Copyright 2000 Federal News Service, Inc.
Federal News Service
May 23, 2000, Tuesday
SECTION: PREPARED TESTIMONY
LENGTH: 4954 words
HEADLINE:
PREPARED TESTIMONY OF ERIC WILLIAMS
BEFORE THE
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
SUBJECT - "FUNDING
OF ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVES AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON FEDERAL LAND POLICIES"
BODY:
Mr. Chairman and members of the
Committee: I am honored and sincerely appreciate the opportunity to testify
before you today.
It's not news that there is a widespread effort to
dramatically change the culture and economy of rural America. What I'd like to
talk with you about today, however, is a little-discussed aspect of the
strategy. The tacticians of the effort realized that while it's not particularly
difficult to get the public up in arms against "polluters" and "corporate
giants," another, stickier hurdle was in their way.
Real live people
live out there, and the public wasn't terribly keen on displacing them. A
recognized and critical part of every successful battle strategy had to be
employed. The rural residents had to be demonized. If the general public viewed
the folks who live in the hinterlands of Idaho and Nevada as romantic and
healthy ties to our heritage, Necessary Change would be extremely difficult. Yet
if they could, collectively and stereotypically, be cast as Overpaid,
Undereducated Social Misfits who hate Mother Earth, then Necessary Change would
certainly follow. Wise Up to Wise Use
I always cringe when people from
the rural West tell the rest of us how to live. There's an arrogance to their
pronouncements, a foolhardy pretension that they are real and the 95 percent of
us who live in western cities don't matter. Hal Rothman, Writers on the Range,
Spring 2000.
In April 1998, I attended a conference titled "Wise up to
Wise Use," sponsored by the Montana Human Rights Network. Even though I'd been a
newspaper reporter, for a kid who grew up in a lunch-bucket union family in tiny
Hobson, Montana, it was an eye-opening experience. For I had largely been under
the impression that human rights groups met to focus on tolerance, inclusion -
generally better ways for folks to get along.
The presentations were
anything but tolerant. "Wise Use Connections and Collaborations with other Far
Right Groups," was the focus of the morning, as explained by Daniel Berry of
C.L.E.A.R. Dr. Thomas Power of the University of Montana told us over lunch of
"The Economic Fallacy of Wise Use." In the afternoon, we took in concurrent
workshops ranging from "Corporate Consolidation of Hate," presented by Kevin
Keenan of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility to "How to do
Research on the Wise Use and other Far Right Groups," again conducted by Mr.
Berry. I was struck by the very real dislike many presenters and attendees had
for farmers, ranchers, miners and loggers, not to mention the companies those
people may work for - especially if those companies are large and from out of
state.
That was the day I learned that I'm part of the Wise Use
Movement. Frankly, until then I didn't consider myself a member. But, as I
learned that day, who I am - or at least how I'm categorized - isn't really up
to me.
What I didn't realize at the time was that the sponsoring
organization and virtually every one of the speakers was subsidized by
foundation funding.
The Montana Human Rights Network itself is heavily
funded by foundations that are large and from out of state. Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility is heavily funded by foundations that are large and
from out of state. Dr. Thomas Power is heavily funded by foundations that are
large and from out of state.
Funding the message of hatred of the 'wise
use' movement comes from a variety of sources, too numerous to mention in this
testimony. Some notable examples are: Montana Human Rights Network Funding
1998 Turner Foundation "Grant for support of work to increase
understanding and action to mitigate threats against advocates and to build
linkages between local human rights groups and environmentalists to focus on
environmental protection."
Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility Funding
Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, New York, grant
"To organize employees of the Office of Surface Mining, and to connect them with
community activists working on issues related to coal mining and the
environment: $25,000 to Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility (Washington, D.C.).
Dr. Thomas Power Funding
Dr.
Power is first referenced in this testimony in this section but is also
connected with numerous other areas of my testimony.
