-Caveat Lector-
Babbitt Gets Feisty, Warns Congress of More Monuments
Wednesday, October 20, 1999
BY CHRISTOPHER SMITH
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
WASHINGTON -- History may show that Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante
National Monument was just Bruce Babbitt's first step.
The secretary of Interior told Congress in no uncertain terms Tuesday
that other choice scenic and historic areas of the western U.S. landscape
will be set aside as national monuments -- with or without Congress's
approval.
"I am not prepared to sit back and let this Congress do what it has done
for the last seven years on these areas, which is virtually nothing," an
unusually feisty Babbitt said during a hearing on a bill intended to
head-off a presidential declaration of the Shivwits Plateau National
Monument on the Arizona Strip. "If Congress does not act and produce an
acceptable bill protecting these lands, I will consider asking the president
to use his power."
That "power" is the 1906 Antiquities Act, dusted off by the
administration in 1996 to designate the 1.9 million-acre Grand
Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. It was one of the
most substantial land conservation decisions made this decade, yet it
happened seemingly overnight with little consultation between the Democratic
Clinton administration and the state's Republican leaders.
Next time there will be no surprises, said Babbitt. But he also won't
wait more than a year for Congress to take protective action before asking
President Clinton to wield the power of his pen and designate a monument.
"The clock is running," he said, noting his tenure as chief steward of
America's public lands is in its twilight. "This proposal for the Shivwits
Plateau was announced a year ago and today is the first hearing it has had
here. That's the problem. I want to strike this notion that Congress has not
had enough time to deal with these issues."
Areas Babbitt mentioned as possible national monuments besides the
Shivwits Plateau in northern Arizona, included the Perry Mesa and Black
Canyon in central Arizona, Steens Mountain in Oregon and a portion of the
Santa Rosa and San Jacinto mountain ranges in northern California.
In an interview after the hearing, Babbitt said he has no plans for
another Utah monument. "I have told the governor I have no intention of
proposing any additional monuments within the boundaries of the state of
Utah," he said.
The frank acknowledgment that the Department of Interior is considering
new national monuments infuriated some House members.
At one point, Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., asked if Babbitt would provide
the committee with a list of all areas under study or consideration for
national monument designation.
Babbitt's one word answer: "No."
After a stunned silence, the secretary added, "I don't mean to be
disrespectful."
But he minced no words when it came to Arizona Republican Rep. Bob
Stump's bill creating a Shivwits Plateau National Conservation Area as an
alternative to the national monument.
"The bill is a step backward," Babbitt said. "It provides less
protection than we have now under existing regulations."
That was not what some residents of the Arizona Strip, still smarting
over the Grand Staircase coup, wanted to hear.
"The land has allowed us to raise our families and to find a better way
of life," said Kane County Commissioner Joe Judd, who testified in favor of
Stump's bill. "Now, the very land that was once hard, unyielding and
sometimes cruel, is being legislated into areas zoned for wilderness
preservation, as if it could suddenly revert back to historic notions and
wild imagination."
http://www.sltrib.com/10201999/nation_w/39645.htm
Bard
The Center for Exposing Corruption in Our Federal Government
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