Is heritage rivers plan a done deal?

June 16, 1998

The first phase of President Clinton’s plan for federalizing American rivers and watersheds is nearly finalized. The Heritage River Advisory Committee — a blue-ribbon panel of presidential appointees — meets today in St. Louis, Missouri, at the Hyatt Regency, to complete the designation process left unresolved at the close of the two-day session in May.

The committee is charged with selecting 20 rivers — from a list of over 120 nominations — which it deems especially in need of federal help in the form of grants and services. From those recommendations the president will choose 10.

At the May meeting, the panel began its deliberations with a list of 32 nominations that members had pared down from the longer list through a pre-meeting selection process. Unable to arrive at any kind of consensus the group decided to meet again this month.

A big question is whether the committee will limit its discussion to those 32 rivers or reconsider part or all of the original list.

More important, particularly for those opposing the initiative, is whether Katie McGinty, chairwoman of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality — the agency charged with supervising and managing the river selection process — will honor a promise she made to Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R-ID, that members of Congress can take out any segment of a river that run through their districts and that they have “absolute
authority” over whether or not a community or state participates in the program.

“It’s a veto authority that any member of Congress would retain throughout the existence of the program,” McGinty told the House Committee on Resources last September — in response to questions posed by Chenoweth who chairs the committee. “A senator will have the right to exercise that veto, as well as the member of Congress in whose
district this river, or stretch of river, might run,” said McGinty.

In a May 8 letter to Chenoweth, McGinty wrote that 12 of the 126 “communities” applying for the initiative would not be considered because of opposition by their local congressman or U.S. senator, and that stretches of 26 other nominated rivers would also be “out of the running because of congressional opposition.”

However, McGinty did not provide Chenoweth with a complete list of congressmen who had chosen to take out their district, or even a complete list of river segments. For instance, Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-TX, whose 8th congressional district is bordered by 800 miles of the Rio Grande, had asked that most of that river in his district be withdrawn following requests by the boards of county supervisors — a fact McGinty has ignored.

Nor did McGinty reveal that congressmen had requested long stretches of the Mississippi be withdrawn. For example, Missouri Republicans Jim Talent, Kenny Holshof, and Jo Ann Emerson between them took out nearly all that river that borders their state.

Holshof did not take out all the Mississippi in his district — the waterfront areas located in the cities of LaGrange, Hannibal, and Clarksville are still eligible — for these had requested inclusion. These three — with the city of St. Louis — are the only communities in Missouri that want their stretch of river to be designated.

More recently the entire congressional and senatorial delegation from Alabama — backed by Gov. Fob James — requested removal of the Chatahoochee and Coosa rivers from consideration in particular because the state is developing water-distribution compacts with Georgia and Florida. They are trying to work out a water allocation formula,
without “unexpected impediments from outside parties” which they fear will be set up if the initiative is in place.

As the delegation sees it, designation will serve to “upset the delicate balance between the federal government and the states of Alabama, Georgia and Florida set forth by the compacts.”

James seconds those concerns noting that designation of either river as a Heritage River would “lead to complication and confusion in resolving critical water resource issues in these basins.”

This ever-growing congressional, state, and local opposition has confounded proponents of the river initiative, who don’t know how to react to the thanks-but-no-thanks opt-out letters which present opposing points of view. Opponents risk be severely reprimanded by the media.

For instance, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch hurls insults at anyone who questions or rejects the offerings from Washington — even when those doing the rejection are members of Congress, who are simply listening to the concerns of their constituents.

“Missouri and Illinois have contributed six new profiles in boneheadedness”– complained the Post-Dispatch in a May 24 editorial, and listed the “bipartisan roll”: Reps. Jim Shimkus, R-IL, Jim Talent, R-MO, Jo Ann Emerson, R-MO, Kenny Hulshof, R-MO, Pat Danner, D-MO, and Ike Skelton, D-MO, all of whom took out rivers in their districts including the Mississippi.

These — the Post-Dispatch charged — had “caved into a fact-free, fax war led by the conservative property rights group Liberty Matters.”

David Howard, executive director of the group, wears the Post-Dispatch editorial as a badge of honor and has posted it proudly on his website — http://www.libertymatters.org

Howard of course didn’t do it all by himself, but was aided by activists across the country who contacted the boards of supervisors and state legislatures as well as members of congress.

John Robb, who grows corn and soybeans on his 800-acre farm in Illinois that looks across the Mississippi to Burlington, Iowa, has been fighting the initiative since it was announced — and since the early 1990s has been one of the leaders of the federal effort to declare the entire Mississippi River a “heritage area.”

He is the founder and a former president of the Upper Mississippi, Illinois, and Missouri Rivers Association. He has recently founded Rivers Resources Unlimited. Both groups deal with flood control, environmental issues, and economic development.

Robb recalled the tactics to WorldNetDaily that were used to sell the initiative to the public. As soon as it was announced by Clinton in his 1997 State of the Union address, staffers from the Council on Environmental Quality went to the small towns up and down the river and persuaded them that the initiative would be great for their town. The
counties, however, were ignored.

“As late as last December, the counties didn’t know anything about it,” he said.

That’s important, for according to Robb, 95 percent of the land along the rivers though Illinois, Missouri, Iowa and up into Wisconsin is rural. “It’s in counties, those are the people who are going to be affected — yet here were the counties and they didn’t know anything about it,” he said.

To counter the spin from Washington staffers, Robb gave presentations to boards of supervisors, and one-by-one the boards passed resolutions of opposition to the initiative.

“But I bet in the end that won’t mean a thing,” he says. They’ll probably just go ahead and designate the upper Mississippi and the entire watershed.”

The possibility that the committee will ignore even the congressional requests for exemption also concerns Linda Liotta, a researcher and free-lance writer who lives in Maryland. Liotta attended both days of the May meeting and has who will be in St. Louis for this one.

“It could be just a waste of time going there,” she told WorldNetDaily.

“They (the administration and staff) know exactly what rivers are to be designated. The job of the facilitator is to get the committee to agree.”