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Nader Requests Hearings on the Salvage Rider
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TAXPAYER ASSETS PROJECT - NATURAL RESOURCES POLICY ADVISORY
(please distribute freely)
TAP-RESOURCES
March 7, 1996
The following letter was sent to the House and Senate Judiciary
Committees from Ralph Nader. As the letter explains, the Judiciary
Committee, along with all other relevant authorizing committees, never had
a chance to review the very dangerous federal Emergency Timber Salvage
Program language in P.L. 104-19, so hearings are in order.
Hearings are not only appropriate in the Judiciary Committee, they
also allow issues to be raised away from the timber industry backed
Resources Committee, and into an arena where substanative problemss could
be addressed. If you would like to ask the Judiciary Committees to
request hearings on the implementation of the "logging without laws" rider
please call:
Senate Judiciary Committee- v. (202) 224-5225
f. (202) 224-9102
House Judiciary Committee- v. (202) 225-3951
f. (202) 225-7682
Ned Daly
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March 1, 1996
Henry J. Hyde, Chairman John Conyers
United States Congress United States Congress
House of Representatives House of Representatives
Judiciary Committee Judiciary Committee
2138 Rayburn HOBuilding 2138 Rayburn HOB
Washington, D.C. 20515 Washington, D.C. 20515
Orrin Hatch, Chairman Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
United States Senate United States Senate
Committee on the Judiciary Committee on the Judiciary
224 Dirksen SOB 224 Dirksen SOB
Washington, D.C. 20510 Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Chairmen and Ranking Minority Members of the Judiciary
Committees:
I am writing to ask that the House and Senate Judiciary
Committees hold hearings on the recent suspension of all
federal environmental laws and citizens' rights to redress
regarding a publicly owned asset. Senseless destruction of
our public forestlands is now being carried out under the
Emergency Salvage Timber Sale Program, more popularly known
as the "Logging Without Laws" rider. This law, which
restricts the public's right to judicial redress and
insulates management of a publicly owned asset from review
of all environmental laws, passed the House and Senate as a
rider in an appropriations bill, now Public Law 104-19.
Consequently, your committees and other relevant committees
had no opportunity to address the radical measures taken to
allow for accelerated timber harvesting at a great expense
to the taxpayer.
The appropriations bill did serve several important
purposes including the provision of emergency federal aid
for the Oklahoma City bombing; however, by including the
salvage provisions in this bill, proper congressional
procedures have been avoided resulting in renegade logging
of publicly owned forests which conforms to neither the rule
of law nor science. We urge the Judiciary Committees to
hold hearings and correct this situation.
The salvage provisions in P.L. 104-19 suspend, in
whole, the following environmental statutes:
The Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources
Planning Act;
The Federal Land Policy and Management Act;
The National Environmental Policy Act;
The Endangered Species Act;
The National Forest Management Act;
The Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act;
And the catch-all provision, suspending:
"All other applicable Federal environmental and
natural resource laws."
These statutes are the product of years of bipartisan effort
in Congress and they form the environmental foundation of
our legal system, yet the salvage rider nullifies them
without so much as a hearing in your committees.
In addition to eliminating all substantive
environmental laws, the rider goes even farther by
practically repealing all citizens' rights before the
judiciary. The rider prohibits a court from issuing any
"restraining order, preliminary injunction, or injunction
pending appeal" relating to a salvage timber sale. A
permanent injunction may issue for a particular sale but
only if it is found to be "arbitrary and capricious or
otherwise not in accordance with applicable law." There is,
of course, no "applicable law" because the rider has
suspended all environmental statutes, and it is difficult to
imagine an agency being found arbitrary and capricious when
it has no standards or laws to violate. The timber sales
may proceed completely at the agency's whim. Had the
judiciary committees thoroughly reviewed the salvage
language it is unlikely that the rider's blatant disregard
for citizen review and participation would have survived.
In addition to restricting future judicial redress, the
rider appears to open up previously outlawed timber sales by
making null and void any prior court rulings:
The Secretary concerned may conduct
salvage timber sales . . .notwithstanding any
decision, restraining order, or injunction issued
by a United States court before the date of the
enactment of this section. Public Law 104-19, sec
2001 (c)(9).
