DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2023
Summary
Part 6 of the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies hearings on appropriations for 2023, with Chellie Pingree as Chair, covers national and regional tribal organizations public witness days, a Members' Day, and fiscal year 2023 budget requests of the U.S. Forest Service, the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Park Service and the arts and humanities. The first hearing, on Tuesday, April 5, 2022, hears Fawn Sharp, Jason Dropik, William Smith and Sonya M. Tetnowski. Ms. Pingree says President Biden proposes $2.8 billion for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, $583 million above the fiscal year 2022 enacted level. The last hearing, on the arts and humanities budget request, closes with thanks to the witnesses for making resources available to everybody.
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“DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2023.”
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[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED
AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2023
_______________________________________________________________________
HEARINGS
BEFORE A
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND
RELATED AGENCIES
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine, Chair
BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota DAVID P. JOYCE, Ohio
DEREK KILMER, Washington MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho
JOSH HARDER, California CHRIS STEWART, Utah
SUSIE LEE, Nevada MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
MATT CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania
NOTE: Under committee rules, Ms. DeLauro, as chair of the full
committee, and Ms. Granger, as ranking minority member of the full
committee, are authorized to sit as members of all subcommittees.
Rita Culp, Jocelyn Hunn, Janet Erickson,
Tyler Coe, Farouk Ophaso, and Marcel Caldwell
Subcommittee Staff
___________
PART 6
Page
National Tribal Organizations Public Witness Day................ 1
Regional Tribal Organizations Public Witness Day................ 39
Members' Day.................................................... 83
U.S. Forest Service Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2023......... 103
Department of the Interior Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2023.. 151
Environmental Protection Agency Budget Request for Fiscal Year
2023............................................................ 179
National Park Service Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2023....... 215
Arts and Humanities Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2023......... 245
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
___________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
49-399 WASHINGTON : 2022
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COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
----------
ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut, Chair
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio KAY GRANGER, Texas
DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky
LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama
SANFORD D. BISHOP, Jr., Georgia MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho
BARBARA LEE, California JOHN R. CARTER, Texas
BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota KEN CALVERT, California
TIM RYAN, Ohio TOM COLE, Oklahoma
C. A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine CHUCK FLEISCHMANN, Tennessee
MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington
DEREK KILMER, Washington DAVID P. JOYCE, Ohio
MATT CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania ANDY HARRIS, Maryland
GRACE MENG, New York MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada
MARK POCAN, Wisconsin CHRIS STEWART, Utah
KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi
PETE AGUILAR, California DAVID G. VALADAO, California
LOIS FRANKEL, Florida DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington
CHERI BUSTOS, Illinois JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan
BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey JOHN H. RUTHERFORD, Florida
BRENDA L. LAWRENCE, Michigan BEN CLINE, Virginia
NORMA J. TORRES, California GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida MIKE GARCIA, California
ANN KIRKPATRICK, Arizona ASHLEY HINSON, Iowa
ED CASE, Hawaii TONY GONZALES, Texas
ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York JULIA LETLOW, Louisiana
JOSH HARDER, California
JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
DAVID J. TRONE, Maryland
LAUREN UNDERWOOD, Illinois
SUSIE LEE, Nevada
Robin Juliano, Clerk and Staff Director
(ii)
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES
APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2023
----------
Tuesday, April 5, 2022.
NATIONAL TRIBAL ORGANIZATIONS PUBLIC WITNESS DAY
WITNESSES
FAWN SHARP, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL CONGRESS OF AMERICAN INDIANS
JASON DROPIK, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL INDIAN EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
WILLIAM SMITH, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL INDIAN HEALTH BOARD
SONYA M. TETNOWSKI, PRESIDENT-ELECT, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF URBAN INDIAN
HEALTH
Ms. Pingree. So I am very pleased to be the first to
welcome everyone to the return of public witness hearings on
tribal programs under the jurisdiction of the Interior and
Environment Appropriations Subcommittee. Due to the ongoing
pandemic, we are still not back to normal for public witness
hearings. Prior to the pandemic, we were able to hold 2 days of
hearings to receive testimony from individual tribes and tribal
organizations. Last year, we were unable to hold any public
witness hearings, but we received written testimony from
tribes.
While we are still not to pre-pandemic activities, I am
pleased that this year we are having two virtual hearings,
starting with today's hearing, to receive testimony from tribal
organizations on national issues affecting Indian Country. This
testimony will inform with the fiscal year 2023 annual
appropriation. Our second hearing, which will take place
tomorrow afternoon, will focus on regional Indian Country
issues. As we did last year, we also solicited written
testimony from individual tribes to focus on specific tribal
priorities. That testimony was received last month.
A lot has happened since we last met. The world was shut
down by a pandemic, resulting in over 900,000 deaths in the
U.S. alone, with devastating impacts in Indian Country. While
the pandemic continues with vaccines and therapies, we are
truly getting back to normal. We also have a new President in
the White House focusing on addressing the pandemic, dealing
with climate change, and honoring the Nation's treaty and trust
responsibility to Native America by requesting investment in
Indian Country. For fiscal year 2023, President Biden proposes
$2.8 billion for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, $583 million
above fiscal year 2022 enacted level. This includes much-needed
increases of an additional $38 million for public safety and
justice programs and construction projects.
With over 55 million acres of land held in trust for
tribes, Indian Country is poised to be a major player in the
clean energy industry. The fiscal year 2023 budget proposes an
additional $104 million for natural resources management
programs to continue investments to address climate change and
help Indian Country lead the way as we pivot to cleaner energy.
Further, the budget proposes to reclassify contract support
costs and payments for tribal leases as mandatory. For the
Bureau of Indian Education, the President requests $4.5
billion, which is $294 million above the fiscal year 2022
enacted level.
The President proposes to make substantial investment in
education construction with a requested increase of $156
million. The pandemic showcased the failures of current BIE
education facilities. I recently met with leaders from the
National Indian Education Association where we discussed the
need for additional infrastructure investment. This requested
increase will go towards addressing these needs. For the Indian
Health Service, the President proposes to reclassify the entire
budget as mandatory. This proposal is not within the
subcommittee's jurisdiction. Although no discretionary funds
were requested, I look forward to today's testimony on priority
areas for Indian health.
I am pleased to welcome back national tribal organizations
to discuss the needs and challenges facing Indian Country. I am
eager to learn more about Native Americans' national
priorities, and I look forward to our discussions on these
issues because I believe it will help to inform us as we begin
to develop the 2023 appropriations bill.
Each witness' full written statement will be introduced
into the record, so please do not feel pressured to cover
everything orally. After we hear the testimony of each witness
on the panel, members will have an opportunity to ask
questions.
And with that, I am happy to yield to my friend, Mr. Joyce,
for his remarks.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for
continuing these important hearings to get input from our
tribal leaders on a wide array of programs under this
subcommittee's jurisdiction. I would like to extend a warm
welcome to the distinguished tribal leaders testifying today.
All of you have the difficult job of representing a diverse
array of interests from hundreds of sovereign nations across
the country.
I represent the Northeast corner of Ohio, which once was
the land of the Miami, Seneca and others. I am humbled to be
joining you in my capacity as ranking member on the House
Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and
Related Agencies, and perhaps now more than ever with Indian
Country recently losing a true leader on Capitol Hill with the
passing of Congressman Don Young. Though not an official member
of this subcommittee, he always looked forward to these annual
tribal hearings and would occasionally join us at the hearing
table. We will miss him, and as likely he would have wanted, we
will endeavor to carry on his work on behalf of all American
Indians and Alaska Natives.
