Issues

Property Rights

Private ownership of property is a fundamental right in America. Along with that ownership comes a certain expectation that landowners will be able to legally use their land as they see fit, so long as others are not harmed by that use. Over the years, that expectation has eroded as federal, state and local governments have passed laws that impact how a landowner uses his/her land. Furthermore, governments have been obtaining property through eminent domain to use for various purposes including roads, parks, open space and conservation areas and other activities.

In the United States, the "taking" of private property is prohibited by the Constitution. However, actually getting relief under the Fifth Amendment has been hard for property owners to achieve. Determining what constitutes a taking and the appropriate remedies when it occurs have proven problematic for the Courts. Recent Supreme Court actions have been particularly alarming, as the Court has seemingly embraced an expansive view of governments’ rights to invoke eminent domain to seize private property for other purposes.

Recent years have seen an erosion of the concept of “private property ownership” under the U.S. Constitution. The practical effect of the taking of privately owned property through over-regulation or acquisition has been a reduction in the economic productivity from that land and a lessening of the tax revenues necessary to support local communities and states. In June of 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kelo v. City of New London that local governments may seize private property to be turned over for private development. The Court’s 5-4 decision allows local governments to use eminent domain to seize property for redevelopment, even if that development primarily benefits a private company.

Property rights are under attack by all levels of government. Current regulations need to be reformed to protect private property rights and reduce "takings" by the government without fair compensation. Since the earliest days, the Western Caucus has taken a lead role in standing up for property rights in the halls of Congress. We will continue to oppose excessive uses of eminent domain and to offer bold and far-reaching solutions to the most egregious regulatory takings and compensation problems.
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Responsible Domestic Energy Development

The Western Caucus believes America needs to increase its energy independence through environmentally responsible development of our huge untapped domestic energy resources. We do our nation and the world a disservice when we continue to rely on foreign sources of oil. Based on the statements of President-elect Obama and the record of the newly expanded Congressional Democratic Majority, there is little doubt that the momentum for increasing domestic energy production will come to a grinding halt. This effort to reduce domestic energy production – from all sources – is shortsighted and not in the long-term interest of the public.

Members of the Western Caucus support policies that increase, diversify, and facilitate the production and delivery of reliable and affordable energy supplies from all domestic energy sources. We introduced a comprehensive energy package, the Americans for American Energy Act, during the 110th Congress to address these issues. Our energy proposals include:

Support Domestic Energy Resources Such as Oil Shale
It is estimated that more than 2 trillion barrels of oil are held in oil shale deposits most of which is located in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming. Oil shale is a sedimentary rock that releases a liquid that can be processed into oil when heated. The Department of the Interior owns more than 80 percent of the land where the richest and most easily recoverable deposits are currently found. These oil shale deposits represent more oil reserves than are contained in all the countries in the Middle East combined, and this resource is believed to be capable of eventually producing 10 million barrels a day for more than 100 years. The Western Caucus supports the development of these deposits into usable fuel for energy independence.

America’s Western oil shale deposit is the largest unexploited hydrocarbon resource on earth. It is estimated that more than two trillion barrels of oil are held in oil shale deposits scattered across the nation. That represents more oil reserves than are contained in all the countries in the Middle East combined.

The richest and most easily recoverable deposits are currently found in the Green River formation in Northeastern Utah, Northwestern Colorado, and Southwestern Wyoming. Estimates suggest Colorado’s total resources alone approach one trillion barrels of oil, which is four times as much oil as Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves. Today, the U.S. Department of the Interior owns more than 80 percent of this area. This resource base is believed to be capable of eventually producing 10 million barrels a day for more than 100 years.

While this gigantic resource of oil shale and tar sands is well known by geologists and energy experts, it has not been counted among our nation’s oil reserve because it is not yet being developed commercially. Companies have been waiting for the federal government to recognize publicly the existence of this resource as a potential reserve and to allow industry access to it.
Responsible Energy Development in ANWR
Most geologists agree that the potential of recoverable oil and gas on the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) may rival the initial reserves at Prudhoe Bay. In 1980, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated the Coastal Plain could contain up to 17 billion barrels of oil and 34 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. However, before oil and gas development in ANWR can proceed, Congress and the President need to authorize leasing and development. Should leasing be permitted and subsequent commercial discoveries be made, it will be an estimated 15 years or more before oil and gas production from ANWR reaches market. That production will then be urgently needed to help meet domestic demand, so taking advantage of this key resource is critical to our national energy security.

