Finally, Mount Hood wilderness bill advances

Senate overcomes procedural hurdle. Vote on Wilderness protection to come later in week.

Crashing through a barrier that blocked popular wilderness bills for more than a year, the Senate on Sunday voted overwhelmingly in favor of legislation that would permanently protect more than 200,000 acres of threatened "natural treasures" near Mount Hood and other Oregon locations, as well as 2 million acres in eight other states.

The 66-12 vote on a rare weekend session cleared the way for final passage later this week of a sprawling public lands bill that extends formal wilderness status and protection to federal land across a wide swath of the country in addition to expanding national parks.

Though many senators grumbled about a Sunday session, the vote was a happy milestone for Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who has been pushing the Oregon elements for more than a year only to be blocked by objections from a single Republican lawmaker.

With Sunday's vote, those objections have been overcome and the path to additional protection for land and streams in Oregon has largely been cleared.

"After five years and well over a hundred meetings, the Senate has finally overcome the procedural hurdles that have delayed action to safeguard some of Oregon's most special places," Wyden said after the vote on a bill that was pushed equally hard by former Sen. Gordon Smith, a Republican.

"Countless Oregonians, including Sen. Gordon Smith, worked tirelessly and in a bipartisan fashion to protect these natural treasures, which define Oregon as one of the most beautiful states in the union," Wyden said.

The Senate vote is expected to create additional momentum in the House, where lawmakers said there is broad support and an absence of the parliamentary privileges that stalled action in the Senate.

"Three years ago, we passed the first Mount Hood wilderness bill in the House, and Oregonians have been waiting a long time for this moment," Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., said after the Senate vote.

Blumenauer has introduced similar legislation in the House and is optimistic that it will move this year.

Sunday's vote also represented a separate milestone: the first vote for Oregon's newest senator, Jeff Merkley. Like Wyden, he voted for the bill.

"This bill gives that effort a boost by expanding protections for some of the most iconic and special wild areas of our state," Merkley said. "I wish this bill had passed sooner, but I am very proud to be able to cast my first vote in support of Oregon's natural resources."

But first, the Senate must complete its work on the bill. That is expected early this week on legislation that is actually a compilation of 164 separate bills addressing a variety of public lands issues.

In most cases, the bill confers the government's highest level of protection on land ranging from Mount Hood and six other areas in Oregon to California's Sierra Nevada, Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado and parts of the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia.

Land in Idaho's Owyhee canyons, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan and Zion National Park in Utah also would be designated as wilderness.

Besides new wilderness designations, the bill would designate the childhood home of former President Bill Clinton in Hope, Ark., as a national historic site and expand protections for dozens of national parks, rivers and water resources.

The national system protects more than 11,000 miles of 166 rivers in 38 states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

The Oregon portion of the bill has been painstakingly negotiated over several years by Wyden and Smith and, like most of the other items in the bill, were unanimously or near-unanimously approved by the Senate committee responsible for reviewing them.

That bipartisan support made it all the more galling to Wyden and other supporters that Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., blocked a bill that would have easily passed the Senate by a simple majority but until Sunday could not receive the 60 votes needed to kill a filibuster.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid ordered a rare Sunday session in part to underscore Democrats' desire to use their new, more muscular majority to blast through procedural objections that in past years derailed dozens of bills.

Under Senate rules, any senator can launch a filibuster that can bottle up legislation unless 60 senators vote to quash it. Last year, with a nearly evenly split Senate, that threshold was rarely met.

But after increasing the majority to at least 57 -- and more likely 59 as two contested elections are likely to be decided for Democrats -- party leaders have said they plan to exercise their numerical advantage.

Coburn has blocked the bill in the past and renewed his objection on Sunday in a speech from the Senate floor even though he conceded he would lose.

As in the past, Coburn complained that the country is not taking care of existing federal lands and adding more would make the problem worse and cost money that the government doesn't have.

"We presently have a $9.6 billion (maintenance) backlog in our national parks," Coburn said. "They're hurting, yet we will add $400 million in expenses."

Coburn also said adding wilderness protections would hamper oil and gas exploration on public lands and harm the nation's energy security.

How the bill will play out in Oregon

• Preserve almost 127,000 acres around Mount Hood with wilderness protection and add almost 80 miles on nine free-flowing stretches of rivers to the National Wild and Scenic River System.
• Designate 9.3 miles of river at the headwaters of the North Fork of the Elk River as Wild and Scenic and add 13,700 acres of wilderness adjacent to the existing Grassy Knob Wilderness.
• Designate as wilderness almost 30,000 acres in an area 15 miles east of Bend.
• Establish a 23,000-acre wilderness area, to be known as the Soda Mountain Wilderness, in the Cascade Siskiyou National Monument's southern backcountry.
• Designate approximately 8,600 acres of BLM land as the Spring Basin Wilderness, overlooking the John Day Wild and Scenic River.

What does this protection mean?

• Bestowing "wilderness status" on federal property brings a host of protections and, at times, bureaucracy. At its most basic level, wilderness status means that the property will remain untouched and pristine. It is the most stringent protection offered by the federal government and is rooted in the 1964 Wilderness Act. The act set forth standards to protect those lands, already owned by the American people, that were "untrammeled by man." They were to be managed "for the use and enjoyment of the American people in such manner as will leave them unimpaired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness." No roads or structures were to be built. Vehicles and other mechanical equipment were not to be used.
• Wild and Scenic Rivers: The National Wild and Scenic Rivers System was created by Congress in 1968. Each river in the national system is administered with the goal of protecting and enhancing the values that caused it to be designated. Designation neither prohibits development nor gives the federal government control over private property. Recreation, agricultural practices, residential development and other uses may continue. Protection of the river is provided through voluntary stewardship by landowners and river users and through regulation and programs of federal, state, local or tribal governments.