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Document 44 of 92.

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APRIL 20, 1999, TUESDAY

SECTION: IN THE NEWS

LENGTH: 2960 words

HEADLINE: PREPARED STATEMENT OF
ALAN FRONT
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT
THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND
BEFORE THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENERGY & NATURAL RESOURCES
SUBJECT - THE CONSERVATION AND REINVESTMENT ACT OF 1999 (S. 25)
THE RESOURCES 2000 ACT (S. 446)
THE PUBLIC LAND AND RECREATION INVESTMENT ACT OF 1999 (S. 532)
AND THE LANDS LEGACY INITIATIVE

BODY:

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, my name is Alan Front, and I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today on behalf of the Trust for Public Land (TPL)-- a national nonprofit land conservation organization that works with communities, landowners, and public agencies across the country to secure recreational, scenic, historic, or other important resource lands for public use and enjoyment -- as you consider the much-needed establishment of a truly dedicated federal funding source for land conservation.
I also appreciate the focused and expeditious attention that the Committee is affording to the various proposals addressing the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) and related programs. While the approaches in these proposals may differ, Chairman Murkowski and Senator Landrieu, Senator Boxer, Senator Feinstein, their respective cosponsors, and the Administration all have recognized the importance of enhanced, sustained federal investment in our public lands. Given the common threads in their proposals -- and the time-sensitive nature of many willing-seller resource land conservation opportunities now confronting us -- TPL is extremely hopeful that today's hearing will be an important early step on the path to enacted, environmentally optimal permanent-funding legislation.As a private organization with public-interest goals, TPL works in the real estate marketplace to address the real-world needs of many of these willing sellers, to meet their desire to see their lands protected, and to forestall the loss of landscapes that define the character of communities across the country. From this perspective, we are acutely aware of the importance -to these willing sellers, and to these communities -- of reinvigorating LWCF, which for 35 years has stood as the principal federal engine for parkland protection at all levels of government as well as for state and local recreation projects. In our nation's cities, we also have seen the profound, specific need for the kind of park protection partnerships that a revitalized and modified Urban Parks and Recreation Recovery Act (UPARR) program would enable. And in the working landscapes of America's forests, farms, and ranchlands, we have witnessed the benefits of programs that maintain traditional lifestyles while conserving the landscapes that shape them.
From the standpoint of this on-the-ground work, TPL is pleased to offer some observations on the land conservation provisions you are considering, and some specific modifications we suggest, particularly regarding Title II of S. 25, the Conservation and Reinvestment Act (or CARA). First, though, I will share a few thoughts as to why permanent funding is so urgently needed.
The Need for Increased, Improved, Permanent Conservation Funding
The Land & Water Conservation Fund was established in 1964 to enable priority additions to federal conservation areas and grants to states and localities for land acquisition and recreational facilities projects. LWCF was founded on a simple, elegant premise of finance: a portion of federal revenues from the sale of non-renewable assets are reinvested in other irreplaceable assets for the nation's benefit. I would be pleased to provide the Committee with a recitation of statistics on annual Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) receipts and annual LWCF levels, though I suspect these all are known to you; for today's purpose, suffice it to say that the fund's unappropriated balance exceeds $12 billion.
Many members of Congress have worked to sustain LWCF through challenging budgetary times and have advocated for specific projects and programmatic uses of the fund. But because LWCF, despite its elegant logic, was not truly set aside from OCS receipts but rather is addressed annually within the Interior Appropriations allocation, funding has varied widely from year to year and has fallen far short of the needs in America's parks, forests, refuges, and other public landscapes. Consequently, there is an immense backlog of willing- seller acquisition needs, support to state and local agencies essentially has dried up, and key opportunities are lost each year.
The shortage of LWCF dollars has posed extreme challenges to resources, effective public management, landowner needs, and community needs. The inability to acquire lands as they become available often leads to private inholding development that can take a toll on resource quality and recreational opportunities of adjacent public lands. Where inconsistent uses occur on private lands amid protected parklands, the true costs of "managing the holes" in public ownership can drain agency budgets, and in fact can far outstrip the cost of acquisition. The paucity of purchase funding can place willing-seller property owners in a difficult and unjust position; those who have public-spirited aims for their lands, or face excessive controversy over proposed private uses due to the public resources they host, often have to wait years for the just compensation that acquisition provides. For communities that depend on public land protection not only for recreation but also to provide safe drinking water, support tourism, or meet other local needs, the inability to secure public lands can have severe economic consequences.
LWCF and the Federal Lands
Recognizing these challenges, all four of the proposals you are considering today seek to provide reliable, permanent funding to fulfill the original purposes and expectations of LWCF, including the acquisition of high-priority inholdings and other key properties by the National Park Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, and U.S. Forest Service.
As the Committee knows well, LWCF appropriations in recent years have as a rule -with one interesting exception that I will highlight in a moment -- lagged well behind authorized levels and recognized need. And each year, willing sellers of priority properties left unfunded by these generally low annual sums for federal land conservation have faced a painful choice: either to pursue parkland-inconsistent uses or private sale that would frustrate the public interest, or to bear the frustration themselves by joining the ever-growing list of backlogged land acquisitions. These landowners and their economic interests are frequent victims of the chronic underfunding of LWCF; just as often, when landowners simply cannot or will not wait, the public lands and their constituents suffer the loss.
The exception to this rule came in FY1998, when Congress and the Administration sought together to address the long laundry-list of deferred inholding acquisitions by providing, through the Balanced Budget Agreement, some $700 million in backlog-targeted LWCF funds. When this one-time infusion of LWCF funds came to bear last fall on the willing-seller pool, the patience of many landowners was rewarded, and land-use disputes in myriad federal areas were resolved.

