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CapitalPress.com
March 6, 2015
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Opinion
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Publisher
Editor
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Mike O’Brien
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com Online: www.capitalpress.com/opinion
O ur V iew
States should have say in creation of national monuments
T
wo Idaho lawmakers want
to make changes in the
Antiquities Act, the 1906
legislation that gives the president
authority to create national
monuments on public lands by
proclamation.
They believe — rightfully, we
think — that local people should
have some say in such actions.
The authority to create national
monuments comes with few
restrictions. The president, “in his
discretion,” can designate almost
any piece of federally owned land
a national monument for “the
protection of objects of historic and
scientific interest.”
Although the act makes mention
of protecting historic and prehistoric
structures, there is no statutory
definition or limit on what may be
found to be of historic or scientific
interest. Presidents have used the act
to preserve wild areas.
It’s easier than establishing
a wilderness area, or a national
park — both of which require
congressional approval — but can
impose similar restrictions on how
the land can be used.
Sen. Mike Crapo and Rep. Raul
Labrador, both Republicans from
Idaho, have introduced legislation in
their respective chambers that would
require approval by both Congress
and the affected state legislature
before a president can declare a new
national monument.
We doubt any president, let alone
the current chief executive, would
give up even this limited unilateral
power to rule by decree without a
bill that passes with a veto-proof
majority. It’s unlikely one exists for
this measure.
The effort is not without
precedent. The Antiquities Act has
twice been modified.
In 1943 President Franklin
Roosevelt established the Jackson
Hole National Monument, an
unpopular proclamation in
Wyoming. In 1950 when Congress
enlarged Grand Teton National
Park, that legislation altered
the Antiquities Act to require
congressional approval for the
creation or expansion of national
monuments in Wyoming.
After President Jimmy Carter
proclaimed national monuments
incorporating 56 million acres
in Alaska, Congress passed the
Alaska National Interest Lands
Conservation Act. The act
requires that Congress approve
the creation of any new national
monument in Alaska larger than
5,000 acres.
We would not argue that the
Antiquities Act has not preserved
legitimate cultural treasures. We
might not have the Grand Canyon
in its current state had Theodore
Roosevelt not protected it by
making it first a national monument.
Our problem is geography. More
than half the land in the West is
owned by the federal government, in
O ur V iew
Congress must avoid future port disaster
H
ere’s a headline from the year
2020: “Longshore workers,
port operators at impasse.” And
here’s what the story will say: “A months-
long work slowdown at West Coast
container ports has backed up traffic,
costing agricultural exporters billions
of dollars in delayed and lost business,
as the longshore workers union and the
port operators delay negotiating a new
contract.”
For that matter, you can take any of the
headlines the Capital Press has run during
the past nine months about problems at
West Coast container ports and recycle
them. When the new five-year contract
expires, exporters and their customers
will have a sense of deja vu. All they will
have to do is look at the stacks of backed-
up containers and their profit-and-loss
statements to see the damage done.
During the past year, both the
International Longshore and Warehouse
Union, which represents 13,000 West
Coast dock workers, and the Pacific
Maritime Association, which represents
port operators and shipping lines, have
amply demonstrated their inability to
negotiate a new contract in a timely
manner.
The financial damage to all shippers
— but especially agricultural exporters —
has been in the billions of dollars and put
companies at risk of losing their overseas
customers.
The problem at the docks was not a
strike; rather it was a convoluted ILWU-
When did we come to
the point in Eastern Or-
egon that we found our-
selves negotiating our
access to public lands for
timber harvest, and why is
this an acceptable model
for our elected officials?
The answer lies direct-
ly under our noses, but for
the fact that a great deal of
us don’t know it exists.
Collaboration and the
bringing together of “in-
terested” parties to negoti-
ate projects is killing our
individual rights each and
every day.
The Grant County
court, as one example, has
decided to align itself with
the financial interest of
Iron Triangle and its abil-
ity to realize a profit from
the “stewardship contract”
given throughout the
county. In order to move
forward with getting its
projects completed, they
must keep the Forest Ser-
vice happy.
The newly appoint-
We must keep fighting
ESA regs that deepen
California’s drought
By JAMES S. BURLING
For the Capital Press
C
Rik Dalvit/For the Capital Press
choreographed Kabuki dance in which
both sides knew they had to reach an
agreement, but not before putting the
screws to all of their customers. Only
after President Barack Obama belatedly
sent his labor secretary to take part in the
talks did the sides magically reach an
agreement.
