May 10, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S6423

their way—they want total flow control or no flow control or no

grandfathering or we move into the

interstate waste transfer and they

want no exporting or total exporting or

the Governor having the total right to

make decisions and communities having no rights or whatever—whatever

the position may be, if they insist on

that, this bill will get bogged down. It

will not get passed by the end of this

week, this legislative week, on Friday.

And the budget will be up next week.

After that, I cannot imagine where

there will be a window of time to deal

with this again. So I appeal to my colleagues who desperately want this bill

to help them and their communities in

their States with this flow control to

not hold this bill up by adding amendments or trying to add amendments

that may in fact derail it. Because once

it is derailed, in my opinion, it is going

to be a long time until it gets back

here.

It is the leader’s decision, of course,

when it comes up. But the point is

there is so much on the table after

Monday when the budget comes up,

any discussion of flow control, with all

due respect, is going to be way down

here when the budget and the numbers

in that get out and the American people begin to interact with their Senators and Congressmen on that.

So I think there is going to be a lot

of discussion. If Members choose to oppose this or dilute it or whatever they

choose to do, or even—maybe they

would like to strengthen it—they will

do it at their own peril. This issue,

which has been simmering for the last

6 or 7 years, will continue to remain on

the back burner during the 104th Congress.

I hope that does not happen, but the

choice is clear. Either vote to pass this

bill which has the overwhelming majority support, maybe unanimous support, in the Senate and protect those

facilities that come within the scope of

this bill, or risk it all to protect a

small handful of communities that do

not fit within this legislation, who are

trying desperately to create a situation

where, if they want to have flow control at some point in the future, they

can have it, or if they have let a little

bit of money out there somewhere, a

relatively insignificant amount, and

they are not sure what they are going

to do—that violates the spirit and intent of this bill and I hope it does not

happen.

We will be down here as long as it

takes to deal with the amendments. I

appeal to colleagues, if they have

amendments, let us try to work them

out. We will try to work out the ones

we agree with, and if we can agree with

them, we will accept them. If they violate the spirit and intent of what we

tried to do in drafting this bill, we will

oppose them forcefully on the floor of

the Senate.

Let me conclude with a brief summary as follows. Communities out

there, as far as flow control is concerned, are in a tough situation. According to the public securities situation, $20 billion in bonds have been issued to pay for flow-controlled facilities. That is not the fault of the U.S.

Senate. The interstate commerce

clause, I believe, was in effect when

that happened. But somehow it got ignored and they got into this bind and

they have $20 billion in let bonds.

We are going to try to help them and

we do help them with this legislation.

We grandfather them, we protect them.

We protect the investors, the bondholders, the taxpayers, the individuals

out there who have in whatever way

participated in these bonds.

As a result of the Carbone decision,

the Supreme Court invalidated flow

control, so it is in limbo. Here we are

in limbo. Nobody knows what to do.

They do not know whether to proceed

or not to proceed, because they do not

know what Congress is going to do in

regard to the interpretation of that decision.

Six incinerators in New Jersey have

had their bond ratings lowered, and I

am sure that is the case in other

States, because flow control was invalidated. Again, we are trying to help

those communities. That is the goal.

Dozens of incinerators and landfills are

in immediate danger if flow control is

not reauthorized immediately, and

every bond based on flow control authority is threatened, every one. Every

single bond out there is threatened unless we do something soon. The longer

it goes on the worse the threat gets.

So the bill provides a narrow flow

control authority to protect those

bonds. Again, it is a compromise. It is

a fair compromise. It is not my position totally. I would be for no flow control. That is not my position. But it is

a compromise position to help those individuals.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the

floor and indicate I hope we could get

some time agreements and some reasonable information regarding these

amendments. If Members who have

amendments could come to the floor

and offer them in a timely manner so

we do not get bogged down and not pass

this bill by the end of the week.

Mr. CHAFEE. I thank the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire.

