Clinton Backs Bill
To Seize More Land

WASHINGTON — President Clinton, celebrating the 150th birthday of the Interior Department, used the occasion to lobby for a $1 billion-a-year program that would enable the federal government to take over more private property.

He criticized the Republican-led Congress for ``wasting precious time battling over senseless anti-environmental riders ... which I'm going to veto anyway,'' and called on them to approve a permanent guarantee of annual funding for government land acquisition.

The so-called ``land legacy'' fund would be similar to what Clinton proposed as part of his budget last month, but the president said Congress should make such funding permanent.

A number of bills already have been introduced by both Democrats and a few Republicans in the House and Senate that would boost spending for land acquisition. The money would come from royalties on offshore oil leases.

The Interior Department already controls 440 million acres of land, including 378 units of the national park system, 514 refuges, wilderness areas, millions of acres of rangeland and such American "crown jewels" as Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon.

Bills introduced by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., would establish permanent funding of more than $2 billion, including $900 million for land purchases.

A different version, introduced by lawmakers mainly from coastal states with offshore oil interests, would call for even more spending, but would earmark nearly $1.2 billion for mitigating coastal impacts from oil development. Environmental activists have opposed those bills because, they say, they would funnel 60 percent of the money to a half-dozen states with offshore oil development and encourage new oil drilling.