112th Congress might be first since 1966 to shun wilderness bills

The 112th Congress could become the first since 1966 to designate no acres anywhere in the United States for protection under the Wilderness Act.

There are currently 27 pending bills that would designate wilderness in 13 states, including five measures that would protect public land in California as wilderness, four that would designate additional wilderness in Colorado, four that would protect additional wilderness in New Mexico, and three that would add more acres in Oregon to the National Wilderness Preservation System.

“Some of the bills that are being held up are wilderness-only bills," David Moulton, the senior director for legislative affairs at the Wilderness Society, said. "Most of them are bills that combine wilderness with the protection of other uses."

Moulton explained that bills designating new wilderness are bottled up in the House Natural Resources Committee.

"Right now, the sitting chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington, is so ideologically opposed to adding any wilderness to the preservation system that he refuses to allow bills through his committee," Moulton said. "So bills that have been proposed to protect wild areas in states represented by Republicans, where there’s broad support and [the bill is] introduced by a Republican, are going to the House Natural Resources Committee and dying there."

Hastings, 71, issued a statement in Nov. 2011 that indicated skepticism about additional wilderness legislation, arguing that enough has already been set aside.

"The federal government already owns more lands than it can afford to properly manage," Hastings said. "We must make thoughtful and careful land-use decisions that reflect our country’s current economic situation, keep our lands healthy, and exemplify the importance of ensuring public access to public lands for multi-use purposes.”

The prospects for wilderness designations by means of a large bill that wraps many smaller proposals into one probably aren't any greater than they are for the individual wilderness bills, at least if Hastings' views carry the day in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives.

In Jan. 2011 Hastings told the Seattle Times that the House Republican majority would not pass so-called omnibus land conservation bills.

Even if there were a reasonable chance for an omnibus bill to move through the House of Representatives before adjournment near the end of December, the Senate may find it difficult to find the time to take up such expansive legislation.

The chamber, like the House of Representatives, is intensely engaged in efforts to resolve the federal government's fiscal crisis.

"All I can say is that the Senate is an infinitely flexible place, so anything can happen," Bill Wicker, a spokesperson for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said. "But, at the same time, lame duck is a very challenging environment for all legislation."

Wicker was using the phrase commonly applied to the period in which the members of the Senate and House of Representatives meet that occurs between an election and the start of the next Congress.

The outlook is not uniformly bad for public lands legislation. A measure that would re-designate Pinnacles National Monument in California as a national park passed the House unanimously.

The House version of the bill does not designate any new wilderness. Instead, it would re-name the existing Pinnacles wilderness to honor a pioneer family from the area.

"Since all the land is already under the control of the National Park Service, it doesn’t add any costs," Adam Russell, a spokesperson for the bill's sponsor, U.S. Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif., said.

A companion bill introduced by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., that remains pending in the Senate would add an additional 3,000 acres of wilderness within the new national park.

Photo of Pinnacles National Monument courtesy Wikimedia.

Note: A version of this story also appears at Examiner.com.

House budget resolution includes cuts to many environmental programs

The U.S. House of Representatives passed early Saturday a landmark resolution that would impose the largest rescissions of appropriated spending on federal agencies in decades. Included in the targets for budget cuts are a variety of programs related to environmental law and policy.

According to the Washington Post, the Environmental Protection Agency was the target of a number of amendments aimed at limiting the agency's ability to enforce regulations or create new ones.

EPA would, if the relevant provisions of the resolution are adopted by the Senate and President Obama signs the final resolution, be forbidden to regulate greenhouse gases.

A 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision required EPA to determine whether carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas emitted to the atmosphere by motor vehicles, factories, and power plants, is a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. If so, that law mandates that EPA limit its emissions.

Last year EPA issued a regulation that would cap CO2 emissions by the largest industrial sources.

The budget resolution would also deprive the agency of more than $8 million currently available to fund its greenhouse gas registry. That cut would be in addition to another $5 million reduction for this year already proposed by the majority party in the House of Representatives.

The registry does not force emitters of carbon dioxide, methane, and other industrial greenhouse gases to limit those emissions. Originally created by rule in October 2009, it requires emitters to report to EPA the amount of greenhouse gases released to the atmosphere above a specified threshold.

EPA would also be barred from spending money to grant waivers of requirements relating to the ethanol content of gasoline and be forbidden to spend money needed to revoke a Clean Water Act permit.

Other adopted amendments to the budget resolution would forbid any EPA efforts to regulate fossil fuel combustion waste, prevent the expenditure of money needed to modify the national ambient air quality standard applicable to course particulates, enforce a Clean Air Act regulation that limits cement plant emissions, and develop or implement surface mining and reclamation guidelines.