Consider the following TPL-facilitated land protection efforts completed in the past few months and made possible by the availability of these extra dollars:
* At Haleakala National Park in Hawaii, 1500 acres of beachfront and old-growth koa forest property were the key to protecting five separate endangered species, preserving ancient Polynesian archaeological sites, and establishing an ocean-to crater connector for park visitors. The property owner's imminent financing deadlines would have forced extensive timber harvest and shoreline development had $4.5 million not been available for the recent NPS purchase.
* In the Los Padres National Forest at California's famed Big Sur, one of the few remaining private parcels on the ocean-facing hillsides above the heavily traveled Highway I scenic drive came on the market. The owner, who already had purchased another home and made his relocation plans, would have been unable to wait another year for funding. Further south, a higher-than-usual funding installment for the national wildlife refuges and BLM areas associated with the Natural Communities Conservation Plan protected several now-or-never properties affording core habitat for multiple endangered species, in the process freeing up other less vital lands for private development and economic .growth.
* Funding for acquisition of anadromous fish habitat through the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Streams program has allowed the timely purchase of lands available under short-term option agreements. Protecting these stream corridors is a central element in the recovery of salmon runs at the heart of a Pacific coast commercial salmon fishery valued at over $1 billion per year. Elsewhere in the Northwest, substantial progress is being made to address the list of willing sellers in the Mountains-to-Sound Greenway the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, and Ebey's Landing National Historic Reserve.
* Some of America's most important grizzly bear migration-corridor lands, important recreational access, and the character of a community were safeguarded with the purchase of the lion's share of the 2,500- acre Lindbergh Lake inholding in Montana's Flathead National Forest. The property's owner, a major national timber company, had reached agreement with local residents not to harvest its timber or to develop its lake frontage, but only if a meaningful start could be made in 1998. * In the critically important Atchafalaya Basin Ecosystem, the owner of the bulk of Bayou Teche, home to the world's largest and most biologically important population of Louisiana black bear, has made these lands available for public management through a multi-year phased acquisition, thanks to the appropriation of sufficient LWCF funds to secure the initial phase.
* On Florida's Gulf Coast, LWCF funds for the J. N. ("Ding") Darling National Wildlife Refuge secured a habitat-rich island slated for, and permitted for, development that would have proceeded immediately had public purchase not been possible.
In these and many other cases, the recent release of this extraordinary LWCF "booster shot" has provided just compensation to landowners; conserved important recreational, historic, and wildlife resources; and protected the investments already made in our public lands. Just as significant, though, is what these funds have not done: despite this progress, an acquisition backlog persists, and each year new inholding protection opportunities arise. As in the examples above, many of these opportunities involve real landowner needs and short financial fuses. And as these cases continue to crop up during this Congress' consideration of FY2000 priorities, the extra money simply is not there.
TPL therefore enthusiastically supports the intent of the several legislative proposals before you to set aside a portion of OCS revenues each year, without further appropriation, to fund LWCF at its currently authorized level. In a number of salient details where the bills diverge, however, TPL has substantial concerns regarding provisions in The Conservation and Reinvestment Act that we believe would result in undue restrictions and delays. Among these are the following:
* S. 25 would limit federal LWCF funds to lands exclusively within exterior conservation area boundaries. But while most acquisition currently takes place inside these lines, our work with such agencies as the US Forest Service sometimes takes us near but outside the boundaries to secure priority lands that contribute to established agency programs. In some cases, single ownerships are transected by agency boundaries. Congress and the agencies now pursue these sorts of "outholdings" with LWCF funds; hemming in this already-existing flexibility would be counterproductive.
* CARA also would direct 2/3 of federal LWCF to the eastern United States. There are pressing needs in these states, but the needs are no less pressing elsewhere. Currently, annual Congressional direction of LWCF and Administration budget proposals can focus dollars on priority projects when and where properties become available, irrespective of geography. To remain responsive to communities and property owners in these priority areas, Congress needs to retain this existing flexibility.