My former economics
professor, whose UM salary is approximately 3 times the average Montanan's, is
now chairman of the department at the University of Montana, and is always
referenced by his University of Montana affiliation. To my knowledge, none of
the multitude of federal agency documents that cite Dr. Power's work refer to
him as affiliated with large foundations that also fund the environmental
movement. Perhaps doing so would be helpful. Here is a mini-feature on one of
the Brainerd Foundation's success stories:
1997-98
Center for
Resource Economics Bringing Environmental Economics to the Region Many observers
were amazed when the Idaho Statesman, usually a conservative newspaper, ran a
series about how environmental preservation might be more important to the
state's economic future than extractive industries like timber, mining, and
ranching. One article even said that the state might benefit from
decommissioning the dams on the Lower Snake River.
The series was
already in the works when Dr. Thomas Michael Power spoke at the Boise City Club
in June 1997 as part of a tour sponsored by the Brainerd Foundation. But his
visit was fortunate. Power, the economics department chair at the University of
Montana in Missoula, is the author of Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies: The
Search for a Value of Place. In his book he argues that a healthy environment
attracts employers and workers and that communities should preserve local
landscapes if they want their economies to be diversified, stable, and
prosperous. "The issue is not sacrificing economic health to protect some
obscure bird, fish, or plant," he writes, "but rather ensuring economic health
by avoiding needless damage to the natural -- and therefore human --
environment."
While in Boise, Power met with the newspaper's reporters
and editorial board. Rocky Barker, one of the two reporters working on the
series, was at the City Club presentation and latched on to Power's example of
one Idaho community whose resource-dependent economy was deteriorating while the
statewide economy improved. "Rocky used that example to good effect in the
series," says Cecily Kihn, program development manager for the Center for
Resource Economics (CRE). "And Tom's visit may have given the Statesman
editorial board a lot more confidence in what it was doing.
"
The CRE is a Washington, D.C., nonprofit whose publishing arm, Island
Press, printed Power's book in 1996. In the summer of that year, the Ford
Foundation provided funds for Power to visit major markets across the West and
promote his message. The Brainerd Foundation then approached the center about
funding a second tour; this time Power would also visit secondary markets, and
in addition to meeting with business leaders and the media, he would meet with
conservationists so they could use his economic theories in their campaigns.
During the first six months of 1997, Power made four trips: to Seattle
and Olympia, Washington, Portland, Corvallis, and Ashland, Oregon, Spokane,
Washington, and Boise, Idaho. He met with journalists, business leaders,
conservation activists, students, and policymakers, generating radio,
television, and newspaper coverage along the way. "I think Tom's message got out
more broadly," says Kihn. "A lot of nonprofits weren't familiar with his
research. Now they better understand the economics around conservation issues."
Western States Center
The importance of the old rural West has
ended and it's never coming back We'll give up something, sure. But discarding a
myth that has deceived us for a century may be the healthiest thing this region
can do. Hal Rothman, Writers on the Range, Spring 2000.
The Ford
Foundation (In excess of $500 million in grants in 1998), which
sponsored one of Dr. Power's "Environmental Economics" tours, is also a funder
of the Western States Center. Like Dr. Power, the Western States Center (WSC)
was a major player at the "Wise Up to Wise Use" conference.
WSC offers a
variety of support and services to the Progressives in the West, particularly in
Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada, Wyoming and the Center's home state of
Oregon. WSC has been particularly effective at developing databases loaded with
campaign finance data that is used to accomplish two principle goals - exclude
business interests from the political arena, including ballot measures, and to
make certain that conservative members of any party don't get elected.
According to the Western States Center web site, their vision "is of a
just and equitable society governed by a strong, grassroots democracy." WSC says
it works on three levels: strengthening Progressive grassroots organizing and
community based leadership; building long term, strategic alliances among
community, environmental, labor, social justice and other public interest
organizations; and developing the capacity of informed communities to
participate in the public policy process and in elections.
From
1996-1998, WSC invested more than $140,000 annually into its
"Wise Use Exposure Project." Publications of the Project include: Dangerous
Territory: the Attack on Citizen Participation and the Environmental Movement
Extremists and the Anti-environmental Lobby: Activities Since Oklahoma City The
Wise Use Radicals: Violence Finds New Bedfellows Western States Coalition Summit
VIII: The Anti-Environmental Lobby and Environmental Education.