Like Don Young and many others in Congress, I recognize
that upholding the tribal trust obligation is a responsibility
shared by all members of Congress, regardless of congressional
district. I also fully recognize that the Federal Government
has a long way to go before fully meeting its trust and treaty
obligations. That is why my position on the Appropriations
Committee is a great honor, but it is also a heavy
responsibility. Fortunately, I have a friend and partner in
Chairwoman Pingree, and it is my sincere hope that, together,
we will continue the hard work of our predecessors for more
than a decade to increase the Federal commitment to meeting
those trust and treaty obligations.
So, I look forward to listening and learning from the
testimony today and working with my chair and the rest of my
colleagues in the days and weeks ahead to do what we can to
help in the next fiscal year. I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you, Mr. Joyce, and thank you so much
for remembering our colleague, Don Young. He truly was a
champion of Indian Country, and we will miss him, absolutely.
Do any other members wish to make an opening statement?
[No response.]
Ms. Pingree. Okay. If not, we will turn to our witnesses.
So we will begin with Ms. Fawn Sharp, president of the
National Congress of American Indians. Thank you for joining us
today. You are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Sharp. [Speaking native language.] Good morning,
Chairwoman Pingree, Ranking Member Joyce, and members of the
House Subcommittee. I am Fawn Sharp, vice president of the
Quinault Indian Nation and president of the National Congress
of American Indians. Thank you for the invitation to testify
this morning.
This subcommittee's jurisdiction includes some of the most
critical funding for Indian Country. As detailed in the 2018
``Broken Promises'' report, chronically underfunded and
inefficiently-structured Federal programs have left some of the
most basic obligations of the United States to tribal nations
unmet for centuries. We call on this subcommittee and Congress
to get behind the vision of tribal leaders for righting these
wrongs by providing mandatory, full, and adequate funding for
Indian Country.
The President's fiscal year 2023 budget request is a
historic shift in the paradigm of nation-to-nation
relationships, one that seeks to restore the promises made to
our ancestors. It includes mandatory funding for Indian Health
Service, contract support costs, and Section 105(l) leases.
Providing mandatory funding to these programs promotes the
opportunity for a tribal-nation-driven approach to serving our
communities and citizens.
Under the current discretionary spending model at IHS, the
per-patient investment is about 56 percent less than the
national health spending per capita. At an average age of 37
years old, IHS hospitals are nearly 4 times the age of hospital
facilities nationwide. It would take nearly 400 years to
replace and update these facilities with the funding currently
provided.
We see the same staggering issues for education. The
weighted student unit for the Bureau of Indian Education School
System is approximately half that of public schools. Further,
DOI recently rated 86 schools in poor condition with an
estimated cost of $5.1 billion for replacement. Last month, the
NCAI board toured the Casa Blanca Community School, a BIE
school built by the Gila River Indian Community using the
Section 105 lease program. This state-of-the-art school was
built in record time with input from the entire community. As
soon as the children step off the bus, they are grounded and
surrounded by their culture, their language, and their stories,
and it fully includes their educational environment. Mandatory
funding for the 105(l) lease program means empowering tribal
nations to build the bright future we all see for Indian
Country.
Turning to law and justice, the safety of our communities
is in crisis and of the utmost importance. The 2019 ``Tribal
Law and Order Act'' report to Congress estimates the need for
BIA public safety and justice programs at $2.73 billion, 5
times the amount of funding provided in 2022. With tribal
nations' criminal jurisdiction being further restored in the
recent reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act and
beyond, Indian Country must be provided the necessary funding
to protect our communities.
Finally, with the long history of Federal Indian policies,
many tribal lands have been placed in the hands of the Federal
Government with the trust responsibility to conserve and
protect them. However, tribal nations' voices have been heard,
and we are now assuming greater roles of stewardship and co-
management of public lands. These opportunities demonstrate
creative management solutions through tribal-Federal
partnerships. This subcommittee must continue to increase
resources provided for tribal co-management of Federal land. It
is essential for tribal nations to bring our solutions, our
traditional ecological knowledge to the table with Federal
partners to combat the climate change crisis.
From what we have seen over the last few years and what we
have known all along, when tribal nations are provided the
parity and deference to provide programs and services, we see
substantial, positive changes within our communities. NCAI
urges the subcommittee to work with the Budget Committee to
fund mandatory obligations through mandatory Federal spending,
and provide funding for programs commensurate to those
obligations and not just the status quo.
Tribal nations are resilient, and we have demonstrated our
resolve and dedication since time immemorial. We expect to
continue to be treated as sovereign nations and with government
parity and equity. When we work together, we have proven we can
achieve more than we thought possible. We must now continue
down the path of nation-to-Nation growth, and only then will
all of our people truly be able to flourish.
[Speaking native language.] Thank you for your time, and I
am happy to answer any questions.
[The statement of Ms. Sharp follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Pingree. Thank you so much for your testimony.
Next, we will hear from Mr. Jason Dropik, president of the
National Indian Education Association. Thank you so much for
joining us today.
Mr. Dropik. Chair Pingree, Ranking Member Joyce, and
members of the subcommittee. [Speaking native language.] Thank
you for this opportunity to provide testimony on behalf of the
National Indian Education Association.
[Speaking native language.] Good morning. My name is
[Speaking native language], Jason Dropik, serving as president
of the National Indian Education Association, but I get the
unique opportunity to also serve as head of the Indian
Community School in Franklin, Wisconsin, right outside of
Milwaukee, serving indigenous youth and getting to see the
impact of what a cultural-based education can do for students
and their futures.
NIEA is the most inclusive national native organization
advocating for culture-based educational opportunities for
American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians. Each
day, our organization equips tribal leaders, educators, and
advocates to prepare the over 700,000 native students across
the Nation for success in the classroom and beyond. Native
education is a bipartisan effort, rooted in the Federal trust
responsibility to tribal nations and their citizens. NIEA
thanks the subcommittee for its ongoing commitment to
fulfilling this constitutional responsibility by advancing
native education programs and services in fiscal year 2023. In
particular, we appreciate the subcommittee's oversight of
Bureau of Indian Education programs and services to native
students.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the national
education landscape has shifted dramatically. The spread of
COVID-19 throughout tribal communities shined a spotlight and
exacerbated existing educational inequities for native
students. Tribal nations acted quickly to save lives and
continued educating our youth, often without the structures,
resources, and means to do so. Fully funding native education
within the Bureau of Indian Education in fiscal year 2023 is
essential to ensuring that native students have access to
resources to recover and thrive after the pandemic and into
their futures.
Fiscal year 2023 recommendations we have. As the
subcommittee considers funding levels for the coming fiscal
year, NIEA urges Congress to consider the full scope of need
for education programs in the Department of Interior through
the Bureau of Indian Education and Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Congress must continue to invest in and oversee education
programs central to the cultural and academic progress of
native students. Such measures are critical to ensure that
native students have access to these resources. Those resources
are necessary for their survival. From competitive salaries for
highly-effective, culturally-competent educators, through the
Indian School's Equalization Program, to the infrastructure of
a modern classroom, to native language and culture-based
programs, Federal appropriations are vital to ensuring equity
for the only students to which the Federal Government has a
direct responsibility: native students.
At this time, I would like to highlight just several of
NIEA's key appropriation priorities for fiscal year 2023.
