Legislation authorizing Defense Department spending includes provisions expanding the conservation of public lands and an extension of a program to expedite energy development permitting on federal lands.
The list of items in the bill runs the gamut and spans efforts advocated by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The overall defense bill is considered must-pass legislation and usually passes both chambers with ease every year. The House is supposed to vote on the measure this week, with the Senate expected to take it up next week.
The public lands provisions in the bill protects hundreds of thousands of acres for conservation by creating eight new national parks and extending seven others, a move that environmentalists cheered.
“These measures protect invaluable drinking water sources, wildlife habitat, and places to hunt, camp, and experience our great outdoors while strengthening local economies and enhancing the quality of life for countless Americans,” the Wilderness Society President Jamie Williams said.
But conservatives dubbed the effort a land grab that would keep areas off limits to energy production.
“Locking up federal land so that it cannot be used to produce natural resources, such as energy, minerals, livestock and timber, has a devastating economic effect on people in the rural West,” said Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment. “Many of these federal land lockups could never be enacted on their own if debated and voted in the light of day.”
The oil and gas industry did secure inclusion of a federal pilot program that aimed to speed up permission for energy development on federal land.
The American Petroleum Industry, America’s Natural Gas Alliance and other have pushed for an extension of the Bureau of Land Management program, which operated on a trial basis in seven field offices. Those groups wrote to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, in November that the program “has a proven track record of success.”
The bill also allows a large copper mine in Arizona to go forward through a federal land swap with United Kingdom mining firm Rio Tinto. The Resolution Mine, as its known, would be the third-largest copper mine in the world.
