Posted on 08/03/2012 3:17:51 PM PDT by jazusamo
Western lawmakers are crying foul over new Interior Department guidelines that resurrect the controversial Wild Lands policy that was killed by Congress in April 2011.
Bureau of Land Management manuals uncovered by Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) include language nearly identical to the draft proposal put forth by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in December 2010. The Wild Lands policy was intended to identify and manage wilderness areas while circumventing the normal and transparent congressional process.
Pulling manuals from the BLM site on July 31, the lawmakers compared the policies and found the new language to be even harsher than Wild Lands in the carte blanche authority granted to the agency.
In some circumstances conditions relating to wilderness characteristics may have changed over time, and an area that was once determined to lack wilderness characteristic many now possess them, states one section of the BLM text. Both manuals include a provision that gives BLM the authority to identify any roadless island of the public lands as possessing wilderness characteristics, even under 5,000 acres in defiance of the Wilderness Act.
Bishop said that the new land management practices essentially create de-facto wilderness areas and would unfairly stack the deck against multiple-use management.
This is clearly an effort to establish Wild Lands 2.0 and abandons all previous commitments Secretary Salazar made to me and many other western members to work openly and collaboratively on new land management practices, Bishop said. Excerpts within these handbooks clearly depict a thinly veiled effort on behalf of this administration to further limit access to our nations public lands.
Once again, the Obama administration shows its Washington knows best mentality, Hatch said. Even though these proposals have already been overwhelmingly rejected, the administration is attempting to administratively put these policies in place. This proposal will give Washington bureaucrats more control over the lands in Utah and across the West.
The Senate Western Caucus reacted angrily to the revelation, with 18 members of the caucus including Bishop and Hatch firing off a letter to Salazar about the backdoor policy move.
You have stated on more than one occasion that it is important that both you and the Department work with Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, wrote the lawmakers, led by caucus chairman Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.). This sentiment was reaffirmed when you met with many of us following the fallout of the Wildlands Secretarial Order. The Departments recent actions greatly undermine both your commitment to working with us, your duty to follow both the letter and spirit of the Congressional mandate to withhold funding for the Wildlands policy, and the Obama Administrations commitment towards being the most transparent in history.
They asked Salazar to pull the BLM manuals out of use immediately and move forward with a public process to craft new directives.
To that end, we request a briefing with you to discuss when Manuals 6310 and 6320 were posted on the internet, the extent to which Manuals 6300-1 and 6300-2 were used in crafting Manuals 6310 and 6320, and the Departments plan to withdraw and reissue new manuals in an open and transparent process, the letter states.
The caucus members stressed that the fact that the manuals were developed and released with no public notice raised deep skepticism for the motives behind the underlying directives particularly considering how unpopular the original Wild Lands proposal was.
The changes from that proposal to the new manuals are less than subtle.
For example, the section on wilderness inventory procedures in the Wild Lands manual reads, The wilderness inventory process directive does not mean that the BLM must conduct a completely new inventory and disregard the inventory information that it already has for a particular area. Rather, the BLM must ensure that its current inventory is updated with appropriate information to conform to Secretarys Order 3310 and this policy.
The new BLM manual reads, The wilderness inventory process directive does not mean that the BLM must conduct a completely new inventory and disregard the inventory information that it already has for a particular area. Rather, the BLM must ensure that its inventory is maintained.
I am troubled and angered by similarities found between the contents of the handbooks and the defunct Wild Lands proposal, Bishop said.
Its wrong, and the Interior Department needs to stop trying to keep the public off public lands, Hatch said.
It wasnt the only time Salazar has been called out this week.
Barrasso and his Wyoming counterpart in the Senate, Mike Enzi (R), yesterday accused Salazar of throwing up more red tape to the construction of new port facilities in Oregon and Washington, which would export Powder River Basin coal to Asia.
On April 5, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requested that the Army Corps of Engineers expand the environmental review and conduct a broadly scoped cumulative impacts analysis for an export facility at the Port of Morrow, Ore.
We believe that the National Environmental Policy Act does not require these steps and that taking them would set a dangerous precedent for American exports, the senators wrote Salazar and Army Secretary John McHugh.
They noted that coal producers could export their product through Canada, but protested against ceding the jobs that the Pacific Northwest ports would bring.
In its request, the EPA cited coal dust and diesel pollution as primary concerns, in addition to wildlife, aquatic resources, and cultural resources.
While these concerns are not insignificant, they are routinely addressed under existing environmental review processes, Barrasso and Enzi wrote. In no way do any of these concerns warrant significantly expanding the scope of or delaying the environmental review process for new port facilities. To the contrary, expanding the scope of or delaying the environmental review process for new port facilities would create uncertainty for ongoing and future exports of coal from the Powder River Basin as well as Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, and West Virginia.
We find it deeply troubling that EPA is attempting to impose what is effectively a climate change litmus test on American exports.
The senators asked that the requests for the expanded environmental review be denied.
In announcing their fight against the environmental red tape, the senators quipped that the EPA is turning into the Export Prevention Agency.
Salazar/BLM Ping
People better pay attention to what the states are doing on their own as well. Michigan is taking another 2000 acres almost within sight of my back door. Not to mention 50 acres here, another 100 there, and 10 or 25 more here and there. As it is Michigan is fast approaching the 50% state and federal owned range.