Bureau-funded schools must be appropriated at least $440
million for urgent school construction and repair. NIEA
appreciates recent steps to address immediate infrastructure,
especially in light of more than the 2-year pandemic. However,
funding continues to fall far short of the total need. In 2016,
the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of
Interior found that it would cost $430 million to address
immediate facility repairs in BIE. Those are immediate repairs.
Our request is modest when taking into account inflation since
2016. The President's budget request for fiscal year 2023 is
only $420 million, far short of what is critically needed.
The Indian School Equalization Program--ISEP--should be
fully funded at $500.7 million for the fiscal year 2023
Presidential budget request. ISEP funds the core budget account
for BIE elementary and secondary schools. Through this program,
schools receive funding to pay teachers and other personnel
salaries. While ISEP is funded at approximately $2 million per
school, each public school across the country receives, on
average, $6 million for salaries, wages, and employee benefits.
Each year, schools are forced to stretch limited ISEP funds
further to fulfill regulations that require educators to be
paid salaries comparable to those in only the Federal school
system.
The Department of Defense Education Activity: this
requirement is meant to support parity and access. However,
Federal corporations have failed to account for increases in
competitive salaries at DODEA, and in States where BIE schools
are located, increased investment is required to ensure access
to high-qualified, culturally-competent educators at all
schools. When funding is cut in other areas of the BIE budget,
ISEP funds are often to used to make up the difference. A
flood, broken heater, or leaky roof can force a BIE school to
lay off a special education teacher, a student counsel, or
school security officer halfway through the school year.
Congress must ensure that ISEP is allocated adequate funding to
fulfill all program needs.
In conclusion, healthy education systems are vital to
thriving tribal nations and communities. Though tribal leaders
and legislators juggle several priorities, education cannot be
forgotten. Appropriations have the potential to promote equity
and ensure access to excellent education options which prepare
native students to thrive in the classroom and beyond. NIEA
urges Congress to uphold the Federal trust responsibility for
all native students by fully funding critical programs that
support effective and culturally-appropriate native education.
Our students, including the students in Bureau-funded schools,
deserve nothing less.
[Speaking native language.] Thank you so much for your
time.
[The statement of Mr. Dropik follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Pingree. Thank you so much for your testimony.
Next, we will hear from Mr. William Smith, the president of
the National Indian Health Board. Thank you so much for being
with us today.
Mr. Smith. Good morning, Madam Chair Pingree, Ranking
Member Joyce, and members of the subcommittee. On behalf of the
574 federally-recognized tribal nations and member
organizations that the NIHB serves, thank you for this
opportunity to testify for the fiscal year 2023 funding for the
Indian Health Service. My name is William Smith. I am the
chairman and the Alaska area representative of the National
Indian Health Board. As a Vietnam War veteran and a retired
Army sergeant, I am proud to have served my country and to
continue the public service by serving the tribal nations
through the National Indian Health Board.
For the fiscal year 2023 and beyond, robust investments are
necessary to fill the Federal trust responsibilities, and
treaty obligations, and improve the health of all Alaska
Natives and American Indians. This funding must also empower
tribes to prevent and prepare for public health emergencies. To
that end, we are pleased that the President's fiscal year 2023
budget requests mandatory funding for the IHS at $9.1 billion,
which increases over the following 10 years. It is a bold
vision and an end to a chronic funding inadequacy in building a
comprehensive Indian healthcare system. We urge Congress to
support the request and work together with administration and
the tribes to see that it is passed into law.
My written testimony discusses this proposal and other key
priorities in more detail. Today, I want to focus on mental and
behavioral health facilities and, finally, full funding.
In his December 2021 advisory, the U.S. Surgeon General
found that native youth were at higher risk for mental and
behavioral health challenges during the pandemic. While the
advisory focused on youth, these findings could also apply to
our adults and other health challenges. Before the pandemic,
tribal communities were at a behavioral health crisis,
according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
American Indians and Alaska Native women experienced a higher
increase in suicide rate from 139 percent from 1999 to 2017.
The men between the ages of 15 and 44 experienced the highest
rate of suicide of all races and ethnic groups. The overall
death of the adults from suicide is about 20 percent higher
compared to the non-Hispanic white populations. Suicide has
skyrocketed for native veterans from 19.1 to 47 in 100,000
people, but most shocking, for those ages 18 to 39, it was 66
in 100,000 persons.
The pandemic devastated our communities. It highlighted the
consequences of chronic underfunding. For example, according to
the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration,
13 percent of the native populations need substance abuse
treatment, but only 3.5 percent receives any treatment.
Congress must tackle these issues head on with aggressive
funding for prevention and treatment measures for tribes.
Facilities are also necessary to make an impact on these
problems. In 2010, Congress authorized the construction of
inpatient behavior health and other specialty care, such as
long-term care and dialysis. While suicide and other health
problems have accelerated, construction has yet to be funded.
In fact, Congress has not funded or completed a series of
healthcare facilities still on the 1993 waiting list.
The Indian Health Service has indicated that the
construction cost loan is now up to $22 billion, yet Congress
funded the entire Indian Health Service system at $6.6 billion
for fiscal year 2023. As a result, tribal leaders and health
policy experts determined that full funding for the IHS at
$49.8 is requested to make a difference. This figure takes into
account mental, medical, and non-medical information,
complications with the costly Federal mandates, and other
emerging needs. It is also a more accurate per user benchmark
based on the national health experience.
Achieving full funding will be difficult given the
restrictions spending cap in the subcommittee's allotments, but
aggressive solutions are needed to make a difference. The
President appears willing to move the bar. Indian Country
challenges Congress to also make a difference and move in the
right direction. The National Indian Health Board and the
tribal nations stand ready to join in this fight for the
healthcare of American Indians and Alaska Natives.
[Speaking native language], and thank you very much for
listening to us. And I will respond to any questions.
[The statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Pingree. Thank you so much for being with us today.
And our fourth witness will be Ms. Sonya Tetnowski, the
president-elect of the National Council of Urban Indian Health.
Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to hearing from
you.
Ms. Tetnowski. Good morning. My name is Sonya Tetnowski,
Makah tribal member, and I currently serve as the president-
elect of the National Council of Urban Indian Health, which
represents 41 urban Indian healthcare organizations across the
Nation who provide high-quality, culturally-competent care. I
am also the CEO of the Indian Health Center, Santa Clara
Valley, a UIO that provides comprehensive healthcare care to
over 22,000 patients.
Let me start by saying thank you to Chairman Pingree,
Ranking Member Joyce, and members of the subcommittee for the
opportunity to testify today.
I testify today to request the Tribal Budget Formulation
Work Group's recommended amounts of $50 billion for IHS and
$950 million for urban Indian health for fiscal year 2023,
supporting the President's proposal for mandatory funding for
IHS, as well as advanced appropriations for IHS. We also ask
that UIOs are protected from unrelated budgetary disputes and
have access to the available opioid funding.
UIOs provide a range of services and are primarily funded
by a single line item in the annual Indian health budget, which
is only 1 percent of the annual budget for fiscal year 2022 for
the over 70 percent of native people living in urban areas.
Despite historically low levels of funding, UIOs have
continuously provided services in the hardest-hit areas
throughout this health crisis. In fact, the county where my UIO
is located was the first in the country to initiate shelter-in-
place measures as we were considered a hotspot by the CDC. I am
proud to say that IHCSCU has been fighting diligently from day
one of this pandemic to do whatever it could to protect the
community. Our UIOs have played a critical role in natives
having some of the highest vaccination rates in the U.S.
