U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander gave the following floor remarks on Wednesday about “Preserving Land and Water Conservation Fund”:
"One thing that unites us on both sides of the aisle, and unites Americans really, is the Great American Outdoors. I often say that Egypt has its pyramids, Italy has its art, England has its history and we have the Great American Outdoors.
"One of the best ideas we have that supports, protects, and conserves the Great American Outdoors for the benefit of all Americans, is the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
"The Land and Water Conservation Fund was first proposed in the 1960s by the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission headed by Laurance Rockefeller. The idea was very simple. It was to say, 'When we have an environmental burden, we should have an environmental benefit.' If we’re going to drill for oil offshore for example, that’s an environmental burden. Let’s take some of those revenues and use them for an environmental benefit. So we’ve had, since the 1960s, money for the federal government and for state and local governments to conserve important parts of America.
"In Tennessee we celebrated, in the last few weeks, the acquisition of the Rocky Fork tract -- about 10,000 acres in Unicoi and Greene counties, which was the No. 1 priority of the U.S. Forest Service. Rocky Fork is a great opportunity for Tennesseans to go hunting, to go hiking, and to go riding horses. Those are the types of things we like to do in our state. We don’t have a lot of protected federal land, unlike many of the western states, and this acquisition was something the Land and Water Conservation Fund helped us do.
"In the mid-1980s, President Reagan asked me to chair the President’s Commission on Americans Outdoors. I worked with Gilbert Grosvenor, chairman of the National Geographic Society, Patrick Noonan, founder of The Conservation Fund, and others. Our recommendation included full funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund -- and to continue to tie it to some of the proceeds from offshore oil drilling.
"In the energy bill nine years ago, when Senator Domenici was chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, we actually made mandatory a little bit of funding from offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico to go into the state side of the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
"What we need to do, Mr. President, is recognize the broad support of the Land and Water Conservation Fund and pass Senator Burr’s bill. The Senator from North Carolina has fought tirelessly to permanently reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund; then we need to appropriate $900 million for the Land and Water Conservation Fund -- and gradually set aside those special areas of our country that deserve to be protected.
"So I’m here to say that, even though it expires today, I’m very hopeful that we can take some action very quickly to extend the Land and Water Conservation Fund -- at least temporarily. And soon we will have a chance to do what Senators Burr and Daines and I have proposed, and have supported during my entire adult life.
"We need to get this done. The American people expect us to do it. And I fully support it."