The rider has given rise to situations in which a specific
timber sale was prevented by judicial order due to
environmental problems, but is now being reformulated into a
salvage sale free from any environmental restraints. This
blatant disregard for our legal system is an embarrassment
and the environmental impacts are currently mounting.
The law's provisions also define "salvage" so broadly
as to permit the logging of almost any area. Salvageable
sections of a forest include those that are "imminently
susceptible to fire or insect attack" or "lacking the
characteristics of a healthy and viable ecosystem." Under
such a nebulous definition, whether a salvage sale will
occur is solely a matter of agency discretion. The salvage
rider has already been used by the timber industry to secure
timber sales on tracts that were previously off limits due
to environmental requirements. Moreover, pristine,
roadless areas are decimated every week by unbridled
logging.
The salvage rider also has serious implications which
go beyond the ravaging of our legal system. Taxpayers lose
tens of millions of dollars annually on salvage logging in
our national forests. Despite the timber industry's
cavalier assertion that salvage logging is good for forest
health, independent scientists agree that overcutting is the
greatest threat to our forest ecosystems. It is the health
of the timber industry, not the forests, which taxpayers are
subsidizing. If salvage logging truly benefits forest
health, there is no reason to suspend our nation's
environmental laws.
Along with the loss of tax dollars, quality of life and
economic diversity are also eroded where the unsustainable
harvesting is taking place. People who depend on salmon
fishing for their livelihoods have already been devastated
by over-logging, and now have no way of protecting the
remaining healthy riparian areas upon which they depend.
The salmon fishing industry in the Northwest has lost about
72,000 family wage jobs over the past 30 years. Of the jobs
lost, 25,000 are directly related to the collapse of the
Columbia River salmon runs (hydropower related mostly) with
the remainder (47,000) related to the collapse of the
coastal runs -- including some that will be pushed right to
the brink of extinction under the "Logging without Laws"
rider according to the Pacific Coast Federation of
Fishermen's Associations. People who depend on salmon
fishing have now also lost their ability to fight to protect
their industry and their jobs under the rider's repeal of
meaningful access to the judiciary.
The cost of running the salvage program is also a
fiscal debacle. Salvage logging on public lands costs the
taxpayer tens of millions of dollars annually, a figure
which can only increase in this new accelerated salvage
program. The sale of timber in our national forests is
often priced below-cost, but the rider takes this practice
to the extreme. The timber industry obtained a favorable
ruling in Oregon U.S. District Court confirming that
previously offered timber sales in Oregon and Washington,
whether they were abandoned for environmental or any other
reasons, would have to be made available at the originally
offered terms. Northwest Forest Resources Council v.
Glickman, No. 95-6244-HO, 1995 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13300 (D.Or.
Sept. 8, 1995). This applies to offered sales dating back
to 1990, and involves pricing that is many times below
current market rates.
While the salvage rider is clearly a boon to logging
companies, handing out generous corporate welfare funds is
not the behavior one would expect from a government
struggling to balance the budget and reduce spending.
Public assets should be managed in the public's interest.
No one can argue that restricting citizens' rights,
degrading public property and forcing taxpayers to subsidize
an industry which is already seeing record profits are in
the public's interest.
As Majority leader Dole said a few weeks ago regarding
the recently passed Telecommunications bill, "It makes no
sense to me then that Congress would create a giant
corporate welfare program when we are reforming welfare for
those trapped in a failed system.... The bottom line is that
[broadcast] spectrum is just as much a national resource as
our national forests. That means they belong to every
American equally. No more, no less. If someone wants to use
our resources, then we should be fairly compensated."
Certainly the Republican leadership would agree that along
with fair compensation for the use of all our national
resources, adherence to applicable federal laws is crucial
in the management of our publicly owned assets.
As Chairmen and Ranking Minority Members of the House
and Senate Judiciary Committees, I respectfully request that
you consider the impacts the ill-conceived salvage rider has
had in environmental and economic terms. Due to the
suspension of applicable laws, hearings in your committee
are the only public way to comprehensively gauge the effect
this egregious rider has had on the management of public
lands. I look forward to hearing from you on this matter.
If your office needs more information on the "Logging
without Laws" rider please contact Todd Paglia at (202) 387-8030.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
P.O. Box 19312
Washington, D.C. 20036
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