Land Use and Land Policy

Although some land use legislation passed in 1972, most of the important bills were still pending when Congress adjourned. Other action on land matters took place within the executive branch; in particular, the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation began a new effort at preparing a national park and recreation plan. (A plan prepared a few years ago has never been made public and seems unlikely ever to be released.) A rising tide of popular interest in land planning continues among many citizen groups. A number of states have passed land use legislation or are seriously considering it, and have begun or accelerated important land use planning efforts

One federal bill that did not pass was concerned with strip mining, especially for coal. Half of all coal is mined today by stripping methods; costs are often much lower than for underground mining. But so is employment per ton produced, and environmental havoc has been so great in some instances as to arouse intense public opposition.

Efforts to pass legislation raise a number of important but difficult policy questions: How much public control should be exercised over private mining? Which level of government should exercise these controls? If costs are increased, who bears the difference? How much restoration of the mined-out areas is technically possible, and what costs can defensibly be incurred? How does a government agency guarantee that the private operator will actually carry out the degree of surface restoration that the law requires?

Thus far, federal legislation has not faced up to these questions. State laws vary widely; many them are criticized by conservationists as woefully weak. It seems probable, but far from certain, that some form of federal legislation dealing with strip mining will pass in the next year or two.

The Public Land Law Review Commission, which completed its work in 1970, made many recommendations for modification of federal land law. Bills have been introduced in both House and Senate, but none has yet been passed by either house. In the House, changes in public land law and provision for national land use planning were included in a single bill; in the Senate, the two measures were separate.

The executive branch reacted adversely to the House version; it had offered its own proposal to each house. Some new legislation seems probable; how soon is much less certain.

The greatest legislative activity arose over a national land use planning proposal. After extensive hearings and studies, the Senate Committee for Interior and Insular Affairs reported out a bill which passed the Senate in September. The bill as reported was modified by the Senate as a whole, notably by removal of severe penalties in terms of lost grants in aid for highways, airports, and other purposes, for any state not conforming to the act. Proposed amendments to include more policy guidelines for the state and federal agencies concerned were beaten.

The bill as passed is more procedural than substantive. It provides a system of federal, state, and local planning with federal grants in aid to assist the states; but it leaves the content of the plans almost wholly up to the states. Neither the bill nor the debates on it gave much recognition to the possibility that divergent private interests might not agree on a general land use plan, nor was there much consideration of the implementation of any plans that might be developed. The Senate bill had general executive branch endorsement.

The House bill, which differed in several respects from the Senate bill, encountered strong objections (mostly for its public land law provisions) from both the executive branch and conservation groups. The form of the House bill had been greatly influenced by the position of the committee chairman, Congressman Wayne N. Aspinall; with his defeat in the primary election, the form of future House action was placed in considerable doubt.