June 21, 1973
Page 20626
Mr. JACKSON. Mr. President, I believe that the distinguished Senator from Maine desires to propound some questions.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, for the purpose of recognition in this colloquy, I call up my amendment which is at the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will state amendment.
The ASSISTANT LEGISLATIVE CLERK. The Senator from Maine proposes Amendment No. 242.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
On page 76, insert between lines 8 and 9 the following new clause:
"(K) exercising control over proposed large-scale development and the use of land within areas which are or may be impacted by key facilities which shall insure compliance with the conditions specified in clause (2) (D) of subsection 202(d) of this Act."
On page 123, strike lines 10 through 16 and insert in lieu thereof the following: "(1) Land sales or development projects", “projects", or "project" means any of the activities set forth in clauses (1) through (3) below which occur beyond the boundaries of any general purpose local government certified by the Governor as possessing comparable capability and authority to regulate such activities."
Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. MUSKIE. I Yield.
Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD. I wonder if it would be possible to vote on the final passage of the bill at 1 o'clock today. It is my understanding that several Senators may miss the vote, if the vote should not come by 1 o'clock.
Mr. MUSKIE. I would have no objection.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the vote on the final passage of the pending measure come at no later than 1 o'clock today and that rule XII be waived.
Mr. SPARKMAN. Mr. President, I have a couple of amendments that I may wish to offer. I would not want to be precluded from offering them.
Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Alabama may be assured of at least 3 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Is there objection to the unanimous consent request of the Senator from West Virginia? The Chair hears none, and it is so ordered.
Mr. MUSKIE. It should not take longer than 10 minutes to cover this item. I do not intend to ask for a yea-and-nay vote. I intend to withdraw the amendment, but it is my purpose to make a record in connection with it.
Mr. JACKSON. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the final passage of the bill.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
LARGE-SCALE DEVELOPMENT AND KEY FACILITIES CRITERIA AMENDMENT
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the purpose of this amendment is to broaden the application of the criteria provisions which the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs has already included in its reported bill. My amendment would accomplish this objective by doing the following:
First, amend the definition of "land sales or development" so that it applies to all areas within a State and applies within the boundaries of general purpose local governments except when the latter have been certified by the Governor as having comparable capability as the State to regulate such land sale or development projects, and–
Second, make the criteria in the bill – which as proposed only applies to "land sales or development" – apply to proposed large-scale development and uses of land within areas which are or may be impacted by key facilities at such time as the latter must be subject to State land use programs – 5 years after enactment.
I fully recognize and applaud the purposes for which the committee adopted the criteria provisions relating to "land sales or development projects." But I do not believe that there is justification for limiting regulation to those projects located 10 miles or more outside the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area. Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas include whole counties of which only a small portion may be within the presently developed urbanized area. We have an excellent example in the Washington metropolitan area. Rural Loudon County is included in the Washington, D.C., Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area but, under the bill, any "land sales or development projects" in that rural area would not be subject to the criteria set forth in section 202 (d).
This rural area is subject to precisely the pressures that the provisions of the committee bill relating to "land sale or development projects" are intended to address – the arbitrary and artificial boundaries of the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area are not relevant to their consideration should not prevent their being addressed.
Further, the addition of the 10-mile limit beyond the SMSA is arbitrary. It is these areas, the outer fringes of the SMSA and the areas immediately beyond, which are subject to the greatest development pressures. It is these areas in which development is most haphazard and most often unrelated to available public facilities. It is these areas over which regulation of land use is perhaps most urgent. The portion of my amendment revising the definition of "land sales or development projects" to end these artificial and arbitrary boundary definition restrictions would mandate State or local regulation for these key growth areas.
Under my amendment, local authority would not be excluded. A local government that has the capability and authority to develop a land-use program of comparable quality to, and subject to the same criteria as that of the State could continue to regulate projects within its boundaries. But where such capability or responsibility does not exist, State regulation in accordance with Federal policy criteria specified in the bill is essential.
Within 3 years these controls imposed by S. 268 on land-sale or development projects will begin to establish a basis for the State and Federal cooperation in implementing the policy criteria established under subsection 202(d). The State will have 2 years during which the criteria must apply to such projects. This will be an experimentation period. At the end of 5 years, when State programs are to be implemented, my amendment would make the criteria applicable to all large scale development and land affected by key facilities in all areas of each State.
Certainly if the concept of application of Federal criteria is appropriate for one type of development with a severe impact of land use, it is equally if not more appropriate for other types of development, key facilities and large-scale developments which may have an even greater impact on land use.
Further, application of such criteria is essential to protect the prerogatives of the Congress in establishing Federal policy and to assure that State and local governments are not subject to bureaucratic whims. This is necessarily a complicated piece of legislation. Many portions of it will be subject to different interpretations.
I am concerned that, if the Congress does not specify what land-use policies are intended, as have been specified for "land sales and development projects," we may have other differing criteria imposed by executive fiat resulting from the State program review process. Matters could be further complicated by having criteria which change in direction or emphasis as personnel change within the executive branch. By setting criteria here in Congress, we reserve to the Congress the right to establish the policies which guide the States in these critical land-use programs, and we protect the States and local governments from changing policies which may be imposed without congressional guidance by the executive department.
