PUBLIC LANDS: Bishop bill would require NEPA review to designate a national monument
Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
Published: Wednesday, April 10, 2013
A new draft bill by Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) would require the president to complete an environmental review before designating certain national monuments.
Bishop's bill and several other Republican measures seeking to restrict the president's monument powers will be discussed at a hearing Tuesday before the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation.
While Bishop, who leads the panel, has long been a skeptic of the National Environmental Policy Act, his bill would require the law to apply equally to the president if he wants to designate a monument greater than 5,000 acres. The legislation would exempt monuments smaller than 5,000 acres from NEPA reviews, but even those would require approval by Congress within three years.
"We allow him to do bigger stuff if he wants to, but he has to go through the NEPA process like everybody else," Bishop said yesterday in an interview.
Bishop's legislation comes weeks after President Obama designated five new national monuments, including the 243,000-acre Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in northern New Mexico. That decision was the result of extensive public outreach and garnered support from a bevy of local officials, ranchers, area businesses and New Mexico lawmakers.
But Bishop and other Republicans have argued that presidents have ignored language in the Antiquities Act stipulating that it be used to designate the smallest amount of land necessary to protect the resource and only when those resources face imminent threats.
Bishop last month said he was concerned that the president was committing taxpayers to new expenditures at a time of harmful federal deficits. None of the monument designations commit any taxpayer dollars, but in some cases they do require appropriations to be stretched slightly more.
Bishop's bill would require that monument designations be followed by a study estimating long-term management costs and any potential loss in federal and state revenues.
Other bills at next week's hearing would require the president to obtain approval from Congress to designate monuments in New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, Nevada and Montana, as is already the case in Wyoming and Alaska.
Republicans introduced a handful of similar bills in the 112th Congress for various states, each of them rooted in concerns that past presidents have abused their monument powers by protecting lands that are not at risk.
An amendment sponsored by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) to require the president to gain approval of a state's governor and legislature before designating a national monument passed the House last April as part of a hunting and fishing package. Her bill, H.R. 382, is included in next week's hearing.
Such bills have never gained traction in the Democratic-controlled Senate and aren't expected to do so during this session of Congress, either.
Conservationists note that more than a dozen presidents, from both parties, have designated national monuments, protecting places including the Grand Canyon and the Statue of Liberty.
"It's no surprise Rep. Bishop opposes the president creating a national monument in New Mexico," Max Trujillo of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, said last month, responding to Bishop's criticism of the Rio Grande monument. "This is a man who repeatedly has proposed selling off our public lands, not protecting them."
Monument supporters say protecting public lands can trigger more recreation spending, which can boost local economies.
