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Land and Water Conservation Fund

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* Your March 10 editorial praises the 1964 Land and Water Conservation Fund and states that since the 1970s, Congress has not appropriated all of the funds. The administration also has not requested money for the state portion of the fund in the last four years, choosing instead to only purchase more land.

You mention several bills that restore this funding but criticize the Landrieu, Murkowski, Young, Dingell effort as “containing unwise new restrictions.” To the contrary, our bill is the only one that does not create new problems for the state portion of the fund. Our approach is the only bipartisan measure and it continues to fund the program as a state matching grant program. Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. George Miller turn it into a competitive program, so only those programs the federal government approves can be funded. Our restrictions simply rein in the federal government’s penchant for taking private property. Our bill says the federal portion of LWCF funds can only be used to buy property from willing sellers, within existing congressionally approved federal sites, such as national forests. It further says that two-thirds of the funds should be expended east of the 100th meridian (about mid-Texas eastward).

Huge percentages of Western states already belong to the federal government. The Eastern U.S. has very little federal lands and should have the benefits of these open spaces, if it so chooses.

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FRANK H. MURKOWSKI

Chairman, Senate Energy and

Natural Resources Committee

R-Alaska

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