GOP leaders blast Reid's public lands, water omnibus

Paul Quinlan and Phil Taylor, E&E reporters
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Republican leaders over the weekend urged defeat of the omnibus package of 110 public lands, water and wildlife bills that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) introduced Friday and hopes to pass in the final days of this Congress.
House Natural Resources Chairman-elect Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) called the package of 110 bills (S. 303) "bloated" and said it authorizes more than $18 billion in spending over 10 years.
"Instead of haphazardly approving billions in new spending, we have an obligation to ask if spending money on these programs is so critical that we should further indebt ourselves to foreign countries and put our economic security at risk," Hastings said in a statement. "This monster bill must be defeated."
Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee -- whose Democratic chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer, urged Reid to push the natural resources package -- also slammed the bill. Inhofe said through a spokesman that the package, unlike certain individual measures included, had no chance of passing and showed that Democrats would rather "play politics than ensure passage of environmental legislation."
"What is truly unfortunate is that within this massive package there are a number of bills that have broad bipartisan support," Inhofe spokesman Matt Dempsey said in an e-mail. "These bills, if considered separately from this massive omnibus package, may very well be able to pass the Senate."
Inhofe and fellow Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn have both pledged to block the 1,003-page bill.
Senate Democrats counter that Republican obstructionism has forced them to resort to catch-all omnibus measures like the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 and the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, which passed with bipartisan support.
"I want to get this package done before Congress adjourns," Reid said in a statement Friday announcing he filed the bill. Just the day before, Reid had sounded less enthused. "I'm not sure we can get that done now," Reid said. "I sure would like to get it done, but I'm not sure we can."
Reid struck a decidedly different tone Friday. "These are bipartisan bills," he said. "There is nothing divisive about protecting historic battlefields, improving our most critical water sources or making sure that our best wildlife habitat remains wild and healthy."
Inhofe has specifically criticized one measure in the bill intended to help bolster new EPA efforts to protect and restore the Chesapeake Bay. He said that provision could serve as a model for water pollution regulation that would ultimately hurt the agriculture industry in other parts of the nation.
Hastings leveled broader criticism at the omnibus, saying wilderness measures would lock up public land from motorized access and energy production and could complicate the U.S. Border Patrol's ability to prevent illegal immigration and smuggling.
While Hastings did not identify particular bills, wilderness critics have targeted Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman's (D-N.M.) "Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Wilderness Act," which would protect 270,000 acres of wilderness and 110,000 acres as a national conservation area along the New Mexican border with Mexico.
The bill, which Bingaman's panel passed unanimously this summer, includes a 5-mile buffer area to allow Border Patrol to conduct routine patrols and construct communication and surveillance infrastructure.
In a June letter, Border Patrol Commissioner Alan Bersin said the proposal "would significantly enhance the flexibility" of the agency to do its job, adding that Bingaman's "collaborative process should be a model for future consideration of wilderness designation along the border."
Other wilderness proposals in the omnibus would ban logging and road development in the Devil's Staircase in Oregon, expand the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in Washington and extend the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River and Pratt River wild and scenic rivers.
Taken together, the bills' 320,000 acres of wilderness are only a fraction of the 2.1 million acres of new wilderness areas in nine states created under the 2009 public lands omnibus.
The omnibus also includes bills that would create or expand national parks and monuments, including a committee-passed proposal to designate the Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico as a unit of the National Park System and a separate proposal to create the Waco Mammoth National Monument in Texas.
A bill pushed by Montana Democratic Sens. Jon Tester and Max Baucus would ban future mineral leasing and hardrock mining claims in a critical watershed bordering Montana's Glacier National Park.
A notable absence in the omnibus is a controversial proposal backed by Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl to promote a massive Arizona copper mine on land that is currently part of the Tonto National Forest.
The bill, which was included in an earlier public lands omnibus draft, would allow the Forest Service to swap about 4,000 acres of the Tonto National Forest to build the mine in exchange for more than 5,500 acres of Resolution Copper's private holdings. That is opposed by American Indian tribes and Arizona's Democratic lawmakers.