Failure of the Endangered Species Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. TENNEY. Madam Speaker, I join my colleagues today urging commonsense policies to carry out the goals of the Endangered Species Act while allowing our communities to flourish.

As stewards of our planet, we each have a responsibility to care for the environment and protect our wildlife while also caring for and addressing the needs of our human environment, which often gets left out in this conversation.

However, today it seems more difficult than ever to have balanced discussions. Deeply entrenched special interests are increasingly using our small communities as pawns for their larger political ambitions. Unfortunately, the bureaucrats in both the Federal and State Government, especially in New York, have become more powerful than the people, and that is unacceptable.

I want to bring to your attention what is happening in my community today. I represent New York's 22nd District, which stretches all the way from Lake Ontario, yes, a Great Lake, to the Pennsylvania border in the heart of beautiful, pastoral, upstate New York.

On April 16, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation ordered an immediate halting of a routine annual dredging project to clear ingress and egress into the lovely inlet of Sandy Pond, which is on the eastern shore of Lake Ontario, due to the sighting of a piping plover, a small shoreline bird that weighs less than 2 ounces. Even though there are over 10,000 of these birds today throughout the Great Plains and eastern seaboard, they remain listed as an endangered species in the Great Lakes region.

The annual dredging project maintains safe ingress and egress into Sandy Pond. The seasonal dredging was one week from completion before the forced government closure. There are several hundred homes and campsites along this beautiful spot on Lake Ontario known as Sandy Pond, where people from around the Northeast have enjoyed this incredibly beautiful and unique place for over a century.

The closure has been devastating to local businesses, residents, and visitors, who have already been suffering from the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic last summer. Property values alone in this region are in excess of $150 million, not including all the business revenues and sales tax lost from people coming to this region from really all around the Northeast and Canada.

Despite this harsh Federal action, the two--there are now two--piping plovers' nests are not even close to the dredging site. I know because I went to the site, and I walked off the distance from the dredging site to the beginning of the designated habitat. The distance was clearly over 3,000 feet, just to get to the beginning of the site, where the birds are much farther down.

I want to emphasize that the community cares deeply about the natural environment. They seek to preserve this natural environment and its natural splendor for generations to come, and they deeply care about the continued growth and continued population of this piping plover.

The community has proposed a simple dredging, an economy-mode dredging, which would be less intrusive, to dispose of the sand in an alternative location that would be far away. This is a very modest and safe proposal. It is respectful and preserves the nesting site to the bird, and it is a perfectly reasonable accommodation.

Unfortunately, the Federal and State bureaucrats have dug in and refuse to compromise, despite the fact that dredging can begin again safely and responsibly without threatening the life or the habitat of the birds.

The Federal and State agencies have been unable to support their position yet with data or facts. We have had numerous conversations with them, public meetings, and press conferences, and they refuse to offer any opportunity for the residents to have some relief.

All the while, the community at Sandy Pond continues to suffer, and the harm could be irreparable harm as the situation grows more dire each day, as the safe passage into Sandy Pond to and from Lake Ontario becomes impossible.

The piping plover, interestingly, has not been seen in this part of Sandy Pond. Really it is sort of a rare resident. And it has been determined that actually piping plovers like dredged sand. It unearths minerals and nutrients for them, and they tend to be flocking now to these nesting sites. Sadly, a few years ago one of the pairs that did show up was killed by a fox, so we were unable to save that particular pair.

There are far too many communities that have suffered from the whims of bureaucrats in Washington and Albany who just don't seem to care and seem to be hiding behind many of these rules and regulations when there are reasonable alternatives that will preserve the natural environment as well as the human environment.

I am concerned that to make matters worse the Biden administration is barreling down a path of appeasement to the left lobbyists and special interests.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has already announced they are repealing recent reforms to the Endangered Species Act put in place under the last administration--and thank you for acknowledging the changes that were made. These changes will enact greater economic costs while doing very little to offer any additional conservation protections for the environment.

Our communities need reasonable compromises to ensure the prosperity and enjoyment of our natural environment for all. This includes the economy as well as the wildlife and the natural environment. The Federal Government must be committed to this outcome as well as the State government.

That is why I rise today, in support of targeted reforms to the Endangered Species Act that provide for commonsense solutions that will protect the natural environment for all species.

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