They’re using federal matching funds so its a sure bet some strings are attached.
The turkeys are trying to make much of those public lands wilderness areas that can only be entered on foot.
Hatch is a RINO, but good for him in uncovering this.
Democrats can never be trusted at any time, in any place. To them, lying is as easy as breathing.
Now that the Rat's end-run around Congress has been uncovered, let's hope that we can finally put this issue to bed.
Thanks for the ping!
Agreed, but like you am happy to see he and Bishop on this. The lying Rats should be tarred and feathered for pulling a stunt like this but nothing will happen to them, at least this farce may be stopped.
The list, Ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
Agenda 21 file
http://www.nachumlist.com/agenda21.htm
Wait until they have more flexibility - in 100 days ?
UN 21 also grabs water rights from farmers, cities, and
bttt
They’ll do the same no matter who wins.
Do you know if the state lands in that map are a lot more than the fed lands?
I’d guess about 50/50 on the state vs fed land. The whole thing is an increasingly tangled mess with various land trust enviro groups having control over private lands or other land in tax limbo. There’s another 500 acre tract near me where a SWAT team removed the landowner for non payment of taxes but the state says they don’t intend to offer it for auction.
I haven’t tracked this down to see where things settled but this story is from 2002. The state wanted to grab 390,000 acres.
Good article...Sounds like the enviros are pushing the state to control more and more of the lands but the state is not all that thrilled about it. Of course many state employees are the product of the enviro movement that were hired some years back and have the enviro agenda in mind.
Agenda 21 people, read it
It comes in many forms. It doesn’t matter whether its state, federal, or one of these little land trust groups. All have the same goal.
Here’s another from Michigan. Almost $3 million to buy 54 acres for connecting corridors.
If you want to be on or off the Agenda 21 ping list, please notify me by Freepmail. It is a relatively low volume list in which we have been exploring the UN Agenda21 and related topics. We have collected our studies with threads, links, and discussions on the Agenda 21 thread which can be found here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2738418/posts
NEW ACTION THREAD:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2861644/posts
Post 128 of the Action Thread is a summary of the history of Agenda 21, what they are doing, what to do about it and a good bibliography for further reading.
We believe that the National Environmental Policy Act does not require these steps and that taking them would set a dangerous precedent for American exports, the senators wrote Salazar and Army Secretary John McHugh.
They noted that coal producers could export their product through Canada, but protested against ceding the jobs that the Pacific Northwest ports would bring.
In its request, the EPA cited coal dust and diesel pollution as primary concerns, in addition to wildlife, aquatic resources, and cultural resources.
While these concerns are not insignificant, they are routinely addressed under existing environmental review processes, Barrasso and Enzi wrote. In no way do any of these concerns warrant significantly expanding the scope of or delaying the environmental review process for new port facilities. To the contrary, expanding the scope of or delaying the environmental review process for new port facilities would create uncertainty for ongoing and future exports of coal from the Powder River Basin as well as Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, and West Virginia.
What is pathetic is the attempt by these two western Senators to push these coal ports on rural areas of WA and Oregon, where the people do not want a coal port and all the environmental degradation that would accompany a coal port. These idiots are trying to paint the opposition to the Powder River Basin Coal ports as a global warming battle. It has little to do with global warming. It has to do with the local impact of coal trains and huge coal ports that foul the water, the air and degrade the quality of life, mostly in rural areas. Would you want a coal port in your back yard? No, of course not. The problem is that there is a declining market for this sub bituminous coal anyway. China has warned that China will not be interested in buying the coal in another couple of years because they are producing their own coal while at the same time reducing their dependency on coal (huge LNG port being built) The Powder River Basin Coal is an Obama crony capitalist project. While Obama wages a war against coal on the East Coast, on private lands, he is facilitating the mining of coal on public leased lands that is mostly owned by Indian tribes in the Powder River Basin. Recently the Crowe made a deal with a large mining company to directly partner in the Powder River Basin, avoiding the federal leasing. There was another Indian tribe in WA that wanted to construct a coal port in Tacoma, WA, but the city nixed it. Enter Goldman Sachs and Warren Buffet, and the idea of building the port in rural Whatcom County, where the growth management act denies any local governing authority over development and crony capitalism reigns supreme. What the producers of this coal and their political supporters want to do is to turn our rural coastline into a major coal train route, that will destroy our health and well being as well as our property values. It will clog and pollute our waterways and basically destroy any chance for any real commercial development that would provide more jobs and some local benefit. There is nothing in the export of coal to benefit WA and Oregon. We don't want it in our back yards. The only people who support the coal are those who will not be impacted by it and are fooled into thinking that it will provide jobs. The fight over these terminals has become so divisive that some of the local Republicans who support the terminal have been working WITH the local lefty regulators and storm water advisory boards, AGAINST the private property owners to benefit the developers. Gateways are what the Agenda 21 people call their multi-modal transportation corridors, ports and hubs that connect urban ports around the world for the purpose of moving people and cargo through rural areas, limiting human incursion into rural areas. The coal port that they want to build in Whatcom County is called the GATEWAY Pacific Terminal. Patty Murray wrote a bill to fund Gateways all around the country that was included in the transportation bill that was signed this summer. Goldman Sach is a partner in several of these projects. Goldman Sachs does not need our tax dollars and neither does Warren Buffet, but they are getting them.
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