In 1996, the North Slope oil fields produced about 1.5 million barrels of oil per day, or approximately 25 percent of the U.S. domestic production. However, Prudhoe Bay, which accounts for over half of North Slope production, began to decline in 1988, and no new fields have yet been discovered with the potential to compensate for that decline. ANWR development offers us the best chance to replace this lost oil production. With oil prices now at over $70 per barrel, establishing reliable and productive domestic sources of oil and gas should and must be a high national priority.

Skyrocketing energy costs are taking a toll on families throughout the nation. Higher energy prices mean increased costs to farmers and ranchers, manufacturers, and residential consumers, many of whom already face tremendous economic challenges. Without new access to America’s vast oil and gas resources in the OCS, domestic oil and natural gas production will decline and costs will continue to escalate.
Promoting Renewable Energy
With domestic energy demands on the rise, renewable energy sources are becoming an increasingly important contributor to the nation's fuel mix. However, renewable energy constitutes just one element of a balanced fuel portfolio: clean coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydro power all are necessary components as well.

In recent years, renewable energy proponents have become aggressive in pursuing State and federal purchase mandates (so-called renewable portfolio standards). Though no federal mandate has yet been approved, a number of State portfolio standards are now on the books. Such mandates put energy providers in a difficult spot. They remove the flexibility that providers need to ensure they can reliably provide energy to consumers at the lowest possible price. There are a variety of policies besides rigid mandates that can be adopted to effectively promote renewable energy production. Production incentives are highly effective and should be made available for all forms of renewable energy, including hydroelectric facilities. Also important is regulatory reform. Because many of the renewable resources in the nation are located in public lands, a streamlined NEPA process would reduce the regulatory costs associated with permitting new renewable generation.

In order to ensure reliability and avoid rate increases to customers, companies need flexibility to determine how best to integrate renewable energy resources into their generation portfolios. The market, not mandates, should decide what economic burdens consumers are asked to pay for renewable sources.
Support the Environmentally-Sound Energy Development of the OCS
In the last 25 years, U.S. energy needs have grown dramatically while supplies have stayed virtually steady. In just the past decade alone energy demand increased by more than 12 percent while domestic production increased by less than one percent.

The Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) is estimated to hold nearly 500 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas resources and 90 billion barrels of oil. This is enough natural gas to heat 100 million homes for 60 years or enough oil to replace current Persian Gulf imports for 59 years.

Up until this last year, over 80 percent of the nation’s oil and natural gas resources on the OCS were completely off -limits to energy exploration and production due to Congressional moratoria and administrative withdrawals, despite a proven record of safety and environmental responsibility. Fortunately, President Bush withdrew the executive moratorium and Congress ended the shortsighted congressionally established moratorium. Unfortunately, many in Congress seek to re-impose both of these bans and once again lock up these valuable resources of the American people.

The Western Caucus believes that our nation does not suffer from a lack of domestic energy resources. However, many of our federal energy policies stop us from adequately accessing our domestic resources and increasing our nation's energy independence. Instead of putting our energy security in the hands of unstable foreign sources of oil, America should first utilize its own vast domestic energy sources.
Reject Counterproductive Taxes on U.S. Energy Producers
More than 60 percent of the oil used in the United States is imported. In the next 20 years, if American oil dependence is allowed to continue as it has in the past and the price of oil continues to increase as expected, more than three trillion dollars will be transferred from the United States economy to foreign countries for imported oil. America’s increased dependence on foreign sources of energy weakens our economy and our national security. Energy independence is a critical matter of national security, and the government needs to treat efforts to increase our independence with the same priority as any other national security issue.

At the same time, the oil and gas industry is of crucial importance to our economy and our nation’s energy security. It contributes billions of dollars to our GDP and provides 1.5 million jobs for American citizens. The last thing we need to be doing today is discouraging domestic energy production. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what many federal policymakers want to do.

With the recent increase in oil prices, some have called for enacting a revised version of the old Windfall Profit Tax. The Windfall Profits Tax was enacted in 1980 to raise revenue and to ensure that oil companies did not benefit unduly in a period of relatively high crude oil prices. It accomplished neither. What the Windfall Profits Tax did do, however, was to drain billions of dollars in industry revenues that could have been used to invest in new oil and gas production. By some estimates, as much as 1.6 billion fewer barrels of oil were produced domestically due to the Tax.

