Clinton Has Flowers for Mother Earth

In a photo-friendly tribute to Earth Day, President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore planted flowers and hoisted a boulder atop a wall on the Appalachian Trail on Wednesday while bemoaning that much of their environmental agenda remains bogged down in Congress.

“We need to get about the work and do it now,” Clinton said in reference to $362 million in proposed White House environmental projects mired in the Republican-controlled Congress. “The money is there. The economy is in good shape. The budget is going to be balanced. We have made this commitment to our future and I’d like to see it, get it done.”

But even before Clinton took the podium at the swirling confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, he and the vice president had orchestrated a day of working man’s imagery.

Soon after their eight-helicopter convoy roared to a landing on a breezy spring morning, the president and vice president--both khaki-clad and in shirt sleeves--plunged into their volunteer efforts.

Wearing leather gloves and digging with trowels, they planted Virginia Creeper, Boston Ivy and pink, white and purple phlox at a scenic point of stone formations near Harper’s cemetery.

Together, the president and vice president took hold of a slab of shale (estimated at 160 pounds) destined for the top of a retaining wall.

While Clinton’s legs seemed to wobble at one point, the two men succeeded in placing the stone.

Certainly, the Clinton White House has taken a more active approach to environmental protection than that of its Republican predecessors.

If Congress were willing, the White House would complete the Appalachian Trail, preserve winter range lands for Yellowstone bison, protect salmon habitat in the Pacific Northwest and restore Civil War battlefields, among other proposals. It would provide nearly $1 billion in additional funding to maintain national parks and other public lands.

The Appalachian Trail stretches 2,157 miles through 14 states from Maine to Georgia. The White House proposes spending $15.1 million to purchase about 13,000 acres of remaining land parcels along the route, mostly in Virginia, Maryland, Maine and Vermont.

But in Congress many members are quietly moving to withhold funding, questioning the spending priorities and resisting potential new rules on private industry. Among the bogged-down proposals are a five-year, $6.3-billion package of tax breaks and spending items to promote energy efficiency, a $586-million clean-water initiative, $364 million to expand the federal park and wildlife refuge systems, $92 million for public land improvements and $650 million to clean up toxic Superfund sites.