Date: 1984-06-04
Speaker: ROBERT F. SMITH (republican)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentleman from Alaska for yielding to me. I stood before the House a year ago and spoke against the bill which passed. as we well know. and has been identified as H.R. 1149. and contained 1.2 million acres of wilderness. I want to suggest that the impact of this issue is upon this Members district. There are five Members of the House from Oregon. This Member shoulders 60 percent of the "compromise wilderness bill" in my district. 551.000 acres. which is going to have an insidious economic impact upon jobs in the future and the cost of lumber products. in our Nation and in Oregon. The Constitution tells us that the House of Representatives represents people. Wa all swore to uphold the Constitution. and I am here representing my people. The people I represent are in Oregon. 73 percent of whom say we do not need or want any more wilderness in our area. Some will say there ought to be a Federal response to that because local people are somehow jaded and they somehow have a parochial interest and therefore cannot be trusted. Well. I am a Federal representative. I think I am as capable of having a balanced opinion about wilderness or any other issue as any other Member from Ohio or Arkansas or Arizona or New York or Alaska. I think my value in this debate is one that does not have a Jaded opinion. but a balanced one. It has been reported that this is a compromise bit.. May I suggest that in exchange for the soft release language of 2 million acres. we are being asked to set aside an additional 900.000 acres of wilderness in the State of Oregon and that is a sword of Damocles. hanging over the heads of the people 1 represent in Oregon. Now. what is a compromise? I always thought a compromise was finally settled between opponents and proponents of an issue. This compromise is being settled between the environmentalists. the environmentalists here and the environmentalists there. I have not been a part of the compromise. nor has anybody been a part of the compromise that is opposed to this bill. in the beginning or even now. The compromise is 900.000 acres. I had proposed. by the way. that the bill be reduced by a mere 81.000 acres. That would have saved future jobs for not just Oregonians. but others. Who are they? Most people do not really care. but let me tell you who they are. They are people from little towns that I represent. little towns like John Day and Prairie City and Pilot Rock. Maupin. and Tygh Valley. These little towns are going to be insidiously affected by this bill. The soft release language leaves us nowhere. It is so far out of the areas of the small communities that it might as well be 10 million acres of release. or located in Costa Rica. It has no impact upon these affected areas of my State of Oregon. Well. after months of my own study. I came up with a compromise proposal. It came from local people. It came from farmers and businessmen and local government officials and industry people and labor unions. What happened? There was no compromise. We offered to reduce wilderness in this bill by only 81.000 acres. leaving almost 900.000 acres in the bill. But there was no compromise. Let me give you an example. In the north fork of the John Day River. an area of real debate in this issue. there are roughly 121.000 acres of land proposed to be set aside. 40.000 acres are in dead lodgepole pine. Now we are being asked to pass a wilderness bill to make sure that 40.000 acres of dead lodgepole pine remain untouched. and prevent the mill at Pilot Rock. which employes 128 employees. from taking out the dead lodgepole pine. Does that make a lot of sense? In some cases I suggest to you that man manages better than nature. Certainly designating wilderness closes the door to management and creates waste in this situation. Is it going to be the choice of Congress to actually dedicate new wilderness to death? In this situation you already have the death of 40.000 acres of stillusable lodgepole pine out. It could have been of some use. We could have reforested the area. I want you. and I welcome all of you. to come to this lovely. pristine area in Oregon. full of dead and beetleridden lodgepole pine. The new wilderness area is not pristine. It includes mines that have been in place and that are valuable. valuable precious metals. gold. silver. chromite. There are roads within the wilderness area. This is not a free environmental vote. It is going to cost jobs and business and heartaches. This is not a compromise. This is a theft of the future from the people of Oregon. I urge you to vote against H.R. 1149. I yield back the balance of my time.