Essentially, WSC and its state affiliates help provide the necessary
clamor that allows our state and local governments to produce documents that
label miners as overpaid, undereducated social misfits and loggers as three-time
losers. The perversion of this situation is that the Western States Center, the
Montana Human Rights Network and others use bigotry and stereotyping to push
their environmentalist agenda.
All of this is done under the guise of
tolerance.
Now, it is completely legitimate that these entities put
their money where their mouth is -they are entitled to conduct their particular
brand of advocacy. That's the American way, the Democratic process. But when
they reach into the government and use the government as their co-conspirators
in developing federal policy, and that federal policy wreaks havoc with people
in communities, something is amiss. I hope it's not the American way to get your
way by demonizing segments of our population.
Following is a chart which
shows WSC state affiliates, its programs, and some of its funding.
WESTERN STATES CENTER CHART
Rock Creek
Historically,
this country's advantage was always cheap land and cheap labor -- In this new
world, trees have more value as scenery than as timber -- Montana and Wyoming
don't lead and, at this stage, don't have much to teach the rest of us. They're
the ones without a real city. Hal Rothman, Writers on the Range, Spring 2000.
In January of 1998, a few months before the "Wise Up to Wise Use"
Conference, the Kootenai National Forest and the Montana Department of
Environmental Quality issued the Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact
Statement on ASARCO's Rock Creek mine project. Rock Creek, which ASARCO began
permitting more than 12 years ago and for which a Final EIS is anticipated this
summer, is an underground copper-silver mine project in Northwest Montana.
Our company, Environomics, was engaged by local ASARCO officials to
assist them with their community and public relations programs associated with
the Supplemental Draft EIS. When I opened this official government document, I
was more than disappointed. When residents of the communities around Rock Creek
opened to those pages, they were stunned. They were angry. And more than a
little hurt. For there, in black and white, the Kootenai National Forest's
Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement told them they were the type
of people the world would be better off without. The following are excerpts from
the Socioeconomic section.
1. Mine development would significantly
hinder western Sanders County's capacity to diversify its economic base using
its natural amenities, quality of life, and competitive cost structures to lure
new comers whose jobs or work could occur in any location and retirees (Johnson
and Rasker, 1993, Jobes 1992). Up to 300 future service jobs, mostly in health,
educational and business services would be foregone through mine effects in the
area (Heffner, 1991; Power 1992; Swanson 1992 a; Nork and Luloff 1992).
2. Project Employment would be expected to raise local wage structures
and to cause increased rates of job shifting during project development. These
effects would increase local businesses' costs, making some businesses less
competitive in national markets and would decrease the rate of local business
growth and job creation. (Wenner 1992).
3. Dependence on repeated
natural resource cycles has caused major fluctuations in area quality of life
and emphasized non-transferable job skills and reduced community
self-determination.
4. Economic and social dependence on resource
extraction industries is widely regarded as an economic and social liability
because it ties social well-being to declining economic sectors, locking
residents into untransferable sets of skills (Baden and O'Brien, 1994; Humphrey,
1994). Mining dependence decreases local social and economic capacity by
hindering local flexibility, capability, and diversity of social processes
(Freudenberg 1992). The project would be expected to increase local labor costs,
decrease average education levels, and weaken the sense of community (Swanson
1992c; Bloomquist and Killian 1998; Freudenberg 1992). Mining dependence
increases community underemployment and decreases social adaptability (Krannich
and Luloff 1991).
5. Local residents who believe that project benefits
are vital to community viability would tend to view project social problems as
reasonable tradeoffs for 30 years of mining employment. Those who value small
town communities, rural scenic qualities, and a sustainable diversified local
economy, would tend to view project costs to be greater than its benefits.
6. Alternative I (the no-mine alternative) would have long term
socioeconomic benefits.
The message was clear.
According to the
agencies, this region, with some of the highest unemployment in one of the
nation's poorest states, is better off without a mine that would employ more
than 300 people for 25 years or more. The fact that the mine would pay high
wages and offer good benefits is a negative, because other businesses might have
to pay more to compete. This underground mine would, simply by its existence,
scare off telecommuters and retirees, which, after all, are a better type of
person to have around than are miners. And despite the fact that the mine would
employ everyone from accountants to lab technicians, heavy equipment operators
to environmental engineers, computer experts to metallurgists, their job skills
are not transferable.