PRIVILEGE OF THE FLOOR—S. 534

Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I ask

funanimous consent James McCarthy,

of the Congressional Research Service,

be granted the privilege of the floor for

the pendency of S. 534.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. President, I ask

unanimous consent Mr. Paul

Longsworth, a U.S. Department of Energy employee assigned to my staff for

a period of 1 year, be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of the

consideration of S. 534.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

The Senator from Oregon.

ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT

REFORM AMENDMENTS

fMr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, I am

pleased to join with my colleagues as

an original cosponsor of the Endangered Species Act Reform Amendments

of 1995. This bill is the result of several

years’ work. The bill represents the

culmination of a broad, grassroots effort to bring balance to the Endangered

Species Act. This coalition consists of

miners, ranchers, loggers, refiners,

manufacturers, the fisheries industry,

and organized labor.

There are problems with the current

Endangered Species Act. The Endangered Species Act is an act that has

gone awry. It is wreaking havoc on our

communities and economies, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, but increasingly nationwide. It is devastating entire regions and industries. In

the Pacific Northwest alone, since the

spotted owl was listed as threatened in

1990, millions of acres of Federal

timberland and thousands of private

acres have been set aside. It takes

about 1,300 acres for a pair of owls to

breed, so we are told. We have set aside

thousands and thousands and thousands of acres in hopes of the owl being

saved. No guarantee it will, no guarantee it will not, but a tremendous damper on legitimate economic activity.

It has impacted tens of thousands of

human beings and hundreds of rural

communities. The estimates on job

losses range from a low of 35,000 to a

high of 150,000 in the Pacific Northwest.

I was here when the act was originally passed, and I remember what our

intention was. We were thinking ‘‘a’’

project: a dam, a road, a canal versus a

species. When you read the debate,

when the original Endangered Species

Act was passed, I do not recall the

word ‘‘ecosystem’’ being mentioned in

the debate. None of us was thinking of

an entire section of the country being

affected by one species. Yet this act is

now being used as a tool by environmental groups to further their agenda

of locking up not only all public land

but much private land as well.

I want to emphasize again, this act

applies to private land. For a long time

I think people thought this was a public land issue in the West, that while it

might limit the activities of the U.S.

Forest Service or the Bureau of Land

Management or the U.S. Park Service,

it did not affect private land. It does. It

affects your right in ownership. It can

diminish the value of your land in

every sense. The Government can take

your property under the current Endangered Species Act and not pay you.

Private property owners are increasingly losing the right to use their property as they intended.

Let us look at the economic cost of

the Endangered Species Act. Edward O.

Wilson, a renowned entomologist, has

observed that there may be something
S6424 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 10, 1995

on the order of 100 million species and

yet only 1.4 million have been named.

How many billions of dollars are we

willing to spend attempting to save insects, bacteria, fungi—that we have

never heard of, never identified, for

which there may be little or no chance

of recovery. Yet in the effort, we will

cause dislocation and hardship for

thousands and thousands of people.

The social impacts are no less devastating. Professor Lee, Robert Lee, at

the University of Washington in Seattle in the College of Forestry Resources, has an interesting background: an undergraduate degree from

the University of California in sociology and then a graduate degree in

forestry. He has done extensive work

on the social trauma that affects timber towns. He points to the destruction

of families, long-lasting social fallout.

He can identify it, pinpoint it. He

points out that, if you are going to go

ahead and apply the Endangered Species Act and close the mill in this

town—and it does not take a very big

mill if you have a town of 2000 and you

have a mill that employs 150 people—

that mill is in essence the backbone of

the town. If you close it, he says he can

guarantee that you will see an increase

in suicides, homicides, divorce, juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, spousal

and child abuse.

He is not saying that in this town

this is all going to happen. What he is

saying is when you take a 45- or 50-

year-old mill worker who married his

childhood sweetheart in high school,

lived in town all of his life, his children

are in the school, he is making $25,000,

$26,000, or $28,000 in the mill, it is the

only job he is trained for, and the only

principal occupation in town is the

mill. It is closed. His mother is still

alive and he does not want to leave the

town. You take away his livelihood.

