Eightmile Wild and Scenic River Act
Floor Speech
EIGHTMILE WILD AND SCENIC RIVER ACT -- (House of Representatives - July 31, 2007)
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Mr. PEARCE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah for his hard work on this issue. I thank the chairman of the subcommittee. We're good friends. And all three of us come from the West, where we are very familiar with public ownership of land.
One of the things that really concerns us most about the threat of condemnation and about the way that home owners, private property owners would be affected is shown in this chart that I have here. The management plan would put a cap on impervious services, and those services could not be paved. If the road to your house washes out, then you simply can't do it.
Now, there are all sorts of takings that the Federal Government can do, and this is one, where they simply won't allow you to fix your property up or fix the roads leading to your property.
So you would lose value because you could not own a house and sell a house that has a road leading to it that has washed out. You cannot add a room to your home; so feasibly we could say that we are limiting procreation. If you have another kid, you can't build a room in the back to accommodate them. You can't go build on your property if you have not already built there. You can't go in and build. The private land is impacted seriously.
But beyond that is there a real concern? Do we have a concern for the public taking of private lands and making it theirs? Are there examples in our history as a Nation where we maybe have extended the power of a Federal Government, a central government that is too strong, a central government that begins to overburden and outweigh and out muscle the citizens? If so, then it is imperative that we give voice to those citizens who have no other voice, who have been left out completely, who are going to be marginalized by these management plans.
I think that we do have a Federal Government that will extend too far, and I think that we have a concern here. Now, it is unfortunate that we have come to this point because the underlying bill, the one that says we would like to preserve a wild and scenic river, is one that there is almost no discussion about. The entire discussion is about private property rights, that constitutional right that gives us each our place to retreat to in the evening without the government's coming in and taking either part of its value or simply confiscating the whole thing.
Now, confiscation is a language that seems abrupt, that seems too harsh, that we really do not face that sort of circumstance today in this country. I would tell you that, as chairman of the National Parks Subcommittee last year, we heard testimony from the Franciscan Friars of Atonement in New York. That group had fought the National Park Service for decades, saying don't take our land. But through eminent domain, the Federal Park Service had continued to put pressure. Again, it was the threat of what they could do that was used as the hammer.
So we find ourselves now with this bill, which the ranking member adequately points out that there is an underlying bill that contains language that nothing contained in this section shall preclude the use of condemnation. It is a process that has been used frequently.
I was recently in Shenandoah National Park, and you would think that Shenandoah is just a great location, and it is. But the underlying story is one that is told right now in the Visitors Center in Shenandoah, and it is about the confiscation, about moving, it seems to me, about 4,000 families out of their homes so that that could be a big park area. We did not want those inconvenient people living there; so we simply moved them out for their own good. We moved them to much better places regardless if they wanted to move or not.
In my own State of New Mexico, the White Sands Missile Range exists there. It is 100 miles north and south and it is 40 miles east and west, 100 miles by 40 miles, and almost all of that land was taken by condemnation.
Condemnation occurs when a too strong central Federal Government just wants to go ahead and move. Forget those pesky citizens.
The Supreme Court recently in the Kelo decision said that governments can, in fact, take private property and redistribute it to another private firm. That is what is at stake both left and right. Both agreed in this circumstance. Liberal and conservative, Democrats and Republicans, said the Kelo decision was one of the most atrocious in taking private property rights away from people.
Madam Speaker, I would simply point out that private property rights are the foundation of our rights. I would urge all Members to vote for the motion to recommit.
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