However, in order to match the pace of other clinics, we
need a consistent baseline of funding, as costs for providing
care continues to increase with a growing shortage of
healthcare providers. As native people had some of the highest
infection rates, increased funding is needed to address the
long-term impacts that COVID has had on our members. I share
these insights to highlight the need for continued increases in
Indian health funding and stress the importance of honoring the
trust responsibility. The Federal trust obligation to provide
healthcare to natives is not optional and must be provided, no
matter where they reside. Continuing to fund IHS at its current
pace is what has led to irreparable health disparities, which
is why we are fighting for full funding. Funding for Indian
health must be significantly increased if the Federal
Government is to finally and faithfully fulfill its trust
responsibility.
We want to thank the committee for the report language to
allow us to finally use our 1-percent line item for facilities.
Your report was instrumental in its final inclusion in the
bipartisan infrastructure package. However, because UIOs do not
receive designated facilities funding, unlike the rest of the
IHS system, it is critical that the committee increase the
funding for the urban Indian health line item. Additionally,
any authorizing language that is specified for tribal
organizations does not include urban Indian organizations, so
we ask that the Urban Indian Organization be included in all
future legislation so that we can work together to close the
health equity gap that exists today.
We urge you to please reach out to IHS and NCUIH to ensure
funding designated to help native communities has the proper
language to ensure we are included. Another priority is
advanced appropriations, which, for IHS, is a long-overdue
request from tribal and urban leaders alike. Advanced
appropriations is imperative to provide certainty to the Indian
healthcare delivery system until such time that all trust and
treaty obligations to all AI/AN are accounted for and provided
as mandatory spending. Again, the risk is too great and the
price is too high to continue funding the way that it is now. I
urge the subcommittee to consider these requests and prioritize
urban Indian health, thereby enabling UIOs to continue
providing high-quality, culturally-competent care to native
people, regardless of where they live.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I have
provided written testimony to the committee, and I am happy to
answer any questions.
[The statement of Ms. Tetnowski follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Pingree. Thank you all for your presentations and your
very thorough written testimony. We really appreciate your
taking the time to be with us today.
We will now begin the questions. I'll start with a couple
of questions from myself. Let's see. So I am going to start
with National Indian Education Association. Mr. Dropik, I want
to talk a little bit more about the construction, and I really
appreciate your reminding us of the importance of expanding
those construction funds and how far behind we are. Certainly
during the pandemic, we were reminded of how inadequate the
facilities are everywhere.
A few years ago, the Bureau of Indian Education developed a
new methodology for determining school replacement and repair
needs and priorities. While this new methodology seems
promising, GAO and some tribal schools have questioned the
accuracy of the data used to determine the needs and
priorities. So has your organization engaged with BIE to ensure
adequate funding and training to provide technical assistance
to schools to ensure the data is input accurately and timely?
Mr. Dropik. Thank you so much for that. That is a great
observation. I would just make two points. One is that NIEA is
always standing ready to help support whenever we are asked or
called upon or invited to the table, so to speak. We would love
that opportunity to share more. I would say that often
sometimes those decisions seem to be made in isolation, not
always with consultation with not only NIEA or even BIE at
times, but also tribal communities that they serve. We really
feel that that communication has to improve. It does not take
place in the way that it should.
The other just real quick point is that also, you know,
funding in terms of structures isn't just a BIE issue. Our
structures and functions in public schools and the gap that we
see with over 93 percent of our native students attending
public schools, those gaps are huge and continue to further
separate. And so though we specifically make those asks as it
relates to BIE funding, obviously from oversight perspectives,
there is much that needs to be done on infrastructure and
resources across all schools where students are. And lifting up
those predominantly native schools lifts up all students in
those communities, so it really should be a win for all
communities.
Ms. Pingree. Yeah. Thank you for your answers and also for
reminding us that all of our public schools need upgrading.
Coming from New England where so many of our school buildings
are old, we are acutely aware of that issue.
Ms. Sharp, I wanted to just ask you a quick question about
climate change. So we all know that Indian tribes are facing
the enormous challenge of confronting the threat of climate
change and the impacts on air, water, land, communities, human
health, species, and habitats. So the fiscal year 2023
President's budget includes an additional $29 million over the
2022-enacted level for climate adaption and tribal relocation.
Could you describe to me some of the challenges that tribes are
experiencing and how climate resilience funds would be used to
adapt to climate change?
Ms. Sharp. Yes, excellent question. Thank you. I really
appreciate that. We are on the front lines of climate change.
We recently convened an NCAI board meeting, and we go through
what is going on in Indian Country, and every region reported
climate-related impacts. So all of Indian Country is directly
impacted, and I could speak specifically to my tribe. We are
currently under four states of emergency. We face a massive
king tide. A landslide threatens to take out the only access
road to our village, and so we really appreciate any funding
and attention. And the dollars that we would use would not only
help relocate our villages, but we are also facing the collapse
of our fisheries in the Pacific Northwest. These are issues
that are key and central to our identity as native people.
The visuals from last summer when we had temperatures of
111 degrees, there is video footage of salmon being cooked
alive in the Columbia River, heat lesions, and clam resources
when the tide went out or just baked them in the open sand. So
we are on the front lines. We are threatened, and these dollars
will be able to help fuel and fund our ability to adapt and
mitigate these direct impacts of climate change.
I really appreciate the question. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. Yes, thank you. I think since there are $8
million specifically for tribal relocation, and you, you know,
graphically described how it affects your tribe, I think we
have to, you know, dig in deeper onto that and understand the
number of tribes that need that level of assistance, and really
just how big the impact is going to be over the coming years.
I have used up most of my time, but I'll get a chance again
later to ask you more questions. So I will yield back and then
see if Mr. Joyce has some questions he would like to ask.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you, and I will continue to follow up with
Ms. Sharp, if you don't mind. President Sharp, of all the
proposals in the President's budget that touch on this
subcommittee's jurisdiction, is it fair to say that mandatory
funding for IHS is the most consequential?
Ms. Sharp. I would say yes. Coming out of a global
pandemic, the ``Broken Promises'' report detailed the level of
funding. There is a data point in that report that says, per
capita, the average investment through IHS for individual
tribal citizens is just over $2,000. The national average is
over $9,000. That chronic underfunding is what led to our
vulnerability, and so coming out of the pandemic, it is
absolutely essential that we have mandatory resources as we
plan to not only recalibrate the mental health crisis that is
not even known at this point, but we know it is there. It is
absolutely essential that we can have funding that we can rely
on, that is mandatory for planning purposes, and to redefine a
healthcare system that is responsive to our citizens.
Mr. Joyce. The mandatory funding proposals for the IHS,
contract support costs and 105(l) payments for tribal leases
technically fall under the jurisdiction of the House Energy and
Commerce Committee and the House Natural Resources Committee
and not the Appropriations Committee. What is the NCAI doing to
help move these proposals through the authorizing committees?
Ms. Sharp. Yes. We are working diligently as a congress,
but we are also working through our regional organizations that
you are going to hear from tomorrow. So we know that we have to
hold the United States accountable to its trust responsibility
and that, as I pointed out in my testimony, these are chronic,
longstanding underfunded programs. And so we have to work at
every level with every region and do the fact finding that we
have been doing for nearly half a century at NCAI, and be able
to provide that technical support to our regions, to our
individual tribes so we can aggressively work to insist that
these are mandatory. These should not be discretionary dollars.
Our basic health should be a mandatory expenditure of the
United States Government.
Mr. Joyce. Great. Madam Chair, I know we have some other
members on here. I'll stick around with you for round two and
let them ask the questions that they may have.