The tax penalties being suggested for the 111th Congress would substantially increase tax costs for U.S. oil and gas companies that compete for energy resources in the global marketplace. The U.S. needs to support policies that encourage, rather than discourage, responsible production of energy from domestic sources.

The oil and natural gas industry is not earning “windfall profits.” The reality is that the industry’s earnings have been very much in line with other industries, and often are lower. In fact, the oil and natural gas industry earned 5.7 cents for every dollar of sales compared to an average of 5.5 cents for all U.S. industry over the past five years.

Federal Lands

The federal government is the largest landowner in the United States, controlling more than 660 million acres. This represents nearly 1/3 of the entire land mass of the United States and is equivalent to an area more than six times the size of California. Over 90 percent of federal land is located in western states. The vast majority of these federal lands were set aside with the understanding that they would be managed for multiple use which would include grazing, recreation, conservation, and sensible natural resource development for the good of the nation and local communities. However, over the years Congress has imposed layer upon layer of laws and regulations. In many cases, these regulations are unreasonable and unnecessarily burdensome and add little or nothing to responsibly managing these lands. As a result, managing the federal lands now cost the American taxpayer billions of dollars a year more than they produce in revenue.

Despite the enormous land holdings already under its control, the federal government continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year to acquire additional land. In fact, over the past 10 years, federal land acquisition funding has averaged $347 million annually. Over the last forty years, the federal government has spent nearly $13 billion adding hundreds of thousands of acres to the federal estate. An area larger than the size of Florida has been added to the federal estate since John F. Kennedy was president.
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Federal Lands and Education

One of the often overlooked effects of continued massive federal land ownership is the impact on public education in the West. Even though state and local taxes of western states, as a percentage of personal income, are as high as or higher than other states, there is a persistent shortfall in funding for public education in the West. Part of this can be attributed to the amazing growth the West is experiencing. On average, western states have more students per classroom than the other 37 states, with enrollment projected to increase dramatically over the next 10 years. In contrast, eastern states student enrollment figures are expected to remain generally stable or might decrease over the same period. An even larger factor in education funding problems for western states is their inability to generate tax revenue due to the vast amounts of federal lands within their jurisdiction. Every acre of federal land is an acre that cannot be taxed by local governments. Since public education is heavily dependent on state and local property tax revenues, western states are suffering due to an inability to assess property taxes on federal land.

To address this, many members of the Western Caucus have endorsed legislation known as “The Action Plan for Public Lands and Education”, or APPLE. APPLE is a western states initiative aimed at alleviating the shortfall in funding public education in the West. The act would authorize Western States to select five percent of BLM and Forest Service lands within their state to be sold or leased, with the generated revenue dedicated solely to public education. Similar land disposal mechanisms have been set up for specific purposes in other states (such as in Clark County Nevada).
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Federalism

A fundamental principle of the Republican Party and of our Constitution is the belief that local governments are better suited to deal with local issues than a distant, out-of-touch federal government. State and local governments are closer to the people, more responsive to citizens, and better equipped for representing their constituents on many important issues. Recently, however, this tradition of constitutionally established local control has been seriously eroded due to usurpation of power by the federal government. Westerners are at the forefront in believing that the federal government should remove itself from historic and traditional local concerns.

Under the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." State and local governments are better suited to deal with local issues than a distant, out-of-touch federal government. Recently, however, this tradition of constitutionally established local control has been seriously eroded due to usurpation of power by the federal government. Over the years, the federal government has whittled away at these States' rights through legislation and regulations.

One arena that is a battle ground for States' rights is in the environmental arena. Congress has passed legislation that limits States' abilities to make decisions on water quality, water rights allocations, air quality and land use to name a few. For example, under the Clean Air Act, States are delegated the authority to implement the provisions of the Act, but federal land managers have developed regulations that give them veto power over any new project that may impact Federal Class I wilderness areas. On the water front, Congress has claimed federal reserved water rights for land designations, which hampers the ability of States to adjudicate water rights. There are countless other examples of the federal government overstepping its constitutional limits and encroaching on state power.