The Federal Government takes away

his livelihood.

Professor Lee says you can bank on

it, as sure as we are here, that you are

going to have the increases that I

talked about in the suicides, homicides, the abuses, the divorces, and alcoholism. It is understandable when

you think about it. A 45- or 50-year-old

is not likely retrained, does not want

to move from town, has lived there all

of his life. Those things are as likely to

happen as you and I being in this

Chamber today.

It is ironic that for years we considered the needs of humans as though

nothing else mattered. During that period, probably a long period in our

country when we developed this country, from approximately 1800 to 1960,

we moved west. We gave no thought to

limitation of resources because we

thought the resources were unlimited.

I am old enough to remember in the

Pacific Northwest within the last 30 to

35 years when the electric companies

advertised: ‘‘Use more electricity. The

more you use, the less per unit you will

pay. Have an all-electric house, electric furnace, electric air conditioning.’’

The theme was, we will never be able

to use all of the electricity we generate. If we ever have to have more, we

will build another dam. Or, as we got

into the seventies, we will build nuclear plants. But it was use, use, use.

As we moved across the West, the

pioneers came over those mountains

and they looked at valleys and mountains of timber, timber, and more timber. It is understandable why they

thought that those resources could

never be used up. These resources were

plentiful. The pioneers were not malicious people; they were not greedy;

they were not selfish. But they saw the

land and thought it was good and right

to develop it.

Mr. President, if 100 years ago, 150

years ago, we had on the books, only

two laws, the Endangered Species Act

and the Wetlands legislation, we would

not have developed the West. Every

railroad you see, once you get across

the Great Plains, is built on rivers and

fill. We never would have cleared the

valleys, never would have cut the trees

and pried out the rocks and farmed it.

You would have been prohibited from

doing it by just those two acts. But as

people moved west, they saw nothing

wrong with clearing the land. As a

matter of fact, the native Americans,

and the early settlers, when they were

there saw nothing wrong with burning

the trees. They did this not for any

kind of malicious intent; they burned

for ecological reasons. I doubt if you

could do that today.

Things changed. I understand why.

You had the century and a half of moving west. You developed the resources,

harnessed the rivers, and plowed the

land. There was not much thought

about the environment, and certainly

not much thought at all about endangered species. Then along came Rachel

Carson’s book, Silent Spring, which I

like to say is the pivot upon which the

environmental movement started. Basically, the book dealt with agricultural pesticides and runoffs and the

damage these were doing. But from

that moment forward, you could see

the pendulum, which had swung for 160

years toward development and exploitation of the resources, swing in the

other direction. Now the pendulum has

swung completely the other way.

I do not level this charge at everybody who is a member of the Sierra

Club or the Wilderness Society. By far,

most of them are very reasonable, decent people. But they are accusing

unjustifiably a group of people who are

excellent stewards of the land, people

who living on the land and taking care

of the land and replenishing the land.

The irresponsible utilization of natural

resources is wrong. But I do not know

anybody who is a farmer who wants to

misuse and abuse his or her land and

not have the option of passing it along

to their children. I do not know of anyone—if they used to exist, I do not

know them now—in the timber industry who wants to cut and run. Everyone I know in the timber industry who

is in the industry wants to cut and

plant and grow, and cut and plant and

grow forever on an intelligent, sustained-yield practice of forestry.

There is only one group where I have

seen a danger. And it is not their fault,

and I do not blame them. You are a little woodlot owner. You have 60 or 70

acres of land. You are not

Weyerhauser. You are not a commercial timber company. But you have 60

or 70 acres of land. You have been managing it well, and you cut a bit, and

you plant a bit. You will use some of it

to educate your kids, and maybe some

of it to help their families, and maybe

some of it for retirement. You are

faced now with the possibility, under

the Endangered Species Act, that you

may be prohibited from cutting on

your land at all. Right at the moment,

you are not cutting and had not intended to cut. Do you know what you

are thinking to yourself? ‘‘I had better

do it now. I had better cut and run and

get out while I can still get my money

to educate my kids and do some of the

other things I had planned to do, because maybe in 5 years, the Endangered Species Act will not let me cut at

all.’’ This is a person who is willing to

and had planned to cut and plant land

that will be in the family for generations. These are the kinds of unintended consequences we face because of

this act.

