Senator Tacks Roads Rider On Midwest Flood-Relief Bill Measure Would Open Parks, Refuges To Road Construction

As his Senate Appropriations Committee grappled with how to help victims of floods, Chairman Ted Stevens saw an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.

Alaska’s senior senator tacked onto the must-pass emergency bill a pet piece of legislation to make it easier to build roads through federal parks, refuges and wilderness areas.

Environmental activists were outraged, and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is urging a presidential veto if the provision added last week stays in the bill. The Senate votes on it today.

The measure, also pushed by fellow Republican Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah, would give the government less say in what constitutes a valid right-of-way for roads built under a 130-year-old law.

“Such a requirement could effectively render the federal government powerless to prevent the conversion of foot paths, dog-sled trails, jeep tracks, ice roads and other primitive transportation routes into paved highways,” Babbitt complained.

Bennett and Stevens have accused Babbitt of overstepping his authority by putting too many restrictions on such right-of-way claims and usurping the states’ authority. They contend state law should determine validity of claims.

Road construction in federally protected parks, refuges and wilderness areas has been a growing worry among conservationists, especially in the West. Nowhere has it been an issue more than in Alaska and Utah, where hundreds of claims are pending for rights-of-way over federally protected land.

The controversy involves a law enacted in 1866, repealed by Congress 110 years later, then resurrected in part during President Reagan’s administration as it began aggressively processing thousands of right-of-way claims it considered still valid under the defunct Civil War-era statute.

No one disputes valid claims exist, but the Clinton administration has waged a running battle with some state officials - particularly those of Alaska and Utah - over who should have the final say on their validity.

Babbitt announced a new policy in January that requires states to examine closer whether a right-of-way actually once was a significant corridor, which would make it a valid site for road building.

The measure Stevens inserted into the $5.5 billion emergency relief legislation for victims of floods and other disasters would override Babbitt’s new directive and again swing the pendulum to the states.

Stevens defended the measure. In 1976, he argued, Congress”absolutely stated, without any question,” that prior claims must be accepted.

“The provision is aimed at preserving historic rights-of-way established at least 20 years ago and creates no new rights-of-way across federal land,” insists Stevens.

Conservationists see it differently.

“It grants rights-of-way across millions of acres of federal land to virtually any person who asserts a claim,” asserted William Watson of the National Parks and Conservation Association, a private watchdog group. “It threatens to carve up our national parks.”