Some issues are inherently federal in nature, but those that are not should be left to the States to decide. When the federal government decides that a bureaucrat in Washington, D.C. should make decisions on local issues, often the result is contempt and frustration by people that are impacted. Because a federal agency has no accountability to local communities, the input of those who must live with the decision is often discounted or ignored altogether. The Western Caucus seeks policies that empower individuals to conserve natural resources and reduce the dependence on Federal mandates and regulatory controls. We also support locally driven incentive-based policies that reduce bureaucracy and process in natural resources-related law.
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Defending Multiple Use of Public Lands

It is every citizen's duty to manage our public lands responsibly to ensure water quality, wildlife habitat, and the multiple-use of our public land base. We need our public lands to be used in a way that appeals to all of our citizens, not to just a single, relatively narrow-minded group. The Western Caucus believes our public lands hold great benefits for all of us. There are many resources available on the land from our renewable forests, to the opportunities to raise cattle on them, to mining for minerals below the surface, to a wide variety of recreational activities, to ensuring the well-being of endangered species, and other wildlife values. Indeed, Congress intended for these resources to be used for a multitude of purposes, including the right of all Americans to access and enjoy the land's spectacular beauty.

Multiple use is a key element of responsible public lands management in the U.S. Throughout our history, non-park federal lands have been available for a variety of activities, from recreation and grazing to mining, energy development and forestry. These principles are embodied in the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act of 1960, in which Congress established that national forests are to be used “for outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and fish and wildlife purposes."

In recent years, a string of statutes and regulations have negatively impacted the ability of these sectors and others to make economic use of many public lands. Restrictions due to endangered species, historic preservation requirements, Clean Water Act regulations, and other laws have eroded the principles of multiple use.

The multiple use philosophy of public lands management -- which encourages the environmentally responsible use of lands for economic purposes -- has been a bedrock concept that has sustained much of the West's rural economy. Revenues that have been generated through grazing, mining, timber operations and recreation would otherwise not have occurred. Further, these sectors are the economic engine for hundreds of local communities – communities that would disappear if their ability to use public lands for beneficial use were removed.

There are a variety of proposed laws and regulations that seek to limit the multiple use of non-park federal lands. Out-of control wilderness, roadless area, and wild and scenic river area designations, an exploding number of areas of critical environmental concern (ACEC), and efforts to reduce or prohibit mining and grazing on public lands continue to put multiple use of our federal lands at risk. Each Congress dozens of bills are introduced that would further erode multiple use of federal lands. We will continue to be vigilant in opposing legislation that undermines the multiple use philosophy.
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Stop Out-of-Control Wilderness Designations

The 1964 Wilderness Act created the National Wilderness Preservation System. The Act gave Congress the ability to designate areas as wilderness and, to date, they have created over 600 wilderness areas encompassing over 106,000,000 acres. A wilderness designation effectively locks up land from any type of multiple use activities including: road construction, forestry, water storage and conveyance, energy development and recreational activities that require a motorized vehicle.

There is little argument that some areas in the United States warrant this most restrictive type of protection, but recently some members of Congress have begun trying to include lands that do not fit the definition of a wilderness area under the law. It has become all too typical for members from large metropolitan areas and Eastern states to attempt to win political points by proposing large swaths of wilderness in the West. These proposals rarely have the input or support of the impacted state or local communities. With nearly five percent of the nation's land already protected by wilderness designation, any new designation should be carefully reviewed, include local input and should have full support of the state where the land is located.

When an area is designated as wilderness, the ability to use the land for multiple purposes is lost forever. This is a decision that should not be taken lightly and the designation process should have the support of the local communities and the impacted state's Congressional delegation.
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Oppose Expansion of the Clean Water Act

There has long been a dispute brewing between the courts, federal regulators, environmental groups and industry regarding exactly what bodies of water fall under the purview of the Clean Water Act (CWA). The problem: the Clean Water Act gives the federal government authority to regulate “navigable waters of the United States” but does not define what the term means.

The EPA and Army Corps of Engineers have defined the term to include navigable waters, adjacent wetlands and tributaries. Neither agency has developed clear and concise definitions of adjacent wetlands or tributaries, causing great confusion in the regulated world. The result has been authority being defined through arbitrary determinations under current regulations.

Depending on the circumstance and who is making the decision, the federal regulatory reach of the CWA has been interpreted to mean any physical connection or any potential connection where water, no mater how remote or infrequent, could eventually mix with navigable waters. This means there is potential for jurisdiction to extend to nearly all bodies of water imaginable.