Under the Endangered Species Act,

we have to remember that we must balance both species and humans. But

here is the problem with the present

act. I want to phrase this carefully.

This is the present act. When you are

determining whether or not a species is

threatened or endangered—those are

the two classifications under the act—

you are to use the best scientific evidence, and nobody quarrels with that.

Realizing science can be wrong, you

may recall that science said if we built

the Tellico Dam, the snail darter would

disappear. We went through a long battle on the Tellico Dam. Finally, the

Endangered Species Committee—the

God Squad, as we call it—said if we

built the dam, the snail darter would

disappear and that was to be the end of

it. Congress overruled the Endangered

Species Committee and said finish the

dam, build the dam. We do not care if

the snail darter disappears. The dam is

all but done. We just have not dropped

the gate. Go ahead with it. We were

told we would run the risk of the snail

darter disappearing. The best scientific

evidence said it would disappear. What

happened? We dropped the gate, the

reservoir filled up, and the snail darter

exists in all of the streams that flow

into the reservoir. Science was absolutely wrong. This is no excuse not to

use science, but science is not perfect.

I have no quarrel with listing a species as threatened or endangered and

using the best science that we know. I

would like there to be good scientific

peer review, and I would like a chance

to appeal to the courts should you have

a really horrendously bad decision. But
May 10, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S6425

I think the best science ought to be

used.

Now you come to the issue of whether or not you are going to have a recovery plan to try to save the species. And

here, only the species counts. If you

cannot come up with a recovery plan

under the present law, if you cannot

come up with a recovery plan that will

save the species, or, to put it the other

way around, if every recovery plan that

you can think of by the best scientific

evidence will lead to the extinction of

the species, then nothing else counts.

People do not count. Revenues to counties do not count. Whether or not the

schools have enough money to keep

going does not count. Nothing counts

but the species, and that is where this

act is not balanced.

So, Mr. President, I am glad to join a

number of my fellow Senators in introducing amendments to the Endangered

Species Act. We think these amendments are a balance. We are not getting rid of the act. We are not getting

rid of science. As a matter of fact, we

are asking for stronger science, for better science, for better review. But this

act finally allows people to be considered as much as bugs. And that has

been the failing of the present law.

I hope the Senate will favorably consider this. I am proud to join as a cosponsor.

I am pleased to join with my colleagues as an original cosponsor of the

Endangered Species Act Reform

Amendments of 1995.

This bill is the result of several

years’ work.

The bill represents the culmination

of broad grassroots efforts to bring balance to the Endangered Species Act.

This broad grassroots coalition consists of miners, ranchers, loggers, farmers, manufacturers, the fisheries industry, and organized labor.

PROBLEMS WITH CURRENT ENDANGERED SPECIES

ACT

The Endangered Species Act is an act

gone awry. The act is wreaking havoc

on our communities and economies,

particularly in the Pacific Northwest,

but increasingly nationwide. The act is

devastating entire industries and regions.

In the Pacific Northwest alone, since

the spotted owl was listed as threatened in 1990, millions of acres of Federal timberland and thousands of private acres have been set aside for owls.

The act has impacted tens of thousands of human beings and hundreds of

rural communities.

Estimates of the number of jobs lost

as a result of the listing range anywhere from 35,000 to 150,000.

The act was originally intended to

ensure the survival of species that were

threatened by site-specific projects,

such as roads, dams, and sewer systems

The act is now being used as a tool

by environmental groups to further

their agenda of locking up not only all

public land, but private land as well.

