Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011 - Continuing

Floor Speech

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Mr. HERGER. Mr. Chairman, as a staunch supporter of dams, I understand my colleague's position on this issue, and I support this amendment.

The constituents I represent overwhelmingly oppose removing functioning hydropower and its associated benefits. I fully share that concern and the disturbing precedent it sets. I think it represents a monumental failure that current Federal laws and regulations provide no alternative that will allow these dams to be operated as cost effectively as they were during the previous licensed term or that will allow the Federal Government to fully meet the obligations it made to the Klamath Basin agriculture with the development of the Klamath Reclamation Project.

As such, this amendment by itself will, unfortunately, not address the underlying issue, which is the environmental extortion that impacts property owners across the West and that impacts the hardworking people who depend on the land for their livelihoods.

Our laws are grossly out of balance, so I look forward to working with Chairman Hastings and Chairman McClintock on the necessary reforms to prevent this continued abuse and to bring greater certainty to the Klamath Basin's agricultural community.

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Mr. HERGER. Mr. Chairman, I'm offering this amendment after much frustration and a lack of responsiveness from the Forest Service to locally elected officials and the recreation community in northern California and across the Nation. For a couple of years now, I and northern California constituents I represent have tried many times to work with the Forest Service on the 2005 Travel Management Rule. Yet we have been completely ignored as the Forest Service presses ahead with route designations that in some cases will eliminate more than 90 percent of the previous access.

Locally elected officials are now at the point of considering litigation against the Forest Service to keep these federal lands open to recreation. It is disgraceful that local counties would have to spend valuable public funding to preserve access to our own national forests. Not only are our counties forced to defend themselves against well funded environmental activists trying to turn every acre of federal land into some kind of sanctuary, but now also against the very agency that is supposed to serve the public.

For these reasons, I believe it is necessary to impose a 7-month timeout on designating these routes.

Chairman Simpson, ultimately, we want a workable solution, and I hope to work with you and Chairman Hastings to ensure a more balanced implementation of the Travel Management Rule.

I hope that my colleagues can support this amendment.

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Mr. HERGER. I have to comment that really all we're doing is asking for a 7-month timeout so that we--our local officials, our local communities have not been counseled with, they have not been brought into the process, and to have 90 percent in many areas declared off-bounds is not reasonable.

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Mr. HERGER. Again, we're not saying we shouldn't look at this, we shouldn't examine it, we shouldn't have regulations. We should. Those of us who live in these areas, we care about the environment more than anyone does. That's not the question.

The question that is being presented and what we're asking for is, since the Forest Service has not been consulting with local government, they have not been consulting with the local communities, we are asking for a 7-month timeout so that they can consult with us and then we can continue to come up with a plan where we work together and not have, again, an all-powerful government in Washington dictating and preventing those that are local from being able to enjoy our own recreation in our national forest.

I urge an ``aye'' vote on this amendment.

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