* S. 25 would require enactment of new law for any LWCF project whose federal cost -exceeds $5 million. Such a requirement would create enormous and often insuperable obstacles to timely project completion. Congress routinely deliberates and appropriates funds substantially in excess of this proposed limit with no new enabling legislation; in fact all acquisitions rely not only on those deliberations but also on existing authorizing statutes that already provide for these land purchases.
TPL firmly believes that this provision mandates duplicative enabling legislation and threatens to overload the apple-cart of this Committee's workload. Moreover, the resulting inevitable delays are certain to leave landowners and communities hanging, and in many cases to doom win-win projects that happen (as is so often the case) to be on short deadlines. We therefore believe it is absolutely essential that you retain the kind of project scrutiny that the Hill and the Administration now exercise, as S. 446 provides for, but that you not unnecessarily add to it.
Stateside LWCF and UPARR -- Meeting Nonfederal Needs
Each of the three bills and the Administration's budget proposal also envision a restoration of the historic federal funding commitment to partnerships fostering land conservation and outdoor recreation at the state and local level. More specifically, substantial, predictable annual funding within the LWCF program would allow for restoration of Land & Water's stateside program, striking an important and overdue balance between essential funding of federal needs and appropriate investment in state and local projects. From outwork with constituencies, landowners, and agencies on both sides of this equation, the Trust for Public Land applauds this big-picture approach.
TPL appreciates the inclusion in S. 25 and S. 532 of Indian Tribes and Alaska Native Corporations as eligible recipients of stateside LWCF funds. We are now working in a number of areas on tribal land conservation projects. To foster that work, we ask that this eligibility be extended, as it is to other stateside recipients, to include land acquisition.
All three bills also guarantee restoration of meaningful funding levels to the Urban Parks and Recreation Recovery Act program. As an organization dedicated to meeting community conservation and recreation needs, particularly where people live and work, TPL witnesses daily and first-hand the urgent backlog of urban park protection and reclamation needs. We therefore strongly support the proposed recommitment to this vital program. We also are grateful for the proposed updating of the program to better address the facilities and land protection demands facing our urban partners.
Given the demonstrated need across the nation for a fully-funded LWCF and for adequate UPARR investment, we urge the Committee to fund UPARR from OCS revenues beyond those intended for LWCF, as proposed in Resources 2000, rather than relying on LWCF funds for both programs as provided for in CARA and in S. 532.
Other Conservation Provisions
Beyond LWCF and UPARR, Resources 2000 and the Administration's Lands Legacy Initiative also includes a number of other titles that TPL fully endorses, and to which we hope the Committee will give its full attention and support. Taken together, these provisions would establish a strong and integrated family of funds for resource protection, restoration, and management. We appreciate this holistic approach to the nation's environmental infrastructure.
Among the important threads in this fabric of stewardship is Resources 2000's Title IV (Farmland, Ranchland, and Forestland Protection), which extends the conservation reach of the bill in extremely important ways. It provides for a steady investment in the Forest Legacy Program, which TPL has participated in extensively and which has done much to preserve working timber landscapes in a number of areas. Similarly, it provides critically needed funding to protect agricultural lands from loss to urban sprawl or other conversion. We hope the legislation the Committee advances will include this exceptionally useful, voluntary mechanism for sustaining traditional resource-based livelihoods and lifestyles.
In addition to recommending increased funding for these purposes, Lands Legacy also proposes to provide additional support for Cooperative Endangered Species (also known as Section 6) programs. In several hot-spot areas around the country, including Southern California's NCCP area mentioned above and the Balcones Canyonlands of Texas, current Section 6 funding is leveraging significant nonfederal action to expedite and enhance species recovery efforts and strike an appropriate balance between development and conservation. Supported by both economic and environmental constituencies, these areas serve as important models to improve the habitat conservation plan approach elsewhere. We believe these successes merit beyond question the inclusion of increased, sustained Section 6 funding in the legislation the Committee advances.
The Road Ahead
TPL greatly appreciates the opportunity to share these perspectives with you as you review this landmark legislation. We look forward to providing any additional help we can to assist the Committee's consideration, and we hope that the 106th Congress will take advantage of this unprecedented chance to restore and enhance its commitment to conservation.
END
SEN-ENR-FRONT-TXT PAGE 9 04/20/98

LOAD-DATE: April 21, 1999

Document 44 of 92.


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