Bill Berkowitz

OAKLAND, California, Nov 15 2005 (IPS) — Richard Pombo, a California Republican who chairs the House Resources Committee, is making a name for himself these days by offering up a series of controversial bills relating to land use in the United States’ national parks and other critical environmental issues.

In a recent version of the House budget bill, Pombo was the author of a proposal that would have opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling (that provision was removed from the budget reconciliation bill but it could still be re-inserted).

Pombo also made headlines when he recently proposed privatising 15 of the country’s national parks. He later claimed to be only joking.

Now, it appears that Pombo is no longer joking. The former real estate salesman, who is serving his seventh term in Congress, has come up with what critics say is another doozy of a proposal. This one was tucked deep into the same 187-page House budget bill in a section called “Miscellaneous Amendments Related to Mining.”

According to an Environmental Working Group (EWG) press release on Nov. 10, Pombo’s proposal would allow “foreign mining companies, real estate speculators, oil and mining conglomerates, or anyone else to purchase up to 350 million acres of American taxpayers’ lands for as little as 1,000 dollars per acre.”

If passed, the EWG said, it could affect nearly six million acres, including land in or near the famous Yosemite, Yellowstone, Death Valley and Grand Canyon national parks.

The proposal “would amend an 1872 mining law in a way that would bring back the very worst of the Wild, Wild West and pretend that the enlightenment of the conservation movement never happened”, The Salt Lake Tribune editorialised earlier this week.

In the late 19th century, lawmakers thought it was a good idea to open up public land in the western United States to the “private exploitation of mineral wealth”, and mineral rights were sold for next to nothing.

When “it became increasingly obvious that developers were buying billions of dollars worth of mining rights and giving the taxpayers virtually nothing in return, Congress put a moratorium on new leases,” the editorial pointed out. “Pombo’s measure would not only end that moratorium, it would also use the mining law as a cover for sales and developments that have nothing to do with mining.”

Another editorial in the Louisville, Kentucky-based Courier-Journal called it “an inflammatory proposal” that is not worth it, no matter how much money could be raised. The Denver Post pointed out that Pombo’s “amendments really aren’t about mining; they’re about real estate speculation,” and concluded that, “the House should erase them from the budget reconciliation bill.”

Environmental activists, who over the past decade have monitored the growing trend toward the privatisation of public lands, were not surprised by Pombo’s proposals. “The (George W.) Bush administration, with Congressman Richard Pombo leading the charge, has worked tirelessly to limit the public’s use of public lands through user fees and it has attempted to sell off National Parks and monuments that the congressman argues don’t pay for themselves,” Denise Boggs told IPS.

“In addition, the Forest Service is selling off sites around the country it claims it no longer has use for or can’t fund – the latest being the Superior National Forest,” said Boggs, the founder and former executive director of the Utah Environmental Congress in Salt Lake City, and currently the executive director of the Lewistown, Montana-based Conservation Congress.

“Currently, mining companies – many of which are foreign-owned – have permits to mine the minerals beneath public lands [subsurface rights] but the surface rights remain in public land ownership,” Boggs pointed out.

“Pombo wants to allow the mining companies to purchase these lands outright. Hard rock mining companies do not pay any royalties to the treasury on the resources it mines from public lands. If the 1872 mining law was changed to force these companies to pay royalties, the treasury would make far more than selling off these lands.”

Asked to speculate about future privatisation initiatives, she said: “I think that privatisation is moving along very quickly and the American people aren’t paying attention. Apathy is rampant and it is difficult to get Americans to respond to conservation issues until it becomes a NIMBY [Not in my Backyard] issue.”

“With the war in Iraq, the soaring federal deficit, the loss of jobs and lack of health care, the growing price of prescription drugs, fear or terrorism, etc. it is all people can do to breathe some days,” she said. “But people need to realise that they must be vigilant to maintain what they value or they will lose it.”

Pombo, whose tenure in the House predates the 1994 Newt Gingrich-led “revolution” that gave Republicans control of the House for the first time in years, “is a Republican in the [Rep. Tom] DeLay mold,” Kelpie Wilson, the environmental editor of Truthout, an online news magazine, recently wrote.

“Oil and gas interests keep his campaign cash barrel topped up; he pays his relatives inflated salaries from those funds; he is deeply involved in the gambling-industry (and) Indian-casino money machine; he took thousands of dollars from DeLay’s buddy, indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff,” Wilson charged.

On the congressman’s website, he points out that he was the co-founder of the San Joaquin County Citizen’s Land Alliance, “a coalition of farmers and other property owners who advocate private property rights, and fight attempts by government to strip these rights away from citizens”.

He is also a member and former chairman of the Congressional Western Caucus, an organisation “work[ing] to form one voice on issues such as Endangered Species Act reform, water rights, private property rights and other issues affecting Congressional districts in the West.”

Pombo has been given a number of awards by conservative organisations, including the United States Business and Industrial Council, the National Taxpayers Union, and right-wing activist Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform. Late last week, the House postponed a vote on the budget bill that included Rep. Pombo’s provision. On Tuesday, Matt Streit, deputy communications director for the House Resources Committee, told IPS that the Pombo provision was “still in the budget bill”, but he was not certain when it would be taken up.

Anne Singer, a spokesperson for the Environmental Working Group, said that the provision was “still alive,” but she too was unclear when it would be voted on.

*Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His WorkingForChange column “Conservative Watch” documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the U.S. Right.