Let me quote from a section of the committee report.
Today, the Nation as a whole is beginning to experience the pressures once felt only in its major population centers. In all parts of the country, conflicting demands over limited land resources are placing severe strains upon economic, social, and political institutions and processes and upon the natural environment – farmers' groups oppose real estate developers; environmentalists fight the electric power industry; homeowners collide with highway planners; the mining and timber industries struggle with conservationists; shoreline and water recreation interests are pitted against oil companies; cities oppose the states; and suburbs oppose the cities.
This is a clear call for national policy direction, and the committee bill makes a start by enunciating described policies with the conditions specified in subsection 202(d). But to avoid the policy collisions which the committee report recognizes, broader application of Federal policy guidance to such major impact projects as key facilities and large scale development is necessary. The policy criteria established in subsection 202(b) are only beginning. They are, however, an essential element of the legislation if conflicts in implementing a rational and enlightened land use policy are to be avoided.
Thus, the bill reported from the committee already provides certain land use planning criteria for second home or recreational developments located outside a specified area. But does it make any difference in terms of the adverse impact on the land whether such an unregulated development occurs inside or outside a 10 mile line?
Is it any difference in terms of impact on the environment whether a development contains 50 homes which would be regulated or 50 stores which would not?
Can it be argued that it is more important to regulate the environment around people's second homes where they live part of the time, than it is to assure adequate regulation of the environment around people's first homes where they must live the better part of their lives?
Are rural homes and recreation developments more likely to have a significant impact on available water supply, sewers and educational systems than their urban counterparts?
Is a large industrial facility less likely to impact available environmental, transportation and public safety systems than summer homes or new resorts? I think not. I think the opposite is true.
It is these large developments – these key facilities – these suburban tracts that must be regulated.
These are the critical activities with which State and local land use controls must deal.
If we mean to articulate a national land use policy which is in fact "enabling legislation" for a good faith State and local effort we must assure them that they have adequate guidance to do the job.
I understand, of course, that what the committee undertook to do is to achieve a pragmatic compromise designed to make the bill viable, to establish principles which obviously could be expanded as they are created and tested.
What concerns me is the language in the bill appearing on page 71 which reads:
(D) a method of implementation of the program which shall insure that–
(ii) the project will not exceed the capacity of existing systems for water and power supply, waste water collection and treatment, and waste disposal, unless expansion of the relevant systems to meet the requirements of the proposed development is planned and approved, and sufficient financing for the construction of the expanded systems is available;
My point is that the areas excluded from the provisions of the bill by the language to which I have referred are projects which generate the very kind of pressures and ramifications about which we are concerned.
Mr. President, I wish that the bill were broad enough to eliminate those exclusions. However, I understand the committee objectives. I will not press my amendment at this point.
I would like to use this opportunity to express the hope that as the programs are developed, as the Council on Environmental Quality and the Interagency Advisory Board address themselves to the experience of the States in the development of guidelines and programs, this point will be borne in mind, because I think that if we were to permanently exclude these major projects from the policy of land use planning, what we will have done is to ignore the pressures generated by unregulated population and activity concentrations. That is the reason why I asked the distinguished Senator from Washington to engage in this brief colloquy so as to get his feelings on this point.
Obviously his reassurance that he shares with me the general objectives and the hope that as our policies are developed under this bill, we will cover those omissions, would be helpful.
Mr. JACKSON. Mr. President, we do share that hope. I want to say that I do not believe that the criteria the Senator referred to should be permanently excluded from application to other areas. I think it is a question of timing as to whether we should move now or later.
As the Senator pointed out, we have come to a practical, pragmatic compromise and we have done this through section 307. However, we are not moving away from the problem. The problem is there.
I believe that the type of criteria in the land sales and development projects part of the bill might very appropriately be extended to many other types of activities. But it was our judgment that we ought to postpone such a wide application pending the study which has been authorized. The Senator from Maine strengthened the study provision of the bill in an amendment yesterday. I believe that this is the most realistic course to follow at this time.
I feel very deeply that the development of proper national land use policies should not be a matter of benign neglect and that we must move forward and face up to it as the programs continue.
I compliment the Senator from Maine for his strengthening of that aspect of the bill by reason of his earlier amendment.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator. I would hope that this colloquy as part of the legislative record would have a good effect. I believe that this is a move in the direction of wise land use in this country. Like all beginnings, it cannot do the whole job.
I do not want to jeopardize what the bill already does by pressing for more at this moment.
Therefore, I withdraw my amendment and express my appreciation to the Senator from Washington for what he has said and compliment him once again – because I doubt that I will speak again on this bill – on the forward-looking legislation that this bill represents.
Mr. JACKSON. Mr. President, I again thank the Senator from Maine for the constructive help he has given in the formulation of the bill.
Several amendments of the Senator that we agreed to yesterday, I think, speak for themselves. I thank the Senator for his invaluable contribution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. MONDALE) . The amendment is withdrawn.