Posted on 02/18/2010 6:26:28 PM PST by Outside da Box
Two senior House Republicans are accusing the Interior Department of “working in secret” on a plan to “lock up vast expanses of land in Western states.”
A letter to President Obama Thursday from Reps. Doc Hastings (Wash.) and Rob Bishop (Utah) highlights an internal Interior list of 14 areas that could be designated as National Monuments under the Antiquities Act.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Turn all federal lands back to the states, with the exception of actually active military reservations.
Klinton did this at least once, in deference to the wishes of his campaign donations/donors that were entangled with the Riyadi’s and the Chinese.....who own/manage the big coal company in Indonesia, IIRC
GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, ARIZ (AP) — “Siding with environmentalists in one of the nation’s biggest wilderness battles, President Clinton declared 1.7 million acres of southern Utah’s red-rock cliffs and canyons as a national monument Wednesday. The election-year move effectively blocks development of one of America’s largest known coal reserves, to the dismay of political leaders in Utah, the nation’s most Republican state.”
” ‘We can’t have mines everywhere and we shouldn’t have mines that threaten our national treasures’, the President said. Standing at the south rim of the rust-colored Grand Canyon, Clinton invoked a 90-year-old law to create the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument without Congressional approval. He announced his decision near the same spot where Theodore Roosevelt used the same law, the Antiquities Act, to protect the Grand Canyon from development in 1908.”
” ‘We are saying, very simply, our parents and grandparents saved the Grand Canyon for us’, the President said, bathed in sunlight breaking through the clouds. ‘Today, we will save the Grand Escalante Canyons and the Kaiparowits Plateaus of Utah for our children.’”
“Seven weeks before the election, Clinton’s action delighted environmentalists, but brought threats of political retaliation from Utah. Mike Matz, executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, called it, ‘one of the most significant land actions that any president has ever done.’ Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said Clinton was declaring ‘war on the West’. Yet, with just five electoral votes in Utah, there was not much political risk for Clinton in offending the state’s political establishment.” (Seattle-Daily Journal of Commerce, 9/19/1996)
If Peak oil is truly here (big if) then all energy assets are on the table. I mean really - if the country is grinding to a halt and mass riots are breaking out over energy, does anyone think silly things like monument designations are going to protect against going in and developing these resources? Same goes for offshore. Fight them tooth and nail, but remember when it comes down to it, these assets WILL be exploited.
Hi sionnsar,
I questioned bothering with a Washington ping then looked closer and saw that not only was it a Washington State Rep (Hastings) mentioned in the story but they’re looking to annex the San Juan Islands (the bastards!)...
We are saving... blah blah blah...
How about saving our ability to defend ourselves, and the very nation our ancestors handed down?
Funny what this chump decides to protect, and what he doesn’t.
More Federal land = More Federal union workers to “administer” it. Plain and simple.
Thanks to rockrr for the ping. Seems action is needed.
Say WA? Evergreen State ping
Quick link: WA State Board
FReepmail sionnsar if you want on or off this ping list.
Ping sionnsar if you see a Washington state related thread.
I hereby designate Washington DC a jacka** zone.
The WSJ had a superb article on small nuclear plants and how they could revolutionize electricity production. Hopefully this will allow even more nuclear plants in the West, allowing more development. It is a shame the Feds are thinking of locking up more land.
Problem with that is that states are turning (certainly here in MI) over to the feds because they can’t afford to maintain the lands.
I am confused with this sentence. Are you accusing Doc Hastings of trying to get the land designated for a monument?
Klinton killed of the last gasp of the Kairarowits power project where SO CAl power companies would rape the Utah countryside to send power to LA and SD.
Here is an extract from a site with a bit of background....
KAIPAROWITS
As a geological feature, the Kaiparowits Plateau in southern Utah’s Kane County presents what geologist C.E. Dutton in 1880 designated as an “excellent example” of the ancient remnants of the state’s topography. In 1869 the famed western explorer John Wesley Powell described the plateau as “long and narrow,” fronted by “storm-carved cliffs” rising to an elevation of from 2,000 to 4,000 feet.
For many modern Utahns, however, the Kaiparowits Plateau is better known as the focal point of a heated confrontation between developers and preservationists rather than for its natural wonders. In mid-October 1965, nearly a hundred years after Major Powell’s expedition viewed the plateau, William R. Gould, vice president of Southern California Edison, a Los Angeles-based utility company, stood below the towering cliffs of the Kaiparowits Plateau and announced to a gathering of representatives of local and state governmental agencies plans to construct a mammoth coal-fired power plant at Kaiparowits. The region had ample coal deposits to keep such a plant operating for several decades. So a consortium of energy producers in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Phoenix hoped to pool their resources to build a generating station which would guarantee an adequate supply of electrical power to the ever-growing urban Southwest.
Many of the Utahns who heard Gould outline these development goals were ecstatic. Southern Utah had long been plagued by poverty and isolation which had retarded the area’s growth. Now hope of a better, more prosperous life was looming on the horizon. The Kaiparowits project (sometimes called the Kane County Project) was expected to bring a small army of scientists, engineers, and construction workers to Kane County. And this population increase would also bring an influx of much-needed money. Rural communities like Kanab, Henrieville, and Cannonville began to dream of a more prosperous existence.
Yet, ten years after the project was announced the consortium was still battling environmental interests which continuously pressured the federal government to safeguard the ecology and clean air of the region. As the fight dragged on and construction costs escalated, the vision of a mighty power plant in the wilderness of southern Utah and the anticipated wealth it would bring slowly vanished. For the utility companies as well as many of the residents of Kane County, Kaiparowits was quickly becoming a nightmare. Finally, in 1975, Southern California Edison decided to abandon the project, following years of frustrating battles with the Bureau of Land Management over environmental safeguards.
Oddly, SoCalEdison was able to build a massive coal project outside of Delta Utah, and ship the power to SoCal. Inside of using coal from the site, as was the plan at KPTS it is shipped by rail acros the state. And GreenPeace (spits) loves to take credit for killing the Kairarowits project but is oddly silent on it lack of success on the InterMountain Power Project, just south of the earlier battle.
Then the states could sell what they could not manage.
No. I was listing my reasons to bother sionnsar for a ping. Had it only been a reference to Hastings alone I probably would have let it go, but the fact that the San Juan islands are listed as possible seizures compelled me to notify him.
Sorry for the confusion ;)
The land should all be sold to pay down the public dept.
It doesn’t really matter who buys it, the minute the land is outside of the Federal government’s hands, the Federal government loses any and all authority to uses it as a legal clam to control over policy in our states.
I don’t care if you sell it to private interest in communist China, anyone and everyone is better then the United states Federal government owning it.
Once its out of Federal hands our states can eminent domain it back if we need to.
Besides we need the money to pay down our dept.
Had me worried there for awhile as Doc Hastings is a really good person.
Nah, I really appreciated his comments, and I’m always happy to see a Washington State voice speaking out against 0bamination...;)
Clinton also seized an entire mountain range in Oregon by executive order at the end of his term.
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