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NATURAL RESOURCES: Chances slim for omnibus lands bill this week
By Noelle Straub and Eric Bontrager
Environment & Energy Daily
November 17, 2008
Chances have dimmed that an omnibus package of more than 150 public lands, water and resources bills will be approved this week.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had said before Congress adjourned for the elections that the Senate would take up the package during the lame-duck session. But with lawmakers focused on efforts to address the country's economic woes, it appears unlikely they will have time to address the omnibus measure.
There are enough votes to pass the omnibus, according to Energy and Natural Resources Committee spokesman Bill Wicker, but time is the main enemy.
"We're ready to rock and looking forward to this massive, very good lands package moving, but we know that it's a steep climb," Wicker said. "We stake our hopes in the recognition the Senate is an infinitely flexible place, and we're certainly hopeful we can get this through."
Reid spokesman Jim Manley said the focus this week will be on economic matters and that time for the omnibus depends on whether Republicans cooperate or oppose those measures.
"The focus next week will be on providing aid to the struggling auto industry along with an extension of unemployment insurance benefits," Manley said Friday. "There is no reason that we can't do both [with the omnibus], but in the end that is up to Republicans."
A bipartisan group of 20 senators sent a letter to Reid on Friday encouraging him to take up the omnibus this week. "Moving the omnibus lands bill this year will allow Congress to close this chapter on important public lands issues and begin fresh next year on a new energy and natural resources agenda," they wrote.
While generally noncontroversial, a few Republican lawmakers and business groups have called on Reid to hold off on the omnibus, which would designate almost 2 million acres as wilderness, among other provisions.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has threatened to hold up the package if it comes to the floor, claiming that the bills increase government spending and curtail energy development. "We've urged Reid not to bring it up during the lame duck," Coburn spokesman Don Tatro said last week. "But we're preparing as if it's going to happen."
Although the House has passed many of the bills in the omnibus individually, it would have to address the bill as a whole if the Senate approves the omnibus this week.
The omnibus combines a package of 53 bills the Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved by unanimous voice vote last month with a 96-bill package from the committee that was already awaiting consideration on the floor. Included in the package are 15 different proposals that would designate nearly 2 million acres of public lands as wilderness in California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, Virginia and West Virginia.
The bill also contains dozens of proposals authorizing new studies for national park units, heritage areas and wild and scenic rivers. While supportive of the designations, the Bush administration has long held that Congress should hold off on new studies until the Interior Department completes its backlog of studies already authorized.
One of the most controversial measures in the package would allow construction of a road through Alaska's Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. The bill would authorize a land swap that would permit a road connecting the villages of King Cove and Cold Bay in exchange for additional wilderness for the refuge.
Residents of King Cove say the road is needed to connect them to the Cold Bay airport, but opponents say the project is unnecessary and could do irreparable ecological harm.
Laura Tanis, a spokeswoman for Aleutians East Borough that includes both Cold Bay and King's Cove, said the larger Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate next year combined with the new Obama administration may make it more difficult to get the measure approved if the package is delayed.
The omnibus includes a proposal to codify the 26-million-acre National Landscape Conservation System. Created by the Clinton administration, the NLCS is now the subject of an Interior inspector general investigation into possible illegal coordination between lobbyists for environmental groups and federal officials of the system.
Next year
Craig Obey, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, is pessimistic the bill will pass this week and is already thinking about what it means for next year.
"What it means is delay," Obey said. "And the question will be then what would they do early next year. I suspect they will want to take up this unfinished business as soon as they can. The question will be how does the package evolve between now and then, and when do they bring it up."
House Natural Resources Chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) has said that if the Senate does not pass the resources bills during the lame duck, Congress will take them up again next year, perhaps packaging them in another omnibus "right off the bat."
But some of the authors of the bills will not be around next year, either by retirement or having lost their re-election bids. And lawmakers could push to re-examine or change portions of the bill next year, such as Izembek, perhaps throwing off the carefully constructed compromise of the current legislation.
"The good thing is there's a lot of great stuff in here," Obey said. "I would fully expect when they bring something up next year, they'll bring up a package that can pass."
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