Lawmakers Agree to Buy Land, Grow Trees
8/13/99
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Lawmakers Agree to Buy Land, Grow Trees
Source: The Associated Press
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: August 13, 1999
Byline: John Hughes
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Some Northwest lawmakers who often clash on the
environment are now linking arms to promote bills that encourage
forest protection and tree planting.
A proposal by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash.,
and Rep. Jennifer Dunn, R-Wash., would allow state and local
governments to issue bonds so that non-profit groups could buy forest
land and protect it from development.
On another front, Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho,
want to create a loan program for states that encourages private
landowners to plant trees to reduce global warming.
It is unclear whether the proposals, pushed late last month before
Congress began an August recess, have a chance of passing in the
remaining months of the 1999 session.
But the bills show that in the midst of fights over Snake River dams
and a proposed mining project in Washington state's Okanogan County,
the lawmakers of opposing parties have found some harmony on
environmental issues.
Craig said in a statement that he and Wyden don't see eye to eye on
the science behind the question of global warming.
"However, we both agree that healthy forests reduce carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere and are a broadly worthwhile environmental objective,"
Craig said.
Their bill would use fines collected under the Clean Air Act and
Clean Water Act -- about $45 million last year -- to set up state
loan programs for tree planting, brush clearing and other efforts
aimed at converting suitable land into forests.
Landowners would apply for two-year loans of as much as $100,000, and
then pay back the states with revenue from logging the trees. Or,
landowners could keep the forested land dormant and arrange to not
have to pay back the loan.
The bill is modeled after a six-year-old Oregon state program called
the Forest Resource Trust, which has succeeded in planting 744 acres
of land that otherwise would not have been reforested, said Jim
Cathcart, who oversees the program for the Oregon Department of
Forestry.
The Wyden-Craig bill has not been scheduled for a hearing, and there
is no House version of the bill.
Under the Dunn-Gorton-Murray proposal, business leaders,
environmentalists and others who want to prevent forest land from
being developed could form a non-profit group to buy the land with
tax-exempt bonds issued by a state or local government.
The non-profit group would then own the land and pay off the bonds
through land uses such as logging, apple growing or recreation.
The proposal requires the landowners to exceed federal, state and
local environmental laws.
"Now local communities and groups who wish to protect our forest and
farm land will be able to do so," Gorton said in a statement.
Dunn has introduced the bill for two straight years at the behest of
local officials, business leaders and conservationists in the King
County area.
While the proposal has stalled in the House, Gorton and Murray met
with some success late last month. They inserted the proposal into a
tax-cut bill that was passed by the Senate. However, the provision
was knocked out in a House-Senate conference committee.
The lawmakers may get another chance to pass the proposal if
President Clinton vetos the tax bill, as he has promised.