If S 347 passes and the huge expansion eventually passes Congress it will:
-----1. Cost over $2 billion dollars and perhaps a great deal more to carry out their grandiose land acquisition and regulatory scheme. It will become a never-ending money pit with Congress having to keep up with public expectations.
-----2. Will control land use within and adjacent corridors by threatening eminent domain (condemnation) of the land. That is how they prevent building and lots of other uses. ALRA saved a ski area in Maine recently that had been continually threatened with condemnation.
-----3. S 347 will ultimately dilute the Park Service budget meaning less care for other parks.
-----4. The combined length of these corridors is between 150 and 300 miles long. The Santa Monica Mountains Corridor NRA is only about 40 miles long and is already costing over one billion dollars.
-----5. The corridors will be like a series of giant nooses put around the necks of the many communities in the encircled areas. Economic and social activities will be greatly inhibited. Access people now take for granted will be lost forever. Frankly, the Park Service has a record of being a very bad neighbor. Go to
www.landrights.org for several socio-cultural assessments and histories of Park Service abuses.
-----6. There will be a massive increase in regulations controlling private and community activities with the encircled areas. S 347 will interdict transportation corridors, which will mean new bridges and passageways for wildlife corridors throughout the region.
-----7. They’ll use the wildlife as an excuse for substantial new regulatory controls. They’ll build bridges for the wildlife over the freeways but you’ll be locked out. For example over 90% of Yosemite is now closed off to most of the public. They are closing campgrounds and parking lots and soon you will have to take a bus just to get into the park.
-----8. Force the closure of hundreds of miles of exiting roadways substantially reducing motorized recreation.
-----9. It will be hard or impossible to get communication towers and other utilities installed in these corridors.
----10. They say they will put in hiking trails, but the area is so hot in the summer that very little hiking takes place. There is virtually no water. In the winter, it becomes floods and mud. At the existing Santa Monica Mountains NRA they have to actually bus people out of the center of the City of Los Angeles in order to increase visitorship. People who have a choice don’t spend much time there.
----11. Movie and TV companies who use these areas for films will be prevented from doing their normal work. The Park Service likes naturalness. They don’t really like people. They just want enough to justify their budget.
----12. Creation of the Rim of the Valley Corridor could require tougher Class I air standards that would have a negative impact on private industry throughout the San Fernando Valley and the other areas. If you like the notion of viewsheds and soundsheds, you love the Rim of the Valley Corridor bill.
----13. The House has not held a hearing on S 347. They did hold a hearing on another very different bill. The Senate held a hearing but had no one testify against the bill. That’s fairness for you. You would think they would want to hear from both sides. So Congress is really operating in the dark.
----14. Even though there is very little water, what exists is valuable. S 347 will give the National Park Service a large measure of control over all the high ground around these valleys. Historically that means the agency uses that power to interdict the goals of local communities and business.
----15. The Park Service also seeks to keep communities from allowing landowners to use their land by threatening the cities and towns with the loss of Federal funds of all kinds.
Besides calling, faxing and e-mailing your personal Congressman, it is especially important to make calls to the Congressmen listed below.
House Resources Committee - All can be called at the Capital Switchboard at (202) 225-3121. You can fax the committee at (202) 225-5929. Be sure to put the Congressman’s name on it. (We’re only listing those Members who may be open minded about this issue and willing to listen)
Richard Pombo (R-CA) (Chairman)
Don Young (R-AK)
Billy Tauzin (R-LA)
Elton Gallegly (R-CA)
John Duncan (R-TN)
Ken Calvert (R-CA)
Scott McInnis (R-CO)
Barbara Cubin (R-WY)
George Radanovich (R-CA) (S-347 is his substitute bill as Chairman of the Parks Subcommittee.)
Walter Jones (R-NC)
Chris Cannon (R-UT)
John Peterson (R-PA)
Jim Gibbons (R-NV)
Mark Aouder (R-IN)
Greg Walden (R-OR)
Tom Tancredo (R-CO)
JD Hayworth (R-AZ)
Tom Osborne (R-NE)
Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
Tom Cole (R-OK)
Steve Pearce (R-NM)
Rob Bishop (R-UT)
Devin Nunes (R-CA)
Randy Neugebauer (R-TX)
Calvin Dooley (D-CA)
Brad Carson (D-OK)
Dennis Cardoza (D-CA)
Joe Baca (D-CA)
If you live in California, call at least three friends to ask them to call.
Forward this message as widely as possible.
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