Ms. Pingree. Great. Thank you so much. I think the next
member up is Mr. Kilmer.
Mr. Kilmer. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks to all of
our witnesses for being with us. I wanted to start by directing
a couple questions to my friend, President Sharp, who has been
just such an extraordinary leader in our neck of the woods and
nationally with the National Congress of American Indians.
You know, the chairwoman in her question touched on the
impact of climate change, the impact of rising sea levels, and
you already spoke eloquently about what that has meant for the
Quinault Nation. You know, if anyone goes online and Googles
``Taholah,'' which is their lower village, and flooding, you
can actually see a photograph of someone rowing a canoe through
the streets of their village because we have seen storm surges
and flooding. You know, unfortunately in the district I
represent, we have four coastal tribes that are in the process
of trying to move to higher ground.
In the omnibus bill, there was some funding for the Hoh
Tribe, and the Quileute Tribe, and the Quinault Nation to
support some of that relocation process. We are working on some
other stuff. The Natural Resources Committee favorably reported
out the Tribal Coastal Resiliency Act, which they introduced to
try to provide some dedicated resources to coastal tribes to
support their efforts to mitigate threats caused by climate
change.
But I think it is worth just pointing out that these are
significant costs. I mean, we are literally talking about
trying to relocate, in some instances, entire communities. You
know, if you go out and visit the Quileute Tribe, their school,
any one of us could stand at the doorstep of their current
school and throw a rock and land it in the Pacific Ocean right
now. And, you know, if you think about the threat of tsunami,
that is horrifying, and, you know, so building a school is not
a cheap ticket, and then you multiply that by all of the
communities that are undertaking this.
So, President Sharp, I was hoping you could say a bit more
about how BIA and any other funding advancing climate
resiliency would help in these relocation efforts, and what you
think Congress had to do on this front because my sense is that
the need is far more significant than the funding has been.
Ms. Sharp. Yes, absolutely. Thank you. When we did look at
the budget that was released, the infrastructure bill, for
example, there is $150 million for relocation for tribal
nations. Our one project at Quinault is about $180 million. So
the national appropriation for relocating tribal villages that
is targeted for tribal nations, my one nation would consume
that entire budget, so the need is tremendous. And if we
consider the report that was released just yesterday by the
United Nations, our reality today is only going to intensify
the climate crisis with respect to sea level rise, mega fires.
And so the public treasury right now, from our perspective,
is paying for the mere symptoms of climate change. We are not
even getting to the infrastructure to actually move these
villages to higher ground. We are not getting to adaptation and
mitigation strategies. So my recommendation going forward would
be to make targeted investments to make a difference, but also
to recognize the scale of this crisis is beyond the public
treasury. We have to be creative in public/private partnerships
with the private sector and also with philanthropy. There is a
global community waiting to enlist resources and deploy those
to tribal nations, and I think the United States could be a
tremendous partner and ally with tribal nations.
In other parts of the world, indigenous peoples don't have
political structure. We do, and so I think there is an
opportunity to meet the needs here domestically but also to be
a leader globally on these issues with respect to indigenous
peoples.
Mr. Kilmer. I am going to try to squeeze in the minute I
have, you mentioned the ``Broken Promises''' report, which
really details, as you pointed out, chronic underfunding in
infrastructure, in housing, in education, in healthcare, in
economic development for tribes, and, in many cases, failing to
fully recognize the sovereign status of tribal governments. I
am working with Senator Warren on some legislation to address
some of the recommendations outlined in that report. But,
President Sharp, can you just comment on the importance of
actually taking action in response to the ``Broken Promises'''
report?
Ms. Sharp. Yes, thank you, and I appreciate that question.
I will try to answer it in 20 seconds. It is critically
important that we consider this as a foundational document.
There is a lot of fact finding. It determines not one Federal
agency is living up to its trust responsibility, so we need to
partner. To the extent Congress cannot fully fund the services,
you need to get behind our vision in building our economy,
including tax parity and our resources to, as Sovereign
Nations, raise the revenue and advance profitability of our
enterprises. [Speaking native language.] Thank you.
Mr. Kilmer. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Pingree. Very well done. Thank you. Mr. Simpson, you
are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you all
for being here to testify today. Obviously, Indian health and -
[No response.]
Ms. Pingree. We lost you for a minute. I think maybe you
got muted.
Mr. Simpson. Can you hear me now?
Ms. Pingree. Yeah. Yeah.
Mr. Simpson. Okay. We are back again, but anyway, thank you
all for being here today. Indian issues and Indian Country has
always been a bipartisan issue on this committee. We work
together and try to do the best we can. I noticed almost all of
you recommended that we do mandatory funding for Indian Health
Services. It was also mentioned that we do advanced
appropriations now. If you had mandatory funding, do you need
advanced appropriations? I guess I'll ask whoever wants to
answer that.
Ms. Sharp. I would be happy to.
Mr. Simpson. Okay. [Laughter.]
Ms. Sharp. Yes, both are critically important.
``Mandatory'' means the United States is signaling to tribal
nations that treaty obligations and the trust responsibility is
non-negotiable.
Mr. Simpson. Right.
Ms. Sharp. That is mandatory. Advanced appropriations is
also vitally important to tribal nations so that we can plan.
It is hard to plan for things when we don't know, and there is
such a level of uncertainty all across Indian Country, and
specifically to the health sector. When you look at every
single metric of public health for tribal nations, our citizens
are off the chart. So we need these resources, and we need them
in advance so that we could plan effectively.
Mr. Simpson. Well, I appreciate what you are saying, and I
agree with you. The Indian Health Service has been underfunded
for years, and we have tried to increase it and so forth. If it
was mandatory, you would pretty much know what it is going to
be the next year. So, I mean, it seems to me, and maybe I am
wrong. I don't know. It seems to me like if it was mandatory,
you would have had that certainty rather than through the
advanced appropriation. But that is a discussion we can have
later on how best to do that because I understand where you are
coming from, and I agree with you.
Let me ask you, if mandatory funding were in place today,
say it had been passed a couple of years ago, would the $9.1
billion in mandatory funding for IHS be sufficient to cover
those costs today, or would that level be higher today?
Ms. Sharp. Yes, it would be sufficient. As I pointed out in
one of the previous questions, the disparity is so wide, the
gap is so significant, it is going to take us years just to get
to a basic level of healthcare. And when you look at our
healthcare delivery systems in IHS, we have the resources to
fund doctors, pharmacists, but do we have a comprehensive
healthcare system that includes oversight, that includes
quality of care, that includes access to care? A lot of these
basic features of a comprehensive public healthcare system does
not exist in Indian Country. So for us to achieve a basic level
of parity with citizens in the United States, we need far more
than what is currently appropriated.
Mr. Simpson. I understand what you are saying. Believe me,
Representative Cole has made me aware of this over the years
and the need to increase funding for Indian Health Services. It
seems like if the authorizing committee passed mandatory
funding, that the idea behind that is that brings that level up
to where it ought to be because it is mandatory, and it does it
right away. From what I understand in this proposal, it is $9.1
billion in mandatory funding that will increase based on
healthcare costs and population growth to $36.7 billion by
2032. I am trying to figure out mandatory at what level, and
how do we anticipate those costs.
And the reason I ask this question is, as you know, a
little over 70 percent of the Federal budget is mandatory
funding. Every agency in the world would love to have mandatory
funding and not have to deal with the Appropriations Committee.
