VallesCaldera.com – The independent news source about the Valles Caldera

According to an article in the publication Environment & Energy Daily today, key members of the Senate Democratic leadership are lobbying Republicans to support passage of an omnibus public lands bill that would transfer management of the Valles Caldera to the National Park Service during the short lame-duck session of Congress:

The full-court press is on to assemble and pass a monumental package of waterways, public lands and wildlife bills in the final days of this Congress.

Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) last night to discuss packaging a slew of waterways bills that won bipartisan endorsements from her committee with measures that emerged with similarly broad-based support from the Energy and Natural Resources Committee aimed at protecting more than 2 million acres and creating new national parks, monuments, wilderness areas and wildlife sanctuaries.

“It was great,” Boxer said of her meeting with Reid. “What we’re doing is we’re talking to the Republicans now who voted for all the bills in my committee to see if they will go along with doing a package of bills.”

Boxer added it was unlikely that such a bill could pass the Senate with unanimous support; thus, work is under way to obtain the necessary 60 votes.

“I think we have a good chance because they are bipartisan bills,” Boxer said.

However, the article quotes Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and George Voinovich (R-OH) as declaring that chances for success of this bill are “uncertain” and “tough,” respectively.

E&E is also reporting that the Pew Environment Group is taking out ads tomorrow in the influential Capitol Hill newspapers Roll Call and Politico urging members of Congress to support this omnibus lands bill:

“More than twenty wilderness bills are now before Congress, thanks to Republicans and Democrats alike,” the ad says, against a backdrop of New Mexico’s Organ Mountains, which are part of a bill to protect 270,000 acres of wilderness and 110,000 acres as a national conservation area.

“Hunters, anglers, business leaders, conservationists and other local citizens who’ve worked together to get these measures this far are counting on Congress to take action before it adjourns,” the ad says.

As New Mexicans who have long advocated for National Park Service stewardship of the Valles Caldera closely follow events on Capitol Hill, a proposed omnibus lands bill containing the legislation that would emblazon the Park Service arrowhead to the gates of the scenic crown jewel of the Land of Enchantment has yet to be introduced in the U.S. Senate. According to the New York Times, the bill has a less-than-favorable chance of passage before the end of the current lame-duck session, after which the Caldera legislation would have to be reintroduced if the Park Service is to replace the Valles Caldera Trust, as has been endorsed by a broad spectrum of New Mexico organizations, newspapers, and officials (see a partial list here).

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee spokesman Bill Wicker told VallesCaldera.com that the omnibus bill will be introduced only if circumstances permit. “We’re just trying to be ready in the event that there’s an opportunity to offer that during the lame duck,” Wicker said. “We really don’t know if we’re going to have a chance to do it this year. We don’t know if there will be floor time given to it, or if there will be objections or what have you, but we do know that we have an obligation to be ready… Nobody has any idea if it’s going to be able to go forward or not.”

Meanwhile, the New York Times covered this issue in a story headlined “Outlook Dim for Lame-Duck Omnibus Lands Package.” An excerpt of the article is below:

Congress may lose its best chance to pass a suite of public lands proposals that would protect more than 2 million acres of federal lands as wilderness if it fails to move an omnibus measure in the lame-duck session, conservation groups say.

But while a key Senate lawmaker last week said he was bundling several dozen public lands bills into a draft package, Democratic leadership is mum about whether such a measure could move amid a crowded Senate schedule of higher-profile issues including a continuing resolution, tax extensions and other measures.

“It is on a list of items that are possible for consideration during the lame duck,” Regan LaChapelle, a spokeswoman for Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said of a draft public lands proposal by New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D). “We have a long list of items that are possible and not much time to do so.”

Reid is speaking with fellow Democrats and Republicans, House leaders and the Obama administration to decide what is possible over the coming weeks, LaChapelle said.

The proposal by Bingaman, who is chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, would include most of the 60-plus public lands bills his panel has passed in the 111th Congress, and none that have failed to pass, said spokesman Bill Wicker.

Bills that have passed the committee include a proposal to designate the Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico as a unit of the National Park System, a proposal to turn the Devil’s Staircase in Oregon into federally protected wilderness where logging and road development would be banned, and a bill to expand the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in Washington and extend the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River and Pratt River wild and scenic rivers.

The Los Alamos Monitor also covered the Caldera legislation and the proposed omnibus bill that contains it in a story headlined “Clock ticks on Valles Caldera: With a new Congress waiting in the wings, passing the Omnibus Bill this year deemed critical.” Below is an excerpt:

After jumping through 24 months of bureaucratic hoops, the management at Valles Caldera National Preserve is poised to become part of the National Park System.

Management of the 89,000-acre dormant volcano field by a troubled private sector trust has had activists campaigning for its inclusion this year, to stave off possible indefinite postponement by a new Congress January 1.

The article quotes Los Alamos County Councilor Robert Gibson as summarizing why the Council and the town’s Chamber of Commerce both have endorsed this proposal:

The Valles Caldera Trust was a management experiment driven by a 2000 political requirement for economic self-sufficiency. The Trust has tried, but will not achieve that economic goal. The insurance costs and regulatory burdens on this small federal entity are too great. While the special character of the Valle Caldera may be vulnerable to excessive use, the National Park Service is experienced in managing similar natural resources and appears to be the best potential manager going forward. There should also be some synergy and administrative efficiency from multiple adjacent Park Service units here.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) is preparing to introduce an omnibus public lands bill for passage during the lame-duck session of Congress, which begins on Monday and ends in early January, according to a story from yesterday in Greenwire, a publication of Environment & Energy Publishing. In this story, Bill Wicker, the spokesman for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee (which is chaired by Bingaman), refused to divulge which bills would comprise the omnibus legislation, stating only that there will be “dozens and dozens of bills” included. However, Wicker and Bingaman’s Senate office spokeswoman, Jude McCartin, have indicated to VallesCaldera.com that the bill that would transfer administration of the Valles Caldera to the National Park Service would likely be one of the pieces of legislation that will be included in the omnibus bill that Bingaman is planning to attempt to shepherd through Congress.

