Texas Republican urges lawmakers to settle Red River disputes

E&E News
By Joshua Learn
July 20, 2014

A Texas Republican urged a House subcommittee yesterday to act quickly to guarantee land rights along the Red River at the Texas-Oklahoma line before interest groups promoting gun rights and others hijack the issue whose roots stretch back to the time of Thomas Jefferson.

"There are some groups using this controversy to gain attention for themselves," Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) told the Public Lands and Environmental Regulation Subcommittee. "The last thing the landowners, the county, the states or the [Bureau of Land Management] need is for people to come in and make a big deal for this, to make it something political.

"The sooner it gets solved for the landowners and for everybody else, the better," he added.

Thornberry's "Red River Private Property Protection Act" (H.R. 4979) says its aim is to "provide legal certainty to property owners along the Red River" and end "clouded" land titles.

At issue are 539 miles along the Texas-Oklahoma line that the United States purchased from the French in 1803.

"Anytime the story starts out when President Thomas Jefferson made a Louisiana purchase from Napoleon Bonaparte, you know it's going an interesting story," Thornberry told the subcommittee.

Rules defining the states' border and property claims have changed several times -- changes complicated by the shifting river.

Texas and Oklahoma agreed on a bill signed into law by President Clinton in 2000 that the southern vegetation line would be the state line rather than the gradient.

"It's much easier to deal with," Thornberry said. "That is the current law that we have."

BLM has resolved to update and complete its management plan for the Red River area by 2018, but Thornberry said that's too long.

"Private land owners cannot borrow money on their land, because the title is clouded, they cannot make improvement on the land, they can't sell the land, because there is all this concern that the federal government is going to come in and make a claim on some portion of these acres," Thornberry said.

Pat Canan, a game warden from Wichita Falls, Texas, and a Red River landowner, said all the changes in state line definitions don't reflect his own land deed, which was created in 1858 for land specified as starting on the river's south bank. The claim BLM has made on the area has all but stalled development.

But Steve Ellis, BLM's deputy director, said his agency's parent, the Interior Department, "cannot support H.R. 4979 as currently written because the bill could result in the transfer of federal lands and mineral estate out of federal ownership without adequate demonstration of private ownership or compensation to U.S. taxpayers."

Among BLM's concerns, he said, is public access for hunting, recreation and management. BLM's claim of ownership, he said, is backed by some Texans who said in June that the area was being invaded by all-terrain vehicle users with guns (Greenwire, June 6).

Ellis also said the possibility that if BLM finds it owns land also claimed by others, the agency could sell the tract at market prices to those who'd been claiming ownership.

"Is that an option, to buy the land that you've been paying taxes on for years?" subcommittee Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) asked Thornberry.

Thornberry said his bill aimed at avoiding the BLM sell-back option, saying such a transaction spurred use of the term "federal land grabs."

"This could escalate in ways that none of us wanted to," he said.

Open Carry Texas -- the group that brought semiautomatic weapons into a Chipotle Mexican Grill that resulted in the chain banning guns in its restaurants -- held a rally outside Burkburnett, Texas, in May to protest BLM's management plan along the Red River (Greenwire, May 23).

BLM's Ellis also said Interior was concerned the new law could "adversely affect ownership interests of tribal nations in the area."

But Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said Thornberry's bill wouldn't affect tribal rights and said he was willing to work with congressmen to alleviate that possibility.

'Classic win-win legislation'

Separately, the subcommittee heard witnesses praise legislation that would facilitate the transfer or exchange of federally managed land and state trust land.

"The system doesn't work, that's the testimony we've heard all around here," said Bishop, the sponsor of the "Advancing Conservation and Education Act of 2014," H.R. 4901. "Something has to change."

Vanessa Hickman, land commissioner for the Arizona State Land Department said that, in her state, "there's an exchange that's been in process for at least 50 years." In Arizona, she said, many trust lands and federally managed lands are "checker-boarded," making them difficult to access by their beneficiaries or stakeholders.

Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) said she'd been working on a particular land transfer in Wyoming for decades.

"I've been working on this my entire adult life," she said in an elevated voice while banging the desk with her fist. "Time? It doesn't take time. It takes lifetimes!"

Some state trust lands are locked in the midst of federally managed land, and some federal land islands are surrounded by trust land. The bill would look to facilitate the transfer between the different entities.

"H.R. 4901 is classic win-win legislation," Paul Spitler of the Wilderness Society said.

The bill would cover 13 states -- Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming -- which all currently have laws governing the management of trust lands.

"On the whole, they are dedicated to providing revenue to benefit education and other state purposes," BLM's Ellis said.

State trust lands generate funds for education and other causes by granting license to resource extraction companies or other endeavors but when these lands are remote and surrounded by federally managed land, they are difficult to access or exploit. In other cases, trust land sits in the middle of a national park.

Meanwhile some federally managed land struggles to meet conservation standards due to the fact that they are surrounded by trust land with active resource development projects.

Ellis called the bill "a serious and thoughtful effort to resolve a long-standing problem facing federal and state land managers throughout the West."

National heritage sites

Lawmakers and witnesses also promoted the "National Heritage Area Act of 2013," H.R. 445, by Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), which seeks to establish heritage areas as stable entities within the national park system.

"Our legislation, if it were enacted into law, would create a systematic framework in the National Parks Service for maintaining the existing national heritage areas while allowing for the possibility of creating future heritage areas," Dent said.

The bill would authorize the current 49 heritage areas while allowing for new ones as long as they had feasible management plans.

"Permanent authorization provides stability that enables these heritage areas to continue to leverage substantial private local and state investment," Dent said, and pointed out that Americans aren't showing any sign of desiring fewer parks or heritage areas.

"Once our national treasure are lost, they can never be restored," Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said.

Subcommittee ranking member Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) supported Dent's bill but pointed to a concern that the 49 current heritage areas were heavily weighted toward the eastern United States.

Other bills

The subcommittee also discussed six other measures:

"Mountains to Sound Greenway National Heritage Area Act," H.R. 1785, sponsored by Rep. David Reichert (R-Wash.), which would establish the Mountains to Sound area and create a trust to coordinate the entity.
"West Hunter Street Baptist Church Study Act," H.R. 4119, by Sen. John Isakson (R-Ga.), which would authorize a study of the church in Atlanta to determine whether to include it in the national park system.
A measure from Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.), H.R. 5086, that would amend the National Trails System Act to direct Interior to conduct a study on the feasibility of designating the Chief Standing Bear National Historic Trail.
A bill that would amend the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Development Act to extend to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park Commission for another 10 years, S. 476, sponsored by Rep. Chris Van Hollen Jr. (D-Md.).
The "Lower Mississippi River Area Study Act," S. 311, by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), that would direct Interior to study the proposed inclusion of Plaquemines Parish, La., in the national park system.
Sen. Tom Udall's (D-N.M.) "San Juan County Federal Land Conveyance Act," S. 609, that would authorize the sale of 19 acres in the county with proceeds going to the Bald Eagle Area of Critical Environmental Concern, which provides winter habitat to between 80 and 100 eagles each year.