I was sorry to hear earlier this week that this Committee and the United States Senate will be losing one of its finest Members and greatest leaders at the end of next year.
During the years that you have been Chairman, the environment has known no better friend in Congress than you, Senator Chafee. Your leadership will be sorely missed.
This Committee has long had the reputation for being the most non-partisan on Capital Hill, a tradition you have upheld with great honor, Mr. Chairman. I can only hope that the next Chairman of this Committee will be able to live up to the standard you have set.
However, there is still much work to be done and I am glad that you have chosen to turn to this fascinating and important subject for today's hearing.
In this Committee we work on some of the most complex, scientific, technical, and, at times, obscure material imaginable. However, today we are going to begin a dialogue on something pretty straightforward: Quality of Life.
We are going to call it a lot of different things: The Liveability Agenda, Open Space Protection, sprawl, smart growth, and Lands Legacy. But they all describing the quality of life issues that face so many of us today, particularly those of us who live in urban or suburban areas.
Our challenge is to find the tools and resources that our communities need to ensure that our cities and towns can grow and develop in the ways that its residents want.
These challenges are incredible and inter-related. Problems of congestion, poor air and water quality, issues of water quantity, waste disposal, and sewage treatment are all problems of modern life that communities struggle with.
Nevada as a state is one of the fastest growing in the country. Las Vegas is one of the nation's fastest growing cities. 5000 - 7000 new people call Nevada home each month, many of them settling into the Las Vegas Valley.
With this growth, which has been wonderful for Nevada, has come many of the problems that we have begun to associate with livability issues. People move to Nevada and to Las Vegas for the wonderful quality of life, so it is incumbent upon Nevadans to make sure that standard of living is maintained.
During her recent campaign for Governor, Las Vegas Mayor Jan Jones made livability issues and urban sprawl a centerpiece of her campaign.
Like so many other areas nationwide, the communities of the Las Vegas Valley have begun to work together on regional solutions to many of these tricky problems.
Just last month, the Southern Nevada Strategic Planning Authority released its plan for responsible growth in the Valley. This is a several hundred page document dedicated to responsibly and creatively answering the question: "What will Southern Nevada look like 20 years from now?"
Mr. Chairman, I am looking forward to our field hearing on this subject in Las Vegas later this Spring. We are going to pack the hearing room with citizens and local officials, all of whom are eager to share with you the many unique and innovative things local people are doing in Southern Nevada to make it a wonderful place to call home now and for many years to come.
One thing I am sure they will tell us: If the federal government has good ideas or resources to deveote to these livability issues, then they want our help. Otherwise, they just want us to get out of the way.
Let me be clear about one important thing: I am not sitting here today as an advocate of some system of federal zoning or any other such nonsense. I don't think that any of my colleagues are, either.
I am saying, however, that the federal government has a role to play, particularly with so much development currently taking place in coastal areas, flood plains, or, in the case of Nevada, on land that borders on federal property (and probably used to be federal property)
In many parts of the West, the federal government has been a not-so-great absentee landlord. Communities have developed as much according to federal land use policy as they have according to local land use policy. It has not always been a great way to go.
Before concluding, I am delighted to see such great attention being focused upon the various proposals to boost the Land and Water Conservation Fund and other land management funds. We cannot continue to ignore the impacts of development on sensitive areas.
The LWCF has been critical to the efforts of the California and Nevada congressional delegations to protect and preserve Lake Tahoe. These funds have been used in dozens of other states for similar conservation purposes. LWCF is a tremendously worthwhile program.
One area that has not been addressed in any great detail in any of the LWCF proposals I have seen thus far is our National Parks. We are literally loving our National Parks to death and Senator Graham and I hope to be able to work with all of you that have drafted LWCF proposals to see about doing something more than we are doing to protect sensitive and important areas within the Park System.
Thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Chairman. As you can see, it is possible to cover a lot of ground on this topic. Thank you, again for holding this important hearing.