In addition, EPA would not be permitted to spend money to implement revised water quality standards in Florida and the agency's Environmental Appeals Board would be barred from spending money to decide whether air pollution permits have been properly granted to companies seeking to drill for oil off Alaska's Arctic coast.

Other agencies with environment-related missions are not spared, but the budget hits they would take are significant less than those aimed at EPA.

The Bureau of Reclamation would lose $1.9 million in funding for water and related programs, the Bureau of Land Management would lose $2 million in funds, and the Forest Service would be prohibited from spending money to implement the Travel Management Rule, which limits the use of roads and trails in the National Forest system by off-road vehicles.

The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation would not be able to spend money to implement any of its regulations, while the National Atmospheric & Oceanic Administration would be prohibited from spending money to create a Climate Service, as it announced it would in Feb. 2010.

The proposed Climate Service would consolidate NOAA functions related to acquisition of climate data and reporting of that information. The administrative organization would not require the expenditure of any more money on those functions than the agency already spends, according to an information sheet published by NOAA.

NOAA would also lose the ability to regulate fish harvests in four management zones along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

The recently announced agreement to remove several dams on the Klamath River in Oregon would be, at minimum, delayed by the budget resolution.

An amendment adopted during the marathon debate Friday night and early Saturday morning would forbid expenditure of any money needed to study the effects of removing Iron Gate Dam, John C. Boyle Dam, and the Copco No. 1 and No. 2 dams.

That study, which the U.S. government agreed to undertake as part of a settlement of a complex dispute over re-licensing the dams, is to assess the costs and benefits of removal. It is to be completed by Mar. 31, 2012.

If Congress and the voters of California approve removal of one or more of the Klamath River dams, they could be breached by 2020 under the historic 2010 agreements.

Ongoing efforts to clean up the heavily-polluted Chesapeake Bay would also be affected. Another adopted amendment deprives that program of most of its appropriation for this year.

The Obama administration had sought more than $400 million to fund that effort this year. Obama had ordered inter-agency cooperation in the effort in 2009.

Congress' in-house environmental programs would suffer a fiscal blow, as the "Green the Capitol" program would lose $1.5 million, and the White House would not be able to pay a senior advisor focused on climate change and energy.

Even the United Nations would suffer financial losses. The resolution would forbid the U.S. government to expend dollars in support of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The funding resolution proposes to cut more than $60 billion in federal spending this year. It does not attempt to significantly lower spending on entitlement programs or national defense, which are the principal contributors to federal spending.

The federal government's budget deficit for this fiscal year is anticipated to be about $1.6 trillion.

Congress must pass, and President Obama must sign, a funding resolution on or before March 4 if ongoing government operations in the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, are to continue.

Incoming Speaker Boehner eliminates House global warming committee

The only Congressional committee exclusively focused on global warming will soon be in the cooler.

A spokesperson for House of Representatives Republican caucus leader John Boehner of Ohio, who is expected to become speaker when the 112th Congress convenes in January, said that the GOP would eliminate the Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming.

"We have pledged to save taxpayers' money by reducing waste and duplication in Congress," Michael Steel said in a statement. "The Select Committee on Global Warming was created by Democrats simply to provide political cover to pass their job-killing national energy tax. It is unnecessary, and taxpayers will not have to fund it in the 112th Congress."

The death of the committee will not mean that the chamber cannot consider legislation touching on the issue or investigate the problem.

Before 2007, when the special panel was created, climate change issues were under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Committee on Natural Resources.

It is expected that those two panels will regain control over the subject when the new Congress convenes in January.

Nevertheless, the Democratic chair of the select committee lamented its impending death.

"We are not going away because the problems that climate change presents are too dangerous, too urgent, for us to disappear into the abyss of cynicism and lost opportunity," Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said. "We are not going away because China and India and Germany are not going away as competitors for global energy dominance. We are not going away because the national security threats from our continued dependence on foreign oil are not going away."

One Republican even had positive things to say about the panel's work during the 110th and 111th Congresses.

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., had opposed its creation but said at the committee's last meeting Wednesday that it had been a useful forum to discuss the issue.

"This hearing will be the last of the select committee," he said. "And while I was initially skeptical of the select committee's mission, it ultimately provided a forum for bipartisan debate, and an opportunity for House Republicans to share a different view on the pressing energy and environment issues that we currently face."

The Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming did more than provide an avenue for debate. Overall, according to Politico, it held more than 75 hearings. They focused on renewable energy, reducing American dependence on oil resources obtained abroad, and the impacts of global warming.