Colorado delegation should support Omnibus Lands bill

A huge package of land conservation legislation, the S22 Omnibus Lands Bill,  passed the Senate January 15 by a 73-21 vote and awaits a vote in the House.  It could go to a House committee first or head directly to the floor and the voting is likely to move fast. 

The bipartisan Colorado delegation should support it because it is rare that 160 bills, the vast majority on conservation issues, get supported by diverse environmental voices such as Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and the conservative Senators from Wyoming and Idaho.  

Former Colorado Senator and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar backs it.  A Salazar spokesman said last Friday that the Secretary, “authored several provisions that will help protect signature landscapes in Colorado, including in Rocky Mountain National Park and on the Western Slope. He hopes the bill will soon be passed and sent to the President’s desk.” 

That same day the Congressional Budget Office pointed out that, in contrast to the fast moving Congressional economic stimulus bills, S 22 will have no effect on the country’s spending at least through 2018.

This is a bill that will probably do a very small bit of environmental damage or it would not have attracted anti-environmental votes, but far more good. S22 expands protection of tribal and Federal public lands in many ways in at least 32 states from the West through New England and the Virgin Islands. 

It expands the means to do more conservation on BLM lands that have often been seen as only being low cost banks for energy and mining concessions.

The bill also contains some necessary money for NOAA, our scientific arm studying the impacts on climate change on our oceans, to conduct measurements of acidifying oceans and impacts of warmer waters, instead of reading other studies as the agency had been forced to do during the past administration when science was considered political hearsay.

For Colorado, this bill will finally protect over 316,000 acres located within Rocky Mountain National Park and establish the new Dominguez-Escalante Wilderness that has passed through endless local public review. Colorado’s Wilderness Society correctly points out that, although the bill is imperfect, it is a combination of many compromises that should not be revisited in the House after so many years of struggle to come to broad agreement. It should be passed quickly as-is.

There is another reason to see this legislation passed.  In addition to not adding to our nation’s debt, it is almost certain that desperately needed conservation jobs will be created in both rural and urban areas as a result of the protections provided for Interior and Forest Service lands, for protected trail systems, and within the Park Service for areas budget for historical preservation.

This jobs creation (pollution cleanup) would be a side effect, also, if the 1872 Mining Act Reform passes Congress in the coming year.   We hope that S22 will be seen as jobs and conservation and public lands and ocean protection by most members of the House of Representatives and especially from those representing the state of Colorado.

Dick Kamp lives in Santa Fe, N.M., and for more than 25 years, has reported on environmental issues in the West. His last two special reports for the Daily Press involved the Dominquez-Escalante Wilderness proposal and the proposed Pinon Ridge/Energy Fuels uranium mine in the West End of Montrose County.