11-11-1999

ENVIRONMENT: Conservation Took Small Steps in Two Directions

Weary of bruising brawls over Republican attempts to dismantle the federal
environmental protection bureaucracy and Democratic efforts to extend it,
lawmakers in 1999 agreed on a new course: smaller steps forward--and
backward.


"There are areas that we're identifying that we can make smaller
steps forward," said Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho. "On some bills,
that will work."


Except for some of the appropriations bill riders considered
anti-environmental by the Clinton Administration--and largely neutralized
in last-minute negotiations--few grand schemes emerged this year to
radically alter the nation's course on resources and conservation. As Sen.
Max Baucus, D-Mont., put it, Congress is "past the era of big
bills."


On such issues as clean air and endangered species and coastal
preservation, the baby-steps approach seemed to work best. The House
passed fairly noncontroversial reauthorizations of the Coastal Barrier
Resources Act and National Marine Sanctuaries Act, as well as a modest
bill to better safeguard beaches. And House and Senate committees blessed
a new program to restore a million acres of estuaries.


Not all of the small steps were viewed as forward movement by
conservationists. For instance, the Senate Environment and Public Works
Committee approved a bill, sought by highway interests, that would undo a
key court ruling in support of the Clean Air Act that banned some highway
construction. In the House, lawmakers approved a forests bill to provide
rural schools with some of the revenues from public-land timber sales, a
move that environmentalists see as an incentive to more logging.


Some of the committees took bigger legislative gulps, but their handiwork
didn't progress far this year. Of those efforts, the most notable was the
landmark Conservation and Reinvestment Act approved by the House Resources
Committee on Nov. 10. The bill--an effort by two frequent adversaries,
Reps. Don Young, R-Alaska, and George Miller, D-Calif.--would set up a $3
billion annual program to fund wildlife and conservation programs over 15
years by using revenues from petroleum production on the outer continental
shelf.


Another Herculean effort was a House Commerce subcommittee's passage this
fall of a sweeping electricity industry deregulation bill. But that bill,
stalked by a surge of electric utility lobbying, isn't scheduled to come
before the full committee until the spring, when Senate action is also
expected.


In addition, House and Senate committees have passed bills to revamp the
search for a nuclear-waste dump, but both contain veto triggers. The House
bill would place the nuclear-waste fund "off-budget," and the
Senate bill would sideline the federal Environmental Protection Agency's
role in approving a dump.


Negotiations to reconcile two House bills (H.R. 1300 and H.R. 2580) that
overhaul the federal Superfund cleanup program were left dangling at
adjournment time. Democrats were pushing simpler legislation to encourage
the reuse of urban "brownfields." In the Senate, the late Sen.
John H. Chafee, R-R.I., earlier this year concluded that the Superfund
reform effort was futile.


By some measures, the anti-environmental riders were the dominant
conservation issue of 1999. The League of Conservation Voters, which
scores lawmakers on their environmental votes, issued more than 20 letters
to the 106th Congress on crucial issues in 1999; half dealt with riders on
appropriations bills. In the end, Republicans gave up the bulk of what
they had been seeking on behalf of mining, grazing, oil, and gas interests
in the riders.


Robert Ourlian

National Journal