Mysteriously, the Supplemental Draft EIS virtually
declared that miners' children are not as educable as other children are and
those communities with mines inherently lack diversity and are socially
backward. As excerpt 6 boldly states, the community is better off without the
mine.
This Supplemental Draft EIS professed that miners are, as
community residents mockingly began to refer to themselves, "Overpaid,
Undereducated Social Misfits."
The sort of dismissive, condemning
language that appeared in the Rock Creek document would have never been
considered substantive for use in an EIS a few years prior. It's becoming
commonplace now.
The main opposition to the Rock Creek Mine comes from a
conglomeration of grant-dependent groups that have overlapping, intermingling
relationships, including fiscal agency.
Brainerd Foundation, Washington
Cabinet Resource Group
1997 - $15,000
To address environmental concerns related to the Troy Mine and proposed
Rock Creek mine.
1998 - $20,000 To challenge the
permitting of the ASARCO Rock Creek copper and silver mine under the Cabinet
Mountain Wilderness in northwest Montana.
Bullitt Foundation, Washington
Cabinet Resource Group
1997 - $15,000
Support a lawsuit against Asarco at northwestern Montana's Troy mine and
the expansion of the organization's public outreach campaign addressing the
environmental challenges of the proposed Rock Creek Mine.
Rock Creek
Alliance
1998 - $10,000
1999 -
$10,000
Support a project to halt a proposed
silver/copper mine in the Rock Creek drainage area of the Cabinet Mountains of
northwestern Montana The Montana Environmental Information Center served as
fiscal agent for Rock Creek Alliance in 1998.
Clark Fork-Pend Oreille
Coalition
2000: $15,000 1999: $15,000
Support the organization's overall operations as it continues to
challenge mining proposals that will further degrade water quality in the basin.
The Educational Foundation of America, Connecticut
Clark Fork
Coalition
1997
Clark Fork Coalition, which is a member
organization of the Rock Creek Alliance, $80,000 over two years
for "Rivers and Mining: The Two Don't Mix."
The Educational Foundation
of America's Foundation's description of its Environment grants division says
that "EFA's environmental priorities included supporting the monitoring of the
utility restructuring process as it impacts the, combating the growth of the
'wise-use' movement, opposing large-scale livestock confinement, and cutting
federal "polluter pork" programs through green scissors campaigns."
Turner Foundation, Georgia Clark Fork-Pend Oreille Coalition
1998 - $20,000
To oppose mining and help
protect and restore the Clark Fork River Basin.
1997 -
$15,000
Protect water quality from hard rock mining,
toxic waste, industry poisons, nutrient pollution, sedimentation, and irrigation
depletion.
Center for Science in Public Participation
1998 -
20,000
Technical assistance to grassroots organizations that are focused
on opposing mining.
Roadless Area Conservation Draft
EIS
The rural West sure doesn't pay the bills -- And its industries,
ranching, agriculture, timber, mining and the like are tossed on the scrap heap
of our transfer-payment, federal, tourist-based regional economy. Hal Rothman,
Writers on the Range, Spring 2000
Most recently, disparaging commentary
toward the men and women who make their living in natural resource businesses
has worked its way into Chapter 3 of the Roadless Area
Conservation Draft EIS. This new document states:
Logging and lumber
millwork are not an inter-generational way of life for all participants in the
wood products industry. In 1991, median tenure of employment in the wood
products industry was 5.3 years (Power 1996). Timber communities have been noted
for their instability for over a century, due to the migratory nature of the
industry (Kaufman & Kaufman 1990). Timber jobs migrate in response to the
expansion and contraction of the industry in local areas, with boom and bust
cycles caused in large part by unsustainable harvest levels (Power 1996). Even
reasonably prosperous timber-dependent communities are among the least
prosperous rural communities, having high seasonal unemployment, high rates of
population turnover, high divorce rates, and poor housing, social services, and
community infrastructures (Drielsma and others, 1990, Power 1996). Moreover,
timber industry jobs are dangerous, having high injury and mortality rates. Many
people enter the wood products industry because it provides opportunities to
earn high wages without having a high level of education. For these people what
is at stake is not a traditional lifestyle and occupational culture, but rather
an accessible route to a middle-class lifestyle. If equivalent jobs were readily
available, these individuals would be happy to take advantage of them.