The Energy and Natural Resources Committee has approved more than 60 bills this session that would create new national parks, monuments, wilderness areas and wildlife sanctuaries, according to Greenwire, including the Valles Caldera National Preserve Management Act, which passed the committee unanimously.

However, many pitfalls loom for Bingaman’s objective of passing this omnibus bill before the 112th Congress is sworn in early next year. From the Greenwire story:

Congress is grappling over a possible extension of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts and has to pass another budget extension if it wants to keep the federal government in business past Dec. 1. And Republicans — fresh off a shellacking of their Democratic rivals in last week’s midterm elections and preparing to run the House come January — aren’t in a hurry to do much more than that.

The package’s quickest road to passage is by unanimous consent, but there are several voices in the Senate that could keep that from happening, Wicker said.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) leads that list, having promised earlier this year to block any bill that did not offset all spending with cuts elsewhere. Coburn threatened to filibuster an omnibus in the final months of 2008, delaying it all the way into the current congressional session.

Wicker said that if the bills could not fit through the agenda, they could quickly be reintroduced and passed through the Senate next session, again as an omnibus.

The likelihood of passage of the bill that would bring the Valles Caldera into the National Park system is “unclear,” according to the spokeswoman for Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), the primary sponsor of the legislation. A key cause for this uncertainty is the fact that the bill must be passed during the “lame-duck” session of Congress that will begin on Nov. 15 and end on Jan. 2, or the reset button would be hit for the entire process.

The legislation (S.3452, the Valles Caldera National Preserve Management Act), which was unanimously approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in August, has been eligible for a vote by the full Senate for three months. However, a spokesman for this committee indicated in August that S.3452 would likely not be voted on by the Senate as a standalone measure, but rather would be included in a proposed omnibus public lands bill, which would package together multiple pieces of legislation dealing with public lands into one bill.

The prospects of Congress passing such an omnibus bill are now uncertain, according to Bingaman’s office. “Sen. Bingaman is hopeful that we can get a public lands package passed,” Bingaman spokeswoman Jude McCartin told VallesCaldera.com, “but it’s unclear if we will have the time to get this passed through both chambers with bipartisan support.”

If the Valles Caldera legislation does not pass before the 111th Congress ends on Jan. 2, 2011, the bill would die. It would then have to be reintroduced and the process would have to begin anew if long-held aspirations by New Mexicans for the Park Service to manage the Valles Caldera are to be fulfilled.

It would appear that the next Congress might be reluctant to sign off on the Valles Caldera legislation, given the bitter partisanship that exists in Washington D.C., since the bill was introduced by New Mexico’s Democratic Senators, while Republicans will soon have control over the House of Representatives. However, the fact that Democrats retained control over the Senate in last week’s elections means that Sen. Bingaman will continue to chair the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, so he could easily reintroduce the Caldera legislation for another shot at passage.

Despite last week’s elections, the partisan makeup of Congress will not change until January, giving Sen. Bingaman a limited window of opportunity to pass this bill in the short term. However, Republicans currently have enough seats in the Senate to filibuster any measure that they desire, and it would be surprising if they decided to allow this bill to pass, given that it was introduced by a Democrat.

Support for a transfer of the Valles Caldera to the Park Service has been overwhelming, with the following individuals and organizations endorsing the legislation:

Valles Caldera National Preserve Board of Trustees
Los Alamos County Council (unanimous support)
Los Alamos Chamber of Commerce
Albuquerque Journal and Albuquerque Journal North
Santa Fe New Mexican
Jemez Thunder
Pueblo of Jemez Gov. Joshua Madalena
Pueblo of Santa Clara Gov. Walter Dasheno
William DeBuys, Founding Chairman of the Valles Caldera Trust
New Mexico’s U.S. Senators Jeff Bingaman (D) and Tom Udall (D)
New Mexico’s U.S. Representatives Ben Ray Lujan (D) and Martin Heinrich (D)
Los Alamos County Council Chairman Michael Wismer (I)
Los Alamos County Council Vice-Chair Sharon Stover (R)
Los Alamos County Councilman Michael Wheeler (D)
Los Alamos County Councilman Ralph Phelps (R)
Los Alamos County Councilman Robert Gibson (R)
Los Alamos County Councilman Vincent Chiravalle (R)
Los Alamos County Councilwoman Nona Bowman (R)
Republicans for Environmental Protection (New Mexico)
New Mexico Wildlife Federation
Los Alamos Mountaineers
Los Alamos Ski Club
Sierra Club (including the Rio Grande Chapter, the Pajarito Group, and the Central Group)
Audubon Society (including the National Audubon Society, the New Mexico Audubon Council, the Sangre de Cristo Audubon Society, and the Southwestern New Mexico Audubon Society)
Caldera Action
New Mexico Mountain Club
New Mexico Native Plant Society
New Mexico Trout
New Mexico Wilderness Alliance
Trout Unlimited
National Parks Conservation Association
Center for Biological Diversity
Coalition of National Park Service Retirees
People United for Parks
and VallesCaldera.com.