Domenici Wants Feds To Sell
Surplus Land, Not Buy More

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Pete Domenici says Congress should address the disposition of existing federal lands and surplus land holdings before funding new land purchases.

Domenici, R-New Mexico, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee during a hearing on the Conservation and Reinvestment Act of 1999 that the federal government already has billions of dollars worth of outstanding land acquisition commitments and millions of acres of unneeded surplus lands.

"Without putting land acquisition funding on autopilot," Domenici says, "we should deal with these realities."

The Conservation and Reinvestment Act would direct 50 percent of the revenues paid to the federal government from Outer Continental Shelf oil, gas and other resource development and production moneys toward coastal impact assistance, federal land acquisition, state and local park and recreation programs, and state wildlife programs.

In 1998, OCS development generated $4.52 billion. Only a portion of those funds now go to the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Under the proposed legislation, 27 percent would go to 30 coastal states and five territories for impact assistance, 16 percent would go to the Land and Water Conservation Fund and Urban Parks and Recreation Recovery programs, and seven percent would go to match state fish and wildlife departments for wildlife conservation programs.

Domenici last year proposed dealing with existing federal in-holdings by using identified surplus federal lands, primarily held by the Bureau of Land Management, to generate funds to pay private citizens for their property that cannot be used due to federal land designations.

More than 45 million acres of privately-owned lands, so-called in-holdings, are trapped within the boundaries of federal land management units. At the same time, BLM has identified four to six million acres of land as surplus and unneeded by the federal government.

"The federal government should treat fairly the thousands of people, including hundreds of New Mexicans, who have yet to be paid for land tied up by the federal government," Domenici says. "I think we can get this done without buying land for land's sake."

Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyoming, has introduced legislation to keep the federal government from acquiring more land.

He introduced the No-Net-Loss of Private Lands Act in late April. The proposal would apply in states where 25 percent or more of the land is federally owned, requiring the government to sell land of equal value whenever private land is acquired.

"The federal land agencies continue to acquire vast amounts of land in the West and restrict access to these areas for multiple use purposes," Thomas says.

The federal government, he says, owns nearly 50 percent of land in Wyoming, 61 percent of Utah, and more than 80 percent of Nevada and Alaska.

Thomas says national parks, wildernesses and other reserved or protected lands would not be put up for sale under the act.