Believe me, I fully understand that, and it might be the only
way we can get Indian health up to where it ought to be and the
funding for where it ought to be. And I don't have a problem
with that if that is what is necessary in order to get it to
get it to that level. And I guess I have been trying to figure
out at what level would it jump right away and how soon would
we be at full funding under mandatory funding.
Ms. Sharp. Yes, I really appreciate where you are going
with that question, Congressman. I really appreciate thinking
about not only meeting the immediate need but the long term,
and how do we get to a level of parity, and I would welcome, as
I am sure all of our partners and colleagues who do some
significant fact finding. We are coming up to an era of
understanding the boarding school deaths within our community
and the murder of our children. There are significant mental
health crises facing Indian Country. At this point, we don't
even have the resources to fully understand the scale of the
healthcare crises facing Indian Country.
And to answer your question, we should spend the time, in
partnership with Congress, to really delve in to understand the
significant right-now health impacts to Indian Country, and
then, from there, build out. So I really appreciate the
question. Thank you.
Mr. Simpson. Yeah, I appreciate your answer, and I am more
than willing, and I know members of this committee are also, to
figure out how we get to the level that we ought to be at so
that there is not disparity between Indian Health Services and
other health services delivered by the Federal Government
stuff. And as you said, we have a treaty responsibility with
these tribes, one that I am painfully aware of, that is
necessary that we try and meet.
One other question. I can't see a clock, Chairwoman, so
this is a briefer question.
Ms. Pingree. Go ahead. Sure.
Mr. Simpson. When it comes to Indian education, and it is
broader than just that, one of the problems that as I talk to
like the Shoshone Tribe in Idaho, they have some difficulties
hiring teachers. And it is not just teachers, but it is also
law enforcement officers. We just had an earmark for a $7
million fire station in Fort Hall because they needed a fire
station. The one thing they told me is they have a hard time
keeping the firemen on the job. They got like 20 or 30 firemen,
but they are the training ground for the communities around
that can pay these people much more. So in Indian education,
law enforcement, other first responders, they do all the
education. As soon as they get educated, a lot of them will
move to other communities.
How do we create a situation where they can pay these
people to stay on the jobs that they have been trained for on
the reservation?
Mr. Dropik. You can go ahead, President Sharp, if you would
like. Otherwise, I can. Either way.
Ms. Sharp. Yes, I can address at law enforcement if you
want to address education. With respect to law enforcement, you
see that all across Indian Country. The one suggestion I would
make as we try to achieve parity with State and local
government, we need parity not only in the number of officers
but in pay scales. And I have often thought wouldn't it be nice
to take the Federal pay scale and include those in our self-
governance compacts. We have in our fish hatchery somebody who
has been there for 30 years, and they are still not at a level
that is even at the lower end of the Federal scale. When
someone from college comes right out to our Federal hatchery,
they are making about $30,000 more. And you are right, you
could go to every sector. And so if we could achieve parity,
take Federal pay scales, plug those in, we would be able to see
a sustained effort to be able to deliver public health safety,
education, welfare for all of our workforce. It is so
important.
Mr. Dropik. And just following up on education, you are
absolutely right. And education and having teachers in the
classroom isn't going to be an issue that is solely in native
communities, but it definitely is going to be, once again, a
huge spotlight and exacerbated by when you have poor
conditions, you have people wearing multiple hats because of
funding deficits, that creates the need for people to serve in
many different roles as opposed to their other community peers
where they don't have to serve in three to four different roles
in their communities. You know, those are some of the
challenges that come in.
So, you know, there are many different ways that you can
help to support that through funding, obviously, those core
structures which helps to create opportunities, and for
personnel where there are huge gaps that we talked about in our
testimony that exist between personnel deficits. But then also,
we can get creative. There is programming, and it might not be
specific from appropriations, but really being able to pass
some meaningful ways in which tribal members can be able to get
their degrees without a huge burden of debt over their head as
they go into their communities and they work and to pay it
back.
I graduated from a Federal program that created Urban
American Indian Teachers, and I was able to get part of my
schooling paid for to serve in urban American Indian settings.
And those programs are so few and far between and poorly funded
that they just definitely would help provide some impact into
our tribal communities. But it is structural. It is personnel.
It is creating those, and it does start with funding as well as
creating those conditions for people to stay.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you for that, and let's work on that. I
am more than willing to work with you. Thank you, Chairwoman
Pingree.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Simpson. I let you
go a little bit over, but you got the rest of Mr. Joyce's time.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Pingree. So we will make it up to everybody else.
Representative Lee, you are next.
Mrs. Lee. Thank you, Chair Pingree, and Ranking Member
Joyce, and all the panelists for being here today. I represent
Nevada, and over 80 percent of our land is federally
controlled, which means that tribal collaboration and
participation in Federal lands management is such an important
issue in my State. I personally have been pleased to see the
Biden administration's commitments on this front with the
Tribal Homelands Initiative and Secretary Haaland's new Tribal
Advisory Committee. Those are all a great start, but as we
heard from testimony today, much more work remains.
I have a pair of questions for Ms. Sharp on this front.
President Sharp, my district is home to Avi Kwa Ame, which is
the Mojave name for Spirit Mountain, the center of creation for
10 human-speaking tribes. Right now, a coalition of tribes, the
local communities, the Nevada legislature, conservation groups,
recreation interests, and others are working to establish
Spirit Mountain and the area that surrounds it as a national
monument, and earlier this year, I sent the Secretary a letter
supporting such a move.
You spoke in your testimony about creative management
solutions to the tribal Federal partnerships when it comes to
Federal land management. We already know that there are four
sites in the National Park Service as well as 80 additional
formalized relationships. From your perspective, are there
successful models of formal Federal and tribal cooperation that
could be or should be considered when creating new monuments
such as the Avi Kwa Ame?
Ms. Sharp. Yes, absolutely, and before I answer that
specific question, I think it is important just to point out
that while tribal nations ceded millions of Acres of lands
across this country through treaty, we have never relinquished
our spiritual connection to this landscape, and that is what we
bring to the table. When we bring our co-management, we bring
our perspective. We bring our teachings. We bring our songs and
ceremonies that remain, that have been there since time
immemorial. So, yes, there are examples all across Indian
Country where we are able to not only be at the table but to
bring that wealth, that brain trust, and that heart and that
spiritual connection to the landscape.
And you'll find in those instances, the management, it is
just better. It is an added layer that connects present-day
management to the beginning of time and our vision to the end
of time, because we do manage for seven generations, so we
bring that very broad perspective. I really appreciate that
question. Thank you.
Mrs. Lee. Thank you. Are there any specific characteristics
that you believe would be essential to ensuring a productive
co-stewardship of tribal lands?
Ms. Sharp. Yes. One of the key features I would strongly
advance is the ability in co-management, for tribal nations
that have a decisive say over our land, territories, resources,
and people, to have what is known as a universal international
standard of free, prior, and informed consent. When we have the
ability to have a decisive say over our lands, territories, and
resources without another sovereign taking unilateral action,
that is when you are going to find that the relationship
between tribal nations and the United States is not only
respected, but advanced in a way that is honorable and that is
worthy of things that are in the future that we can achieve
together in a good, positive way.
Mrs. Lee. Thank you. You know, I did want to comment about
your previous answer. I had the pleasure of touring Spirit
Mountain with the local Fort Mojave Tribe and witnessing their
dance and their ceremony, and it was really quite moving.
So, you know, the Biden administration has the Tribal
Homelands Initiative, and this is a historic commitment to
upholding and enhancing the Federal Government's partnership
and nation-to-Nation relationships. As this effort continues to
get under-way, what elements should Congress prioritize in the
near term that will best position this initiative for success
in the long term?