Private property owners are increasingly losing the right to use their property as they intended.

ECONOMIC COSTS OF ESA

Edward O. Wilson, a renowned entomologist at Harvard observes that

there may be something on the order of

100 million species.

Yet only 1.4 million have been

named.

How many billions of dollars are we

willing to spend attempting to save:

fungi, insects, and bacteria we’ve never

heard of, and species for which there

may be little or no chance of recovery

in any case.

SOCIAL COSTS OF ESA

While the economic costs of protecting species is great, the social impacts

are no less devastating.

Robert Lee, sociologist with the University of Washington College of Forest

Resources, has done extensive research

on the social trauma afflicting timber

towns. He points to the destruction of

families and long-lasting social fallout

in the form of suicide, homicide, divorce, juvenile delinquency, drug

abuse, and spousal and child abuse.

It is ironic that for years we considered the needs of humans as though

nothing else mattered.

Now, under the Endangered Species

Act, we are considering the needs of

fish, wildlife, and plants as though

nothing else matters.

Both policies are short-sighted and

flawed.

CURRENT EFFORTS

We need a process which not only

protects plants and animals, but one

which recognizes legitimate human

needs as well.

That is why, in the last Congress, I

joined with Senators GORTON, SHELBY

and others in introducing legislation to

bring balance to the Endangered Species Act.

This year, with even stronger bipartisan support, we have again introduced

legislation to require that the economic and social impacts of Federal efforts to protect species be fully considered.

SUMMARY OF BILL

Our bill contains several components

essential to meaningful reform.

The bill reforms the process by which

species are listed as threatened or endangered:

Requires independent scientific peer

review of the science;

Requires better data collection.

Provides for broader participation by

affected States and the public;

Requires judicial review of listing decisions;

In place of intensive Federal management, the bill includes incentives to

encourage private landowners to protect species, such as:

Encouraging the exchange of private

land for Federal land to provide habitat for affected species; and

Establishing a Federal cost-share

program for any direct costs imposed

on a private person.

Our bill requires the Secretary to set

a ‘‘conservation objective,’’ ranging

from full recovery of the species to

solely protecting the species from actions which would directly injure or

kill the species.

In other words, the Secretary could

decide to allow a species to go extinct.

Our bill requires that economic and

social impacts are fully considered in

the development of conservation measures.

Our bill changes the statutory definition of ‘‘harm’’ and ‘‘take’’ to mean the

actual injury or killing of a member of

a species.

‘‘Harm’’ will no longer apply to the

modification of a species’ habitat as

the courts have broadly interpreted

current law.

Our bill minimizes the impacts to

private property.

CONCLUSION

It is not our goal to abandon our national commitment to the protection

of endangered species; however, we cannot protect every imaginable species.

We can do a better job of balancing

jobs and economic opportunity with

species protection.

While this bill does not go as far as I

would like, it will begin the debate

which is long overdue.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The

clerk will call the roll.

The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

Mr. MCCONNELL. Mr. President, I

ask unanimous consent that the order

for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr.

THOMAS). Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. MCCONNELL. Mr. President, I

ask unanimous consent I be allowed to

proceed for 5 minutes as if in morning

business.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

PRESIDENT CLINTON BRINGS

HOME NOTHING

fMr. McCONNELL. Mr. President,

President Clinton has gone to Moscow,

and he has come home with nothing. I

repeat: President Clinton has gone to

Moscow, and he has come home with

nothing.

There has not been much coverage

yet of the summit over there in Russia,

but it is pretty clear that President

Clinton has in effect gone to Moscow,

given President Yeltsin an opportunity

to show that he can deliver the President of the United States for a celebration of the end of World War II, and we

have had no progress on stopping the

sale of nuclear material to Iran, no

apologies about the slaughter of 25,000

people in Chechnya.

In summary, Mr. President, very little, if anything, has been accomplished

at this summit that would benefit this

country.

Now, arguably, our President showing up over there has helped President