That’s nonsense. The minute the old
contract expired last year, both sides
knew they would have to negotiate
a new agreement. They knew an
agreement would require give-and-
take on the part of both sides. But they
dawdled for months as union members
slowed port traffic to a near-standstill.
Such drama may be OK for
backwater operations, but for West Coast
container ports, which handle hundreds
of thousands of incoming and outgoing
containers a year, it is unacceptable. The
financial damage is unacceptable, and
the child-like behavior is unacceptable.
Only Congress can make sure this
never happens again. It can place the
ports under the Railway Labor Act and
prevent the union from taking any labor
action detrimental to the timely and
efficient flow of containers through the
ports.
Railroad workers and airline
employees are already included in the
law. It’s time to add the port workers.
This nation cannot afford any more
needless and costly drama at the ports.
Congress needs to do the right thing
and fix this threat to the U.S. economy.
Another disaster awaits inaction.
Even a dysfunctional Congress would
have to agree.
Readers’ views
Don’t negotiate
away national
forest access
contrast to 4 percent of the land east
of the Rockies. These proclamations
have a disproportionate impact here.
In the day when Manifest
Destiny was official policy, settlers
were encouraged by the government
to come West to cut timber, mine
minerals and graze livestock. The
livelihoods of local families and
communities depend on access to
public lands.
The restrictions on the use of
public lands are already significant.
Western farmers, ranchers and
timbermen rightfully fear the
additional restrictions these
proclamations can impose.
It seems that they should have
at least the same consideration
afforded the people of Wyoming.
ed forest supervisor for
Malheur National Forest
made this very clear in
early February when he
informed the American
Forest Resources Coun-
cil that any interference
or preventing the Forest
Service from performing
road closures will jeopar-
dize timber outputs on the
forest.
That, my friends, is
where we have come as a
region and where the For-
est Service has come to
as an agency. You don’t
support what we want to
do, we’ll break you, pe-
riod, end of story. So,
what other choice do these
companies have? Either
Hells Canyon Preservation
Council litigates a timber
project if it’s not closed
afterwards, or the Forest
Service simply does not
allow the project because
you can’t keep the public
shut up about it.
This isn’t just in Grant
County, it’s throughout
the Eastern Oregon coun-
ties and the only way to
address it is to tell the
commissioners that our
motorized access is not to
be negotiated.
We’re being held hos-
tage, friends. Who stands
up and says enough is
enough?
John D. George
Bates, Ore.
Oppose all
foreign trade
treaties
Do you believe we will
benefit with the passage
of the Trans Pacific Part-
nership or the Transatlan-
tic Trade and Investment
Partnership treaties? This
is not free or fair trade, as
they lead us to believe. It
is a means to destroy our
form of limited govern-
ment, our sovereignty and
merge us into the EU.
Under the jurisdiction
of their tribunals, Country
of Origin Labels that are
legal in the U.S. would be
denied so we could not call
for labeling of Vietnamese
catfish.... We would be de-
nied our firearms and even-
tually property ownership.
If you think this is just
a story, do some research.
Even some of our legis-
lators who are not in the
group of 35 committed
to pass these treaties are
denied access to the full
context of these treaties.
But those organizations/
corporations
furthering
this agenda have special
passwords to the full infor-
mation.
The TPN promotional
group has a goal to imple-
ment these treaties in 2015.
For a year or more I have
been contacting my legisla-
tors, but I am only one and
it takes all of us to voice our
concerns and hold them ac-
countable. The New Amer-
ican magazine has infor-
mation about this at www.
thenewamerican.com.
We are not paying atten-
tion to the destructive forc-
es attacking our nation and
freedoms. The people in Eu-
rope are rising against their
control. We can stop it now
in our nation by contacting
our legislators, voicing our
concerns and holding them
accountable. We owe it to
our freedom, future, nation
and our posterity.
Mrs. M.A. Novak
Yamhill,Ore.
alifornia’s
historic
drought shows no sign
of letup. Snowpack is
described as “dismally meager”
as the state’s prolonged dry spell
drags into a fourth year.
