H.J. Res. 140

Floor Speech

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, this bill is an unprecedented use of a procedural mechanism that would have far-reaching consequences, not just for the Boundary Waters, as Senator Smith has explained, but for public lands across our country.

I have always supported science-based review, especially a project so close to this cherished Boundary Waters canoe area, and I continue to have concerns about this administration's disregard for science.

So as many of my colleagues know, I am the granddaughter of an iron ore miner. My great-grandparents came from Slovenia, and that was the job that my great-grandpa came to do. He died very young from his work, and then my grandpa took it up. He started very, very young in underground mines with a number of brothers and sisters that he took care of when his parents died, married my grandma, and this was his life. And he loved that life.

But he mostly also loved the time he had in the outdoors. He loved to hunt. He loved to fish. Every day he would go down 1,500 feet in that cage in that mine and always thought about what he thought about with that black lunch bucket that my grandma packed for him every single day in that little house that they had taken when a mine closed down in Babbitt. They put it on the back of a flatbed truck and they blew a hole with dynamite in the ground and put that house on top of it. That was their life.

My grandpa worked most of his life in the mines as did so many friends. He became, in his later years, the foreman of the mine, and I would meet people when I was first running for U.S. Senate up in Northern Minnesota that would say to me: You know, my dad worked with your grandpa. And whenever they explored a dangerous part of the mine, the other foreman wouldn't go. They radioed down from above. But your grandpa, he went first. He went with the guys, and he went down in the mine.

Such a big part of my life. That is why I have stood with our miners. I have stood with them when we had steel dumping from China and brought President Obama's chief of staff up to Northern Minnesota, met with our steel workers and our unions.

I have stood with our workers through good times and bad and will continue to do that. We have, as Senator Smith explained, some exciting new projects up there like Mesabi Metallics which is going to be a big taconite mine, a modern mine with some of the biggest equipment in the country. And we will have more.

But what this is about today is something else because my grandpa always got that balance. It was a balance of the working life that we must continue up in Northern Minnesota and a balance of the world around him, that world where he loved to hunt and he loved to fish.

I was 18 years old before I took a vacation that didn't involve a tent or a camper in one way or the other. I grew up in a family that valued the outdoors. My mom and dad met in the Twin Cities Hiking Club and generations of Minnesotans have found this same joy: hiking, paddling, camping in the Boundary Waters, and our beautiful parks. But I don't think they would have ever expected this.

H.J. Res. 140, as I noted, is an unprecedented use of a procedural mechanism that would have far-reaching consequences, not just for the BWCA but for other public lands. Secretaries of the Interior have long had the ability to issue public land orders to reserve Federal land for specific uses, setting it aside for things like infrastructure, certain military purposes, training and border security, or protection and conservation.

And public land orders are carefully made. The U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management gather public input. They hold townhalls. They analyze inputs.

But now for the first time, the Congressional Review Act is being used to rescind a public land order. Public land orders have never been considered rules under the CRA and have never been submitted to Congress as rules.

Today, the CRA before the Senate is being used simply as a way of revoking the land withdrawal without having to conduct that public engagement. And this unprecedented use of the CRA will have broader disruptive impacts on land management agencies' ability to oversee public lands all across the country.

This process is focused on Northern Minnesota today, but this new precedent could lead to Congress overturning public land orders elsewhere.

The Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service have long been trusted with working with landowners, nearby towns, and counties, and others to develop plans for managing public lands. This is often a give-and-take process built on trust. But this Congress, for the first time, has disrupted decades of work by the Bureau of Land Management and has stepped in the way of locally led land management.

These CRA resolutions disregard extensive public input. If this CRA resolution were approved, public access to some of the Nation's most treasured landscapes could be lost and the careful management of their lands and waters eliminated.

There are hundreds of public land orders that have been issued to protect our public land that could be put at risk: The Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge in Montana, considered a sportsman's paradise for its elk and bighorn sheep hunting; the 355,000 acres of Federal land near the Chaco Canyon National Historical Park in New Mexico. The precedent potentially being established today could pave over the comprehensive process undermining these landowners.

The CRA even threatens the protected status of the Grand Canyon, which happens to sit on significant mineral deposits. This precedent could lead to CRA resolutions beyond the BLM's work. Forest Service plans might be the next Land Management Agencies Congress attempts to disrupt using this process.

This ultimately could lead to Washington micromanaging public lands rather than letting the people and experts that live near the forest, grasslands, and waterways have a say.

So look at who is concerned about what is happening in the Senate today, the groups that are supportive of what I have been talking about here and are against this effort: American Fisheries Society, American Fly Fishing Trade Association, American Hunters & Anglers, Angler Action Foundation, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, Bass Anglers Sportsman Society, Fly Fishers International, the Izaak Walton League of America, Minnesota Trout Unlimited, Minnesota Wildlife Federation, National Deer Association, National Wildlife Federation, North American Falconers Association, North American Grouse Partnership, Pheasants Forever, Quail Forever, Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Trout Unlimited, Whitetails Unlimited, Wildlife Management Institute, the American Canoe Association, the Outdoor Alliance, Outdoor Life, Outdoor Realm.

So maybe some time should be taken to listen to what some of these national groups are saying that care about what my grandpa and my dad cared about, and that is public lands that can be used for recreation, for canoeing, for hunting, and for fishing.

So I will end with this: Sigurd Olson, the great Ely, MN, author and conservationist, wrote that ``joys come from simple and natural things, mists over meadows, sunlight on leaves, the path of the moon over water.''

This is the Boundary Waters. So Sigurd Olson just happened to be the dean of Ely Junior College and yet he rose to this national fame and that is when my dad met him because my dad went to a 2-year college, Ely Junior College, because my grandma believed that somehow that would launch his career in journalism. She happened to be right, but no one would have believed it then.

But Sigurd Olson was then the college dean. My dad and Sigurd Olson maintained a friendship for many years, powered by their shared love for the written word, for the Boundary Waters, and for their efforts to preserve Minnesota's forests and parks.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed into law Hubert Humphrey's bill, and this is the desk that I stand at today--Hubert Humphrey's desk--to protect this area by creating the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

And the Boundary Waters are now the most visited wilderness area in the country, welcoming 150,000 people each year. Over the course of my dad's career, he wrote 8,400 columns, more than a few of which were dispatches from the Boundary Waters. Speaking to the complexity of this national wonder, my dad wrote about the Boundary Waters: This is a place of woods and lakes and repose most of the time where a person can roam or drift or watch and listen. And that is not so much different in winter than in summer.

He called it a million acres of waterway and forest unlike any in the United States.

And my grandpa who loved that area, loved the forest, understood that you can make both things work but not when you are messing around with rules, not when you are not even taking the time to look at what is happening here to our public lands, and instead are just making this decision at night and going home for the day.

I thank Senator Smith for her work, and I ask my colleagues to vote with us and listen to us about what is going on here.

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