As the Obama Administration’s legislative agenda seems to have been stalled in Congress, it is looking increasingly likely that it will start looking to exercise its executive power to advance its agenda. See this article from the Friday edition of the New York Times as an example.
Along these same lines, a document recently obtained from the Department of Interior indicates the Obama Administration is in the process of considering a flurry of new national monument designations throughout the West (the document is a 5meg pdf file available upon request). This document mentions designations and land acquisitions in 11 different western states: Utah, Montana, New Mexico, California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Alaska, and Wyoming. According to our quick review, as many as 13 million acres of land (possibly more) are at risk for potential designation. Nearly every one of these proposed designations involve areas with energy potential.
National monument designations of this scope could have significant impact on many western-based businesses, ranchers, HOV enthusiasts, property rights activists, and rural citizens. Sadly, this effort to lock up millions of acres of land is just one more example of a renewed War on the West undertaken by an Administration determined to limit public access, reduce domestic energy production, ignore basic property rights, and impede real job creation.
As someone who has fought this fight before or who represents interests that may be impacted by these new designations, I wanted to give you a heads up as well as solicit your input as we consider ways to aggressively push back on this new attack. Please feel free to spread the news around as well as to contact me if you have any questions or suggestions.
Cody Stewart
Executive Director
Congressional Western Caucus
Chairman Rob Bishop (UT-01)
202 225-0453
cody.stewart@mail.house.gov
See my post Internal DOI Document; Secret Plan To Create 14 Nat'l Monuments? $Billions For Land Acquisition
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