House Bill Proposes Savage Cuts in Land Protection Funding

Urge Your Representative to Restore Funding, End Tongass Subsidies

The House of Representatives this week will take up the Interior Appropriations bill that funds our land management agencies. For the first time ever, the Congress proposes to eliminate funding for all new land acquisitions in Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) and to slash funding for the Forest Legacy program.

But in a stark display of twisted priorities, the bill would continue massive subsidies for road-building and logging on our largest national forest, the Tongass in Alaska. We still have a chance to restore some common sense to this legislation but we’ll need your help to do it!

Please Take Action Today!
Our representatives need to know that you oppose the elimination of LWCF land acquisition money and deep cuts to Forest Legacy funding. And they need to know that you support a package of conservation-minded amendments that would help protect the Tongass, safeguard poor and minority communities that now suffer disproportionately from dirty air and water, and would block weakened rules for sewage dumping in our waterways. There’s very little time: only phone calls and e-mails will reach your representative in time.

Sample Letter for Campaign

Subject: Interior Appropriations bill

Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,

I write in regard to the Interior Appropriations bill. Of greatest concern to me is the fact that the bill reported by the committee essentially zeroes out funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) and drastically reduces funding for the Forest Legacy Program.

Taken together, these two programs are the best tools available to us to ensure that burgeoning population and sprawl do not consume our most important environmental and recreational lands. It is profoundly shortsighted to gut these programs at a time when sprawl accelerates.

I also urge you to support several conservation amendments likely to be offered during floor debate. One, an amendment by Reps. Chabot and Andrews, would eliminate the outrageous subsidy taxpayers give to logging companies by paying for new logging roads in America's largest national forest, the Tongass in Alaska.

The Tongass is a wonderland of wildlife habitat, important to fishers, hunters, Native people and local communities. More roads and clearcuts can only harm them. Already the Tongass has more than 5,000 miles of roads and the timber available from existing roads is more than adequate to supply local mills.

Last year, taxpayers spent $48 million for logging and road building on the Tongass, but took in only $800,000 from logging companies in return. Over the next decade, if the Forest Service carries out its logging plans, the cost could exceed $1.2 billion. It is long past time to stop subsidizing timber companies to ravage one of our great national treasures.

Here are other amendments I strongly urge you to support:

- One by Rep. Alcee Hastings to help to help ensure environmental justice for low-income and minority communities; and - One by Reps. Bart Stupak and Clay Shaw to prevent the EPA from making final its proposed weakened sewage dumping policy.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Campaign Launched:
May 15, 2005

Background Information

LWCF: A Promise About to be Broken

The Land and Water Conservation Fund is the nation’s primary source of money to protect places important for their environmental and recreational values from loss to development. The Congress created the fund in 1964 and authorized it to receive $900 million a year in royalties from offshore oil and gas drilling, a level it has rarely achieved.

Besides setting funding levels, the appropriations bill specifies particular tracts to be acquired. This year, the President’s budget sought $132 million for 32 projects, including lands within the Superior National Forest, Cape Cod National Seashore, the Bonneville Shoreline Trail and scores of others. The House bill includes no more than housekeeping money for the program and nothing at all for these critical acquisitions. Without federal money to acquire them, these lands may be developed.

Forest Legacy

The Forest Legacy program provides money to states to help protect privately owned forests. It suffered less deep, but still severe, cuts in the committee. Forest Legacy has been an enormously popular and remarkably successful program. It provides states and communities matching grants to protect environmentally important forests from development, through either the purchase of land or of development rights.

The bill that will go to the House floor this week includes only $25 million, a full $55 million below the President’s budget request.

The Tongass: America’s Rainforest

The Tongass National Forest in Alaska is the nation’s largest, a national treasure that is indispensable to salmon fishermen, hunters, native cultures and local economies in southeast Alaska.

It is also under siege. Last year, we taxpayers subsidized the timber industry to the tune of $48 million for road building associated with the disastrous logging program on the Tongass. Those timber sales brought in less than $800,000. Since 1982, the Forest Service has wasted nearly $1 billion taxpayer dollars on Tongass logging 1982.

If ever the term “good money after bad” had a poster child, the Tongass subsidy is it. As it currently stands, the Interior Appropriations bill proposes to continue to pay for roads that are used primarily by private logging companies.

Roadless Area Sales

At this rate, if the Forest Service is allowed to continue its Tongass logging binge, taxpayers will lose $1.2 billion over the next decade and will lose as well an irreplaceable piece of our natural heritage. The Forest Service plans over 50 timber sales in Tongass roadless areas.

Last year, a strong bi-partisan majority in the House (222-205) okayed an amendment to prohibit the Forest Service from spending your tax money to build more logging roads in the Tongass. Unfortunately, the Senate never took up its own Interior spending bill last year, so the amendment never became law. Reps. Steve Chabot (R-OH) and Robert Andrews (D-NJ) offered that amendment last year and will offer it again this week.

Other Important Amendments

In addition to the Tongass amendment, conservation-minded members of the House intend to offer several other important amendments.

Environmental Justice
Federal agencies are bound by an Executive Order (12898) to ensure that their actions do not create adverse impacts that fall disproportionately on minority and low-income populations. Recent reports have found that the agencies have consistently failed to meet that requirement and that these very communities often suffer the first and the worst of environmental and human health impacts.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL)will offer an amendment help us actually move toward environmental justice in federal environmental programs by prohibiting the spending of federal money in any way that’s inconsistent with the Executive Order’s requirements.

Anti-Sewage Dumping
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)is moving to make final a policy that would allow the discharge of inadequately treated sewage into the nation’s waterways. That would allow more viruses, parasites, toxics and other pollutants into our waters at the risk of human health and safety. Waterborne illnesses would increase. So would sewage treatment costs, shellfish bed closures and damage to fish, coral reefs and other wildlife.

Reps. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Clay Shaw (R-FL) will offer an amendment to prevent EPA from making the rule final.

How You Can Help: Take Action Now!

Please take a moment ask your Member of Congress to oppose the virtual elimination of funding for LWCF and drastic cuts in the Forest Legacy program and to support the package of conservation amendments that will be offered to the Interior Appropriations bill on the House floor. Time is short, so only phone calls and e-mails will work. You can look up your representative's phone number here:
http://ga1.org/wilderness/leg-lookup/search.tcl

Please consider phoning your representative’s office. It’s quick and simple. Just ask for the appropriations staff person, identify yourself and tell the staff person you are calling about the Interior Appropriations bill. Urge your representative to do everything possible to restore funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund levels and to reverse the drastic cuts in the Forest Legacy Program.

Then ask your representative to support these conservation amendments:

An amendment by Reps. Chabot and Andrews to eliminate taxpayer subsidies for logging roads on the Tongass National Forest;
An amendment by Rep. Alcee Hastings to help ensure environmental justice for low-income and minority communities; and
An amendment by Reps. Bart Stupak and Clay Shaw to prevent the EPA from finalizing its proposed weakened sewage dumping policy.