Coming up tomorrow in DC Members of the Senate Public Lands and Forests Subcommittee will exchange views with the Obama administration on bills addressing abandoned mine cleanup and new wilderness designations – among other items. Too bad the Subcommittee can’t exchange views with Obama and do it here in Cascadia where we will be living with the results. Ever get the sense that Barack Obama is using us as a chip in some sort of high-stakes game of pinochle? In any case, Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman is pushing legislation that would clarify the right of states and tribes to use abandoned mine land funding to clean up some non-coal mining sites. Since there is no other comparable source of clean-up money for other types of mining, states use the coal funds to clean up other dirty deeds. The Abandoned Mine Land fund is paid for through a royalty on coal. ‘Coal’ and ‘royalty’ in the same sentence!
The Subcommittee will also consider chairman Senator Ron Wyden’s piece of legislation allowing the Bureau of Land Management to engage in a land swap that would create two consolidated wilderness areas totaling 16 thousand acres. The wilderness areas would include some of the Big Muddy Ranch, famous for Oregon’s most headline-grabbing ‘invasive species’, the Rajneeshies. It’s now held by the Christian youth organization, Young Life. Must be some kind of ancient curse. The new wilderness would also include land along the wild and scenic John Day River adjacent to the Spring Basin wilderness – where presumably no one has enraged the spirits …yet.
And Senators Mark Udall Democrat of Colorado, Idaho Republican Jim Risch, and Colorado Democrat Mike Crapo are drafting legislation that would attempt to reduce wildfire damage by “shifting resources within the Forest Service to respond to damage caused by the infestation”. Translation: They’re going to auction off the logging rights before the ink on this new legislation is dry. Then it’s champagne and hookers for all! Whoopee!
- KBOO