Where I Stand: 105th Congress aims at your health and environment

Thursday, Jan. 30, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

SURE DIDN'T TAKE LONG for Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, to introduce his latest bill designed to dump nuke waste on Nevada. This shouldn't come as a surprise, because the Alaskan has shown no respect for the natural resources in his own state. In addition to wanting to cut down even more of the Tongass National Forest, he also insists on having oil wells drilled on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This means big money, and he couldn't care less about the environment, wildlife and the caribou diet of Gwich'in Indians.

Murkowski is the ideal man to point the drive he hopes will make the Silver State the world's nuke waste toilet. His sidekick, Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, over in the House, has the same environmental-destruction credentials as the senator. He also has the same power in his role as chairman of the committee overseeing our nation's natural resources.

Joining Murkowski in the presentation of a nuke waste bill for Nevada is another money-over-matter guy, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho. Craig hasn't seen a tree he doesn't believe would look better as a two-by-four or a pile of sawdust.

Remember that disastrous salvage-logging bill passed in a prior Congress? If you don't, just call some friends in Northern California, Oregon and Washington and ask them about how that bit of chicanery resulted in unstoppable mud slides during recent downpours. Even before the floods this year, the damage done by eroding bare hillsides destroyed some prime salmon-hatching creeks and river areas.

That infamous salvage-logging rider has finally expired, but the damage will be with us for generations. So, we are now safe from more such nonsense? Hardly. Craig has a 100-page bill designed to do even more damage to the forests and natural resources in and around them. Incidentally, one of my favorite federal agencies, the U.S. Forest Service, has been tagged as being more than eager to accommodate the big logging outfits.

Craig's new bill can result in unbelievable damage to our nation's natural resources. According to a recent published review, this is what but a few parts of his bill will do:

* The bill repeals the law requiring the Forest Service to give the public an opportunity to comment on proposed management activities.

* Forest Service and BLM officials would be able to impose $10,000 fines on people for filing administrative appeals that the officials consider to be "frivolous" or causing "unwarranted delay."

* Timber and mining companies and livestock grazers would receive special exemptions from public meeting laws.

* The bill relegates current ecosystem management policy to a purely analytical role and prohibits the agencies from applying it in a way that interferes with commodity outputs.

* The bill incorporates 17 of the 19 recommendations by the American Forest and Paper Association designed to give the timber industry greater influence over the national forests.

* The bill expands the use of salvage-timber sale revenues to prepare new timber sales and a wide range of other timber management activities, thereby reducing the return of timber revenues to the Treasury and increasing the federal deficit.

* Protection measures currently in place for Columbia River salmon, California spotted owls and other imperiled species will terminate in two years.

* Environmental protection requirements in management plans would be converted to nonbinding "policies," while expected timber and other commodity outputs would be mandatory.

Now you see the mentality of the lawmakers the Nevada delegation must combat as they attempt to protect the people and businesses of Nevada from becoming a deadly dump. Some Republican lawmakers received a burning during the last election because of their open anti-environmental actions. This forced them to withdraw some of their policies and eventually showed some cooperation for clean-water bills.

During the 1996 campaigns, many of these same men and women started to talk like Teddy Roosevelt conservationists. Evidently, some learned their lessons and were sincere about what they were saying. This is not the case with people like Murkowski, Young and Craig. Americans now can only hope that the voices of those who are concerned about the environment become stronger.

In the meantime, Nevadans are going to rely on the goodwill Speaker Newt Gingrich should have for Reps. John Ensign and Jim Gibbons. They must also hope that Sens. Richard Bryan and Harry Reid can hold enough votes to sustain a veto of Murkowski's bill by President Clinton.

It's not going to be easy.