

that you could make some definite commitments, it would make life

a lot easier for us. I can tell you that many of the Governors out

there both R&Ds do not want to have things happen in their State

without consent.

As past speaker of the House of Utah, I know I would be offended if in that position if we didn’t have at least some people tell

us about it.

It is going to take a while to overcome this last hit of September

1996, believe me. It is going to take a long time for people to get

over it.

I would hope that when we get into these things, we could keep

in mind that we would like to work together. I think political divisions aren’t as important as what is good for the country, and I

would hope that would be the case with all of us.

I appreciate all three of you being here, and the two other folks

who joined us. It has been kind of you to be here. This hearing

stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 1:10 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional material submitted for the record follows.]
64

STATEMENT OF HON. OWEN B. PICKETT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE

STATE OF VIRGINIA

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I welcome this oversight hearing into The American

Heritage Rivers Initiative announced by the President in his State of the Union address earlier this year and look forward to hearing from the witnesses who will be

testifying before the Committee today.

On May 21, 1997, the Administration announced in the Federal Register its initiative to ‘‘Restore and protect America’s Rivers.’’ In an unusual move, a 3-week, public

comment period was set aside ending on June 9, 1997. Under normal circumstances,

public comment periods are held open for a minimum of thirty days in order to provide adequate time for interested citizens to file their views. The abridged public

comment period was of concern to me because of the unusual nature of the arrangement being proposed where the executive branch of the U. S. Government, through

its agencies, was undertaking the implementation of a new Federal program that

has not been authorized by Congress and for which no moneys have been appropriated by the Congress to these agencies to be expended for this purpose. This

strikes me as being quite unusual and if successful, reason for alarm. Federal agencies are generally considered to be creatures of Congress but this will no longer be

true if they can, by unilateral action of their own, extend their reach and usurp

moneys appropriated to them for other purposes to pay for their unauthorized activities.

There have already been a number of instances where excessive and unauthorized

action taken by Federal agencies has resulted in private property owners being denied the full use of their property. To provide some additional time to try and properly evaluate this proposal, I sent a letter to Ms. Karen Hobbs, Council on Environmental Quality, Executive Office of the President, requesting a sixty day extension

to the public comment period. I hope our witnesses today will be able to clear up

some of the concerns about the process being used to implement The American Heritage Rivers initiative and assure us that ample due process safeguards are in place

to protect our citizens against unwarranted and unauthorized actions by Federal

Government agencies. There is a good measure of enthusiastic support for the ultimate goal of the Administration’s effort to preserve for future generations the rich

natural and cultural legacy of our Nation’s rivers. As a member of the leadership

review board for the Elizabeth River Project, a non-profit organization committed

to environmental preservation planning for the Elizabeth River in Hampton Roads,

Virginia, I am aware of the immense local public support available to restore and

preserve our Nation’s waterways. There are many other willing and anxious citizens

ready to join groups such as this one to ensure that our water resources are protected and enhanced in every appropriate way as quickly as possible. But as laudable as this objective is, it should not obscure or deter adherence to established constitutional principles nor diminish by Federal fiat the Constitutional protections afforded to our people.

The Administration’s far-reaching initiative deserves the thoughtful and deliberate consideration of this Committee. I look forward to hearing the testimony of

the distinguished panel.
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