That single paragraph has three references to the works of Dr. Thomas
Power, who is mentioned in more detail above. As a former miner, it's of little
consolation to me (an overpaid, undereducated social misfit), that the Forest
Service now considers loggers as possessing not only those non-redeeming values,
but also as being culturally ignorant trailer trash who'll do anything for a
buck and a new woman.
There's a reason this sort of language is now
appearing in these documents, which ostensibly are based in science and fact,
not political rhetoric and dogma. It's because of all the pressure brought to
bear by the environmental industry, being well organized and heavily funded by
wealthy foundations to produce exactly those results.
This well-funded
machine has generated (through the necessary, strategic atmosphere for excluding
from normal moral and ethical consideration) a whole segment of society - rural
resource providers. This atmosphere has been set with pseudo-scientific reports
and non- peer reviewed studies released to the public through the media and
through public agencies. This atmosphere has allowed agenda-driven personnel
within both federal and state agencies to repeat the mantra of cultural smearing
that we find in many management plans being implemented and being proposed
throughout the United States.
ICBEMP/Northern Rockies Campaign
The truth is hard, but clear. The rural West has become a playground, a
colony the rest of us visit when we want to relax or indulge our fantasies. We
camp, hike, swim, boat, bike, ski, hunt, fish and ATV throughout the rural West,
making our living and our lives in its increasingly stretched out and stunningly
dense cities. Hal Rothman, Writers on the Range, Spring 2000.
In May
1997, a consortium of four federal agencies released their long-awaited
Environmental Impact Statement regarding the Interior Basin Ecosystem Management
Project (ICBEMP). ICBEMP essentially is a one-size-fits all approach to managing
(or not) an area the size of France, half of which is federal land, in the
Inland Northwest.
As early as 1996, grants were sent to various - some
obscure - organizations to help influence the outcome of ICBEMP. One such
contribution came from the Ruth Mott Fund in Michigan and was described like
this:
Upper Columbia Working Group, Helena, Montana
Support for
start-up funding for the Upper Columbia River Basin Ecosystem Management Project
- $10,000
Others that year came from the David and
Lucile Packard Foundation. (Nearly $88 million of the Packard
Foundation's $412 million in 1999 grants went to "Conservation"
efforts).
Wilderness Society, Seattle, Washington -
$100,000 To support continued analytical work on the forest
ecosystems and economy of the Interior Columbia River Basin
National
Audubon Society, New York - $150,000 Second-year support for
the Columbia River Bioregion Campaign
Here's how Audubon describes that
Columbia River Bioregion Campaign:
The National Audubon Society is a
member of Columbia River Bioregion Campaign (CRBC), a coalition of local, state
and national environmental groups that was formed 3 years ago to try to improve
the management of federal lands in the Columbia Basin. The Federal Bureau of
Land Management (BLM) and the US Forest Service (USFS) are currently in the
process of developing the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Plan
(ICBEMP). This Plan is intended to implement the President's Northwest Forest
Plan east of the Cascades. The scientific findings which have been included in
the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) released earlier this year are
excellent, but the management plan recommended by the Project has been judged
inadequate by the CRBC. The major shortcoming identified by CRBC in this
alternative is that it emphasizes grazing, logging, and controlled burning as
primary activities to restore the Basin's forest/grassland ecosystems.
The role of the State Office in the CRBC is to recruit and coordinate
the involvement of chapters in the Campaign to influence the BLM and the USFS to
make improvements in the Plan so it will do a better job of improving the
management of federal lands in the Columbia Basin ecosystem for the benefit of
birds and other wildlife. State Office staff will also coordinate chapter
responses to the DEIS for the ICBEMP. The CRBC has already asked the USFS and
the BLM to either withdraw the DEIS or release a Supplement later which would
provide a satisfactory alternative to protect old growth habitat, bird, fish and
wildlife population viability, and community resiliency and stability.