Ms. Sharp. Yes. I think a lot of the issues that we have
touched on have been related to funding, to co-management, to
having a decisive say. I think it is important to spend time to
really understand the tribal nations' perspective. I think
oftentimes when there are new initiatives and innovative ideas,
a lot of people think they have an idea of what would work for
us or what is best for us, and that has been the long story of
Federal-tribal relations. But to the extent there is some early
engagement to really understand issues from our perspective
that little investment of time is going to be proved to be
valuable for years to come.
Mrs. Lee. Great. Thank you, Ms. Sharp, for that insight,
and with that, I yield.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much. Mr. Amodei, are you
interested in asking questions? I am not sure if I see you on
there.
[No response.]
Ms. Pingree. Okay. I hear back from Mr. Amodei. If he wants
to ask questions later, we will put him back in the line. So
we'll go to Mr. Cartwright.
Mr. Cartwright. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for
our distinguished panel for testifying today.
I want to talk about broadband internet. We are all talking
a lot about that, but we have to talk about it in context with
this hearing. Ms. Sharpe, I want to start with you. In January,
one of your NCAI colleagues, Mr. Rantaren told the Senate
Committee on Indian Affairs that half of the tribes did not
apply for broadband funding, in part because they were unaware
of the funding opportunity due to the lack of connectivity. In
other words, they weren't online so they didn't get the notice.
Well, as we begin to build up better broadband access with the
IIJA funds, how do we ensure that these tribes and communities,
who clearly need the funding, are aware of the opportunities
available to them?
Ms. Sharp. Yes, thank you, and I am just looking at my
screen here. I don't know if my face is coming up as red as it
looks on my screen or if my blood is literally boiling. I am
not sure. But to answer your question, the one thing that I
would recommend, for us to really put our broadband programs
together, we have to go to multiple sources. If we could create
a one-stop place so that we aren't band-aiding the approach to
establish broadband, and then also deploy resources to help
build capacity. Another reason so many tribes didn't apply, we
don't even have the capacity to be able to begin the planning
process. And so early dollars for planning one-stop-shopping to
be able to combine all of the Federal deployment of resources
targeted to Indian Country in a convenient place, I think that
would go a long way.
Mr. Cartwright. Well, thank you, and I want to include Mr.
Dropik in this discussion. Mr. Dropik, as you noted in your
testimony, native students often face significant hurdles,
educational disparities. Can you describe the impact that
limited broadband access has had on exacerbating these
disparities, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how,
if allocated appropriately, the broadband funding in the
bipartisan infrastructure bill--the IIJA--can help reduce these
disparities?
Mr. Dropik. [Speaking native language.] Thank you for that
opportunity, and you are absolutely correct. So with about 68
percent of our tribal communities being in rural settings, I
can speak firsthand. When we had to pivot to remote learning
within our own school, we had students who had to move back to
their tribal communities because that is where they had
families that could take care of them, so they were out of
their city centers with their parents or went with an aunt or
an uncle or a grandparent. And there was zero cellphone signal
let alone broadband access, so we couldn't even give them a
hotspot that they could use.
And so infrastructure, parts of it in terms of increasing
access in rural communities, and we know that in the Southwest,
the distance and the geographical challenges that exist there
for making sure that people have adequate access. What that
does is just there was already a gap. We have seen gaps in
communities where that isn't an issue, where they are able to
access online, whether it is our suburban community or urban
centers. And then also what we did, though, seeing our tribal
communities, so that gap further spread as students that didn't
have those same issues were able to engage in some connections
with other people with meaningful learning experiences that
were met.
So it is that communication. We got to let them know, but
even if they knew, some of our families wouldn't have been able
to access that because there is just zero capability in their
community, and it is because there have been no investment
dollars. If I need a classroom or if I have an opportunity to
get some high-speed internet, I need a classroom renovation so
I don't have a ceiling tile falling on my head. And so those
are our priorities.
You know, when we make those priorities and we cut funds,
and infrastructure, and the resources, it takes away from other
opportunities to grow and to create that access. So I think, to
President Sharp's point, that collaboration about really
researching where do we need to have those priorities made so
that we can make sure that they have access, then we can start
getting the tools in people's hands, and the communication can
go out. So that infrastructure part, getting to rural
communities is huge, our tribal communities, which is where
many of the lands are, is something that has to be addressed as
well.
Mr. Cartwright. Well, that is well said, and thank you both
for your testimony. And, Chair Pingree, I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much. I think we might have a
couple of members who want a second question. So I'll try one
more time. If Mr. Amodei wants to ask a question, just let me
know. Otherwise, I will go back and we'll go with a couple more
questions, and I'll start with myself.
I wanted to ask Ms. Tetnowski, in your testimony, I thought
it was interesting that there are only two urban Indian health
facilities for the entire East Coast. Is that because of lack
of funding, or are there other urban facilities provided or
interested in providing health services but that are not able
to do so because of the funding, and what would be the process
or what is needed to expand Indian healthcare on the East
Coast?
Ms. Tetnowski. Thank you so much for that question. Yes, it
does have to do with our ability to get additional funding to
increase our service areas. Many of our existing programs were
created many years ago, most of which are 40-plus years old as
far as organization goes. And so with a 1-percent line item out
of the entire IHS budget, the ability for us to expand into new
areas or to create new facilities in new locations is just not
possible. We just don't have the bandwidth or the resources to
be able to sustain them.
One thing I wanted to follow up on what Representative
Simpson said about the ability to have advanced appropriations
versus mandatory funding, advanced appropriation would ensure
that we weren't shut down during any type of government
closure. IHS is currently the only healthcare organization in
the Federal Government that does not have advanced
appropriations at this time, again, leading to our inability to
expand programs and plan. Like President Sharp shared earlier,
planning is critical for those services to expand.
Ms. Pingree. Yeah, thank you for that answer and for your
thoughts on the mandatory and advanced funding. Mr. Smith, I
want to ask a question of you. In the fiscal year 2022 budget,
the Indian Health Service for the first time identified over
$50 million the Service pays to the Department of Health and
Human Services for assessments. The subcommittee urged IHS to
fund these costs from the direct operations line rather than
hospitals and healthcare care, which is used to provide actual
service. Has the Service consulted with the tribes about moving
these costs, and does NIHB have a position on where these costs
should be funded?
Mr. Smith. Thank you for that question. As it is going, I
would have to refer back to my technical support to get you the
proper answer for what you need. But on another note, when we
are talking about advanced appropriations, mandatory advanced
appropriations would give us the stopgap until we can decide,
and talk together, and work together on the mandatory
appropriations so we would know the full cost of everything it
is doing. So like I stated before, we already suffered during
the government shutdown. Then when you talk about people
leaving the jobs, we had health persons leaving our Indian
Health Services jobs because they weren't getting paid and
going over to the paid section, and we are trying now to get
qualified healthcare workers back into our system.
So advanced appropriations would be the solution to
figuring out what mandatory would be because when you are
saying ``mandatory appropriations,'' we don't know what that
would be. But if we had that, just like the VA, it kept going
during the shutdown, but the Indian Health Service, we suffered
dearly. So I'll get back to you with your first question----
Ms. Pingree. Great. That is fine. You can let us know, and
thank you for that.
Ms. Pingree. I know those of us in government like to think
we are never going to shut down again, but it does seem to
happen, so I understand your concerns.