Unfortunately, there is
also no end in sight to federal
fish-before-people policies that
have made the drought’s effects
more severe.
This became clear after the
U.S. Supreme Court, a few
weeks back, declined to hear
challenges to Endangered Spe-
cies Act regulations that have
withheld millions of gallons of
water from human use and sent
it directly out to sea.
In a misguided strategy to
protect habitat for the Delta
smelt — a three-inch fish on
the ESA list — the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service has sharp-
ly curbed the operations of the
state and federal water projects
in California over the past sev-
en years. As less water has been
pumped south from Northern
California and the Sierra, water
rates have spiked in Los An-
geles, Orange and San Diego
counties. Vast stretches of farm-
land have been fallowed. Thou-
sands of farm jobs disappeared.
And the regulations aren’t
even working: The smelt popu-
lation keeps evaporating.
After the 9th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals upheld these
destructive policies last year,
a group of San Joaquin Valley
farmers and a number of water
districts appealed to the Su-
preme Court. Even though the
court accepts only a small per-
centage of appeals, there was
surprise — even shock — that
the justices wouldn’t come to
the state’s aid.
However, this setback must
not lead to surrender. The ESA
water cutbacks are so damaging
to the economy, so ineffective as
environmental policy — and so
wrong as a matter of law — that
the legal campaign against them
must go on.
Success takes time
In fact, that’s how litigation
against entrenched environ-
mental policies often proceeds.
However misguided they are,
overturning them takes time and
tenacity.
My organization, Pacific Le-
gal Foundation — a watchdog
for sensible environmental polic-
es — knows this first hand.
We’ve won quite a few vic-
tories at the Supreme Court.
But almost every one came on
the third, fourth or fifth try. On
questions ranging from the scope
of Clean Water Act regulations,
to the right to challenge govern-
mental takings, to the need for
fairness in environmental-mit-
igation demands, we’ve had to
keep knocking at the Supreme
Court’s door before the justices
finally agreed to hear the issues
and rule in our favor.
Three principles
Persistence is just as essential
Guest
comment
James S. Burling
in fighting ESA policies that rob
millions of Californians of water.
It will be necessary to keep going
back to the courts — and ulti-
mately to the Supreme Court —
to establish three basic principles:
• ESA officials must not ig-
nore human beings. The Cali-
fornia water cutoffs were imple-
mented with no regard for their
effects on the economy. Yet the
government’s own protocols say
economic consequences have to
be considered when ESA regula-
tions are drafted.
The Supreme Court should
force ESA regulators to follow
their own rules and stop ignoring
the health and welfare of society.
•ESA regulations must be
“prudent,” not oppressive. In
upholding the smelt water re-
ductions, the 9th Circuit said that
ESA-listed species must receive
“the highest of priorities,” even
at “the sacrifice of … many mil-
lions of dollars in public funds.”
But this was based on a
controversial Supreme Court
precedent from 1978 — Ten-
nessee Valley Authority v. Hill
— which is clearly outdated. In
TVA, the Supreme Court said
species protection takes prece-
dence over all other priorities,
“whatever the cost.” However,
Congress later amended the
ESA to insist that key regula-
tions must be “reasonable and
prudent.”
It is time for the Supreme
Court to acknowledge that TVA,
with its radical bias against com-
mon sense, has passed its shelf
life.
• ESA policies must help,
not hurt, protected species. The
feds’ strategy to aid the smelt
(and protected salmon, too) ac-
tually hurts other ESA-listed
species. The pumping reductions
have withheld water not just
from cities and farms, but also
from imperiled species such as
the San Joaquin kit fox and the
Western screech owl.
A bedrock rule of medicine
is, “First, do no harm.” The Su-
preme Court should hold ESA
regulators to the same standard:
They must avoid skewed strat-
egies that “help” some species
only at the cost of injuring others.
At PLF, we will be looking
for cases across the country that
allow us to litigate these three
important issues, with the aim of
getting them to the nation’s high-
est court.
The protection of species is
important, but so is the protec-
tion of jobs and the economy.
PLF will continue to fight for that
principle of reasonable balance
until it is embraced by the courts
and implemented by the bureau-
cracy.
James S. Burling is Director
of Litigation with Pacific Legal
Foundation. PLF represented
San Joaquin Valley farmers
who challenged the Endangered
Species Act water cutoffs in
federal court.