Lee Amendment

Floor Speech

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, we are about to vote shortly on the Lee amendment.

I rise to speak in opposition to that amendment and to remind my colleagues that this is a vote that we took around the same time last year.

The Antiquities Act is one of our Nation's most successful conservation laws. It was signed into law in 1906 and used by President Theodore Roosevelt to designate Devils Tower in Wyoming as its first national monument.

In the 110 years since its enactment, the Antiquities Act has been used by 16 different Presidents--8 Republicans, 8 Democrats--to designate more than 140 national monuments, including the San Juan Islands and the Hanford Reach in the State of Washington. Nearly half of our national parks, including national icons, such as the Grand Canyon and Olympic National Park, were designated as national monuments under the Antiquities Act. However, the amendment of the Senator from Utah would effectively end the President's ability to use the Antiquities Act to protect these threatened lands. His amendment requires that the national monument designation will expire after 3 years unless Congress enacts a law specifically approving the designation, and the State in which the monument would be located would also have to approve the designation. So this amendment requires State and Federal approval over a Federal land designation, which is unprecedented, giving away Federal land management responsibilities to States and a veto over these conservation efforts.

I hope that, as my colleagues look at this first vote, they will oppose this amendment. As I said, I strongly do, and I hope our colleagues will look at their past record on this as well, because I am pretty sure we are all on record on our side in opposition to this amendment in the past.

With that, I know we are probably ready to proceed to the vote.

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, this amendment would direct the Department of the Interior to create a new education program to educate landowners about conservation programs. It also requires that if the Interior Department contacts landowners about selling property or participating in a Federal conservation program, that the landowner be provided information about the Federal conservation programs available. I think this information is already publicly available, so I don't oppose establishing it as a conservation education program, and I am happy to move this amendment by a voice vote.

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, speaking in opposition to this amendment, it is basically like Keystone ``light.'' The proponents want to have no environmental review of natural gas gathering pipelines, and that is why we should oppose it. With two exceptions, the amendment would require the Secretary of the Interior or Agriculture to approve the right to waive any gathering pipelines, unless they violate the Endangered Species Act or the National Historic Preservation Act. It would require the Secretary of the Interior or Agriculture to approve the right to waive with pipelines.

I consulted with the Department of the Interior, which had grave concerns about waiving those laws here. This amendment would significantly limit the Department's ability to gather relevant, scientific, technical information, and the public views about how to manage our public lands. So I encourage our colleagues to vote no.

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, we just cleared several amendments in a bipartisan fashion, working back and forth across the aisle, and I so appreciate our colleagues working so diligently on these tonight. If we want to keep making progress, obviously we have to keep communicating, but I thank everybody involved with getting these amendments done.

To my colleague from Alaska, thanks for her diligence in focusing on these issues. Hopefully we will resolve these issues tomorrow. The cloture motion has been filed, so we need to keep moving forward so that we can resolve these issues by the end of this week.
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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I did want to mention on amendment No. 3140 that I want to thank everybody who worked on that particular amendment tonight. I know tomorrow we are going to have a colloquy continuing the dialogue among all our colleagues who care about these issues as they relate to energy and biomass and making sure we are all continuing to work on this together. I want to point out that there will be a colloquy on that tomorrow.

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