One last question, Ms. Sharp. In your written testimony,
you proposed investments in an economic development pilot
program. Could you give me some more details on how the program
would work and how it would differ from BIA's existing economic
development programs?
Ms. Sharp. Yes. One of the central points of distinction,
we know and recognize that healthy tribal economic systems and
economy is so much more than tribally-owned business. It is
attracting companies that locate within Indian Country. It is
also supporting a private sector economy, our individual tribal
citizens. So what we are after is a comprehensive economic
development strategy for Indian Country that not only assists
us in increasing profits, not necessarily governmental
revenues. That is a system of taxation, and that is a whole
nother area where Congress needs to support our ability to
raise revenues. But in the profit sector, tribal nations can
compete. We can support intertribal trade. We can gain access
to international commerce and trade. We can also build a
private sector economy.
And so we have to look at economic development within
Indian Country through that comprehensive lens to know and
understand we are a sovereign tribal nation. We could attract
companies. We could tax them. We could raise revenues, and we
can also create strategies to increase our profitability
through commercial ventures and enterprises. That is what we
are after.
Ms. Pingree. Great. Thank you. That is a really helpful
explanation. Mr. Joyce, would you like to ask some further
questions?
Mr. Joyce. No, my questions were addressed by the relevant
questions asked by other members. I certainly appreciate you
thinking of me.
Ms. Pingree. Great. Well, our colleagues have asked some
good questions. How about you, Mr. Simpson? Any more questions
from you?
Mr. Simpson. Yeah, Chairwoman. I appreciate it. It is not
really a question, and I am certain that when this is all over,
I am going to have some staff member--Darren, I am talking to
you--come over to my office and explain to me where I am wrong
or whatever on this. But the question of advanced and
mandatory, I still find that fascinating because you know that
most mandatory spending, it is completely out of our hands,
just like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. We don't
appropriate money for any of those things. Once it goes to
mandatory, it is mandatory, and that means that, as an example,
with Social Security, if you get a Social Security check, you
will get that check regardless of whether the Federal
Government has any money or not. If we have to borrow the
money, you qualify for that as long as you qualified for that.
That is what ``mandatory spending'' means.
And when and when you say, ``advanced appropriation,'' I am
sitting here going advanced appropriation of what? If it is out
of our hands, what are we advancing the appropriation for if it
is mandatory spending? So we need to work this out so that we
are all on the same page because I am on your side on what you
are trying to do here. We certainly need to get the Indian
Health Services where Indians are receiving the same type of
medical care that other Americans are. And I think that is
something that this committee has been working on, but it is a
huge task, as you know. So let's work together and see if we
can solve this.
And also, I am very interested, having come from a city
council of a town of 10,000 where we had 25 miles away on each
side, a city of 50,000. We trained all the police officers for
those communities, and now we are seeing the same type of thing
happening with tribes where they are training the educators and
everything else, and then they are going to where they can get
better pay, and we need to solve that problem, frankly. So I
appreciate all the work that you all do and for being here to
testify before this committee today. We want to work with you
to make sure we get to a good place where we ought to be.
Thank you, Chairwoman. I appreciate it.
Ms. Pingree. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Simpson. I really
appreciate your points, and I think we have got some sorting
out to do on those questions and appreciate your insights. And
to all of our witnesses today, thank you so much. You have been
really helpful to the committee in thinking about what we need
to be doing in fiscal year 2023, and we will look forward to
staying in touch as we work through this process. And, again,
thank you for your work for your organizations and for
providing your insights to us.
So with that, I will call this committee adjourned.
Wednesday, April 6, 2022.
REGIONAL TRIBAL ORGANIZATIONS PUBLIC WITNESS DAY
WITNESSES
KIRK FRANCIS, PRESIDENT, UNITED SOUTH AND EASTERN TRIBES
JULIE KITKA, PRESIDENT, ALASKA FEDERATION OF NATIVES
SERRELL SMOKEY, PRESIDENT, INTER-TRIBAL COUNCIL OF NEVADA, INC.
HAROLD FRAZIER, CHAIRMAN, GREAT PLAINS TRIBAL CHAIRMEN'S ASSOCIATION
MELVIN SHELDON, JR., FIRST VICE PRESIDENT, AFFILIATED TRIBES OF
NORTHWEST INDIANS
Ms. Pingree. So good morning, everyone, and welcome to the
second public witness hearing on tribal programs under the
jurisdiction of the Interior and Environment Appropriations
Subcommittee.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, we are still not back to
normal for public witness hearings. However, this year, we are
having two hearings. Yesterday, we heard about national Indian
Country priorities to inform the fiscal year 2023 annual
appropriation. Today, we will focus on regional Indian Country
priorities. As in 2022, we have also solicited testimony from
individual tribes to focus on specific tribal priorities. That
testimony was received last month.
A lot has happened since we last met. Indian Country is
struggling with the effects of a pandemic that has resulted in
loss of lives, including many tribal elders and fluent native-
language speakers, shut down tribal governments, and shuttered
schools. The pandemic's mental health impacts on Native
Americans are devastating and will need long-term assistance to
address. I am very grateful that President Biden is honoring
the Nation's treaty and trust responsibility to address these
issues. I also look forward to his focus on the climate crisis
and the need to transition to clean energy that is impacting
not only the Nation but the world. Like the pandemic, Native
America is on the front lines of the climate change crisis and
has an important role to play in leading the way to a cleaner,
healthier future.
For fiscal year 2023, President Biden proposes $2.8 billion
for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, $583 million above the fiscal
year 2022-enacted level. This includes much-needed increases of
an additional $38 million for public safety and justice
programs and construction projects, plus an additional $104
million for natural resources management to continue
investments to address climate change and pivot to cleaner
energy. Further, the budget proposes to reclassify contract
support costs and payment for tribal leases as mandatory.
For the Bureau of Indian Education, the President requests
$4.5 billion, which is $294 million above the fiscal year 2022-
enacted level. The President proposes to make a substantial
investment in education construction with a requested increase
of $156 million. I recently met with leaders from the National
Indian Education Association where we discussed the need for
additional infrastructure investment. This requested increase
is much needed.
For the Indian Health Service, the President proposes to
reclassify the entire budget as mandatory. The proposal is not
within the subcommittee's jurisdiction. Since no discretionary
funds were requested, I look forward to today's testimony on
priority areas in the event Congress has not reclassified the
service accounts before we pass the annual discretionary
appropriation bill.
I am pleased to welcome tribal organization to discuss
regional needs and challenges facing Indian Country. I am eager
to learn more about your issues and priorities, and I look
forward to our discussions on these issues because I believe it
will help to inform us as we begin to develop the 2023
appropriations bill. Each witness' full written statement will
be introduced into the record, so please do not feel pressured
to cover everything orally. After we hear the testimony of each
witness on the panel, members will have the opportunity to ask
questions.
And with that, I am happy to yield to my friend, Mr. Joyce,
for his remarks.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for
continuing these important hearings to get input from tribal
leaders on a wide array of programs under this subcommittee's
jurisdiction. I would like to extend a warm welcome to the
distinguished tribal leaders testifying today. This is day two
of the subcommittee's traditional 2-day annual listening
sessions with tribal leaders. I know we all look forward to the
day when we can return to full-day sessions and visit with
tribal leaders from around our Nation.
Our witnesses today have the difficult job of representing
a diverse array of interests from hundreds of sovereign nations
across the country. I represent the Northeast corner of Ohio,
which was once the land of the Miami, Seneca and others. I am
humbled to be joining you today in my capacity as ranking
member on the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies
Subcommittee, perhaps now more than ever. As I