Under that frightening scenario, every sewer, curb, road, gutter, storm drain, culvert, irrigation canal, wash, tire rut and ditch could ultimately be required to meet water quality standards and have designated and beneficial uses just like rivers, lakes and reservoirs. This legislation could potentially cost individuals and companies thousands of additional dollars complying with CWA provisions.
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Reform the Endangered Species Act (ESA)

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) was enacted more than 30 years ago with the best of intentions. Its original goal: save species in danger of becoming extinct and help them recover to health. Americans overwhelmingly support these goals. In that time, less than 1percent of species in North America have been recovered out of more than 1300 that were listed in the last 30 years. But we also believe that the goal should be to save more species – not to simply add more names to a list. We want to help species recover so they can actually come off the Endangered Species List.

Every day more and more Americans are coming to understand the ESA is less about species and more about control of land and resources. You only have to look at the past 33 years since the enactment of the ESA to see what it has produced - the dramatic destruction of property rights and the failure to recover species.

Environmentalists are fighting hard against any ESA reform. There is good reason. The Endangered Species Act is one of the best federal land use laws on the books and has been used, with great success, by the environmental movement to drive their vision of land use policies in this nation.

If environmentalists and politicians really cared about the animals, they would get rid of the Act and give landowners the freedom to do what they do best – produce necessary resources while taking care of the land and all who inhabit it. ESA has been a failure, when it comes to actually recovering species. The Act needs to be reformed to place greater emphasis on recovery actions over bureaucratic listing actions. It must encourage the use of innovative approaches to increase species' populations. This can be done, in part, by moving the designation of critical habitat into the development of species recovery planning.

Strengthening the Act also must include improving the quality of science used to make policy decisions. This will enable the effective use of federal monies and time in restoring species populations truly in need.

The final key to improving recovery rates is working in cooperation with conservation organizations and private landowners. By providing the tools necessary to enable private landowners and States to be partners in achieving the goals of the Act, the recovery of species will improve.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the lead federal agency responsible for this program, estimates the annual cost in federal funds for the operation of ESA is between 1989 and 2000 to be over $3.5 billion. When federal, State and private costs are all added up the full cost may be ten times higher. Most of the costs are born by the private sector, and these costs do not add to their bottom line or their ability to keep the critical private lands in management for the species we want to recover.
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Prevent “Stroke of the Pen” Designations of Monuments

In recent years, a disturbing trend has emerged in land designations: the usual route through Congress has been circumvented as the Executive Branch has been allowed to designate national monuments without the consent of elected legislators or consultation with State and local governments.

Congress, by virtue of its power granted in the property clause in the U.S. Constitution, makes the bulk of public land designations by statute: additions to national forests or Bureau of Land Management lands, the designation of federal wilderness areas (undisturbed areas that are off limits to any mechanized use), and the establishment of national parks.

With regard to designation of national monuments, however, Congress has delegated almost complete authority to the President. Under the Antiquities Act of 1906, the President is authorized to designate national monuments by presidential proclamation, without Congressional input and with very limited judicial review from the federal courts. The Act lacks significant standards for size, creating a high potential for abuse.

Although Congress retains the ability to designate national monuments through statute, it principally relies on monument designations put forward by the Executive Branch by virtue of its delegation of power. Between 1906 and 1999, Presidents designated 118 national monuments, and only three Presidents (Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush) never used the power. Although Congress has limited the Act’s reach in some respects, the federal courts have expanded and upheld every exercise of the Antiquities Act that has been challenged.

President Clinton took the Antiquities Act to new heights with the designation and expansion of more than 20 national monuments, many of which were opposed by local landowners, residents and States. In order to prevent this abuse of power in the future, Congress should take steps to curb the President’s ability to arbitrarily designate national monuments, and create a mechanism for Congressional review of proclamations made pursuant to the Act. Congress should also provide for State and local input before the designation takes place.

We support legislation that would create accountability, congressional review, and to provide for state and local input in the presidential monument designation process.
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Support Full Funding of Payment-in-Lieu-of-Taxes Program (PILT) and Secure Rural School Programs

For Westerners, the federal government’s ownership of vast quantities of land does more than restrict economic development opportunities. It also robs local communities of property tax revenues and the taxes associated with private business development. The Federal Payments In Lieu of Taxes (PILT) and the Secure Rural Schools programs were created to address these problem. However, until recently, these programs were subject to the whims of the Congressional appropriations process and were constantly underfunded. It is estimated that Western communities lost out on over one billion dollars in unfunded PILT payments since the program was enacted.

PILT was created in 1976 to help offset a portion of this lost income for local counties.