So, did these foundations see any fruits from their contributions?
In the ICBEMP document new, unreviewed methodology was used to study the
communities of the interior west and determine which communities were
'resilient' and which were not. Criteria for 'resiliency' included: strong civic
leadership, positive, proactive attitude toward change and strong social
cohesion. The ICBEMP document then listed community resiliency of all
communities with less than 10,000 persons (population being a determining factor
in resiliency) and a scale was developed that divided the communities into four
equal categories of low, moderately low, moderately high and high resiliency. In
other words, rather than looking at communities for what they are, this
methodology pigeonholed towns into four equal parts. Moreover, the methodology
was such that a community of 10,001 people automatically was more resilient than
one with 9,999.
The underlying supposition of this federal document
remains clear: a community that is low in 'resiliency' lacks strong civic
leadership, is not positive and proactive toward change and does not possess
strong social cohesion. Again the underlying message was clear: Because yours is
a resource-dependent community, its social structure is ill and needs to be
dismantled and then rebuilt, largely by outsiders who know better than you. It's
going to be painful for you, but it's in the public interest.
While
several grant-dependant organizations became heavily involved in the politics of
ICBEMP, it was the Northern Rockies Campaign run by Desktop Assistance had the
most impact. Here's Desktop's description of its program:
During the
summer of 1997, the Northern Rockies Campaign (NRC), with primary support
provided by the Pew Charitable Trusts, initiated an aggressive strategy to
influence the outcome of the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management
Project (ICBEMP), an inter-agency federal process that would dictate management
of 1/4 of all public lands in the United States for the next several decades.
(U)sing a variety of innovative and creative public outreach strategies,
including canvassing campgrounds in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks as
well as eliciting Working Assets Long Distance (WALD) to include a "Help Protect
The Big Wild" appeal in one of its monthly statements, in just 8 months NRC
collected 73,000 public comments in favor of protecting wild places in the
Northern Rockies.
(W)hen the Clinton Administration announced on January
22, 1998 its directive to the Forest Service to institute a temporary moratorium
on road building in most national forest roadless areas, the
Northern Rockies Campaign took it as a sign that our efforts the previous eight
months bore fruit.
(N)RC public comment campaign proved decisive in the
new policy - the Administration heard us and set almost all roadless
areas in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming temporarily off limits to Forest
Service development. We wanted to thank the Administration for their action and
to press for permanent protection of the "last best place."
Desktop
Assistance, a founding member of NRC, initiated an email campaign to re-engage
citizens who had submitted public comments to ICBEMP. On January 27, at the
opening of the 30-day public comment period, we sent email to 6,957 people
asking them to do two things: thank the Administration for its policy and submit
an official public comment on the policy.
Desktop, which relies heavily
on the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation ($8.4 million in
Environmental grants in 1999), wasn't the only organization to get substantial
money from Pew early on for this effort. (More than $53 million
of Pew's $250 million in grants in 1999 went to environmental
and public policy) A 1996 Pew grant to the Greater Yellowstone Coalition said
this: Greater Yellowstone Coalition - $300,000 With its renewed
funding, the Northern Rockies Campaign (NRC) will seek to protect key old-growth
forest tracts in the Northern Rockies through a comprehensive land management
planning process currently being developed by the Forest Service and the Bureau
of Land Management.
CLOSING
I'm not an anti-government
right-winger. I was raised a lunch-bucket Democrat and believe strongly in my
country and my government. Yet I find it extremely disconcerting when nonprofit
organizations and federal land agencies are stating loudly that most people
carrying lunch buckets are over-paid, under-educated social misfits.
It's unfortunate that certain foundation funding of environmental groups
makes it possible for the government to use this type of language, and to use
these types of programs to destroy rural America.
Incidentally, Writers
on the Range, which sponsored Mr. Rothman's italicized comments on the New West,
is funded by the Needmor Fund and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.
Thank you for considering my testimony.
END
LOAD-DATE: May 24, 2000 
