Officials Seek Easing of Federal Rules, Control of Western Land

Dozens of Western state lawmakers urged Congress Monday to relax U.S. environmental regulations, protect private property rights and turn over hundreds of millions of acres of federal land to the states.

“Federal policies are creating rural ghettos,” said Melvin Brown, Republican speaker of the Utah House of Representatives.

The legislators and county commissioners representing 12 Western states gathered as members of the Western States Coalition to begin a week of meetings with their representatives in Congress.

“At the turn of the last century, the end of the gold rush created ghost towns,” said Gail Phillips, Republican speaker of the Alaska House. “Now we are seeing the same things across the West in timber towns and other mining towns.”

Rob Bishop, co-founder of the coalition, said it boasts more than 3,000 members representing 22 million people. He said it is a bipartisan group.

The coalition unveiled a list of “12 Steps to Revive the West,” including replacing the Endangered Species Act “with a law that balances human and economic needs with needs of plants and animals.”

The group called for forest policies that ensure a reliable supply of timber from public lands, keeping water rights sovereign to Western states and turning Bureau of Land Management acreage over to the states.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) told the state lawmakers that their visit comes at a critical time and that without their hard work, “the Western lifestyle as we know it will become extinct.”

Leaders of an advocacy group for federal land management employees said the Westerners’ agenda would virtually eliminate the federal government’s role in managing more than 570 million acres in the West.