The PILT program compensates more than 1,900 counties in 49 states and territories for property taxes they cannot collect on tax-exempt federal lands located within their boundaries. These federal lands are administered by the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service, federal water projects and some military installations. PILT helps rural counties pay for essential services such as environmental compliance, law enforcement, health care, education, firefighting and search and rescue.

When the National Forest System was established and forestland was set aside from settlement and development, many local rural communities experienced hardships due to the large amounts of land withdrawn from economic development and the diminished potential tax base that resulted. In response, Congress passed a bill in 1908 creating a revenue sharing program from activities on national forest lands to help offset these effects on local communities. These payments primarily funded public schools and roads.

In 2000, the Congress passed, the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act to replace and modernize the old timber receipt revenue-sharing program. For many rural counties once dependent on timber revenue, these funds are vital for local schools and communities. The Secure Rural Schools funding is crucial for rural economies. Without inclusion in this year's budget, 4,400 schools stand to lose significant funding for schools and roads and many counties across America could face fiscal insolvency.

The Western Caucus took a lead role in fighting for and achieving, for the first time, guaranteed, full-funding of PILT and the Secure Rural Schools Program. We stand ready to continue to fight for these programs well into the future.

Wilderness “Statement of Principles”

The 1964 Wilderness Act created the National Wilderness Preservation System. Wilderness designation provides the most restrictive land management level for federal lands. Like any federal land designation, wilderness designation requires tradeoffs between competing interests. For example, wilderness designation promotes a narrow recreation demand which make some public areas permanently inaccessible to many Americans.

To date, Congress has designated 756 wilderness areas encompassing nearly 110 million acres, roughly five percent of the nation's land or the equivalent of Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont combined. According to the Census Bureau, there are 108 million acres of developed land in the United States. Congress has now designated more land as federal wilderness than the total acreage of developed land in this country.

There is general consensus that certain areas in the United States warrant this highest and most restrictive type of protection. However, Members of Congress from large metropolitan areas and Eastern states have begun proposing legislation to designate large swaths of wilderness in other Members’ Districts in the West. This is done largely to win political points. These large wilderness proposals rarely have the input or support of the impacted state or respective local communities. These large proposals also ignore the fact that the vast majority of wilderness bills that actually became law over the last few decades were limited in scope, and followed a ground-up, collaborative process.

Members of the Western Caucus feel the following four criteria must be met before an area should be considered for federal wilderness designation:

Wilderness legislation should meet the definition of wilderness as laid out in the 1964 Wilderness Act.
Wilderness legislation should have the support of all the Members of Congress who represent the area where the wilderness is designated.
Wilderness legislation should include adequate protections for private property and pre-existing uses.
Wilderness legislation should have broad community support, including from locally elected officials, as well as state and local groups representing a wide array of interests.

In order to meet both the spirit and the intent of the original Wilderness Act as well as these aforementioned principles, we offer the following guidelines to help Members of the Western Caucus evaluate wilderness legislation:

Wilderness legislation should include a detailed map as part of the legislation that clearly and accurately describes the area covered by the proposed wilderness designation.
Wilderness legislation should not implicitly or explicitly allow for buffer zones to be created around wilderness areas which would preclude economic activity normally allowed by law.
Efforts to designate federal wilderness should include, prior to designation, a full analysis of potential impacts on pre-existing uses in the described areas, access to adjacent public lands, and the ability of federal land managers to conduct fire prevention and suppression efforts and manage for overall forest and rangeland health.
Efforts to designate federal wilderness should include, prior to designation, an inventory of all energy resources within or adjacent to the designation, to which access could be impacted by the designation. This should include the potential for development of solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, biomass, wave, tidal, coal, oil, natural gas, oil shale, and coal-bed methane resources.
Efforts to designate federal wilderness should include, prior to designation, an inventory of all known or suspected mineral deposits, hardrock or otherwise, within or adjacent to the proposed wilderness area, to which access could be impacted by the designation.
Efforts to designate federal wilderness should include, prior to designation, a thorough assessment of the economic consequences the designation will incur on surrounding communities including a social and economic impact analysis regarding the loss of recreation opportunities.
Efforts to designate federal wilderness should include, prior to designation, an assessment of catastrophic wildfire potential and ability to manage for fish, wildlife, air and water resources that could be at risk in the proposed area.
Wilderness legislation should release to multiple use management any Wilderness Study Areas not proposed for wilderness designation.
No wilderness designation should claim or create new federal reserved water rights or undermine the historic rights of Western states in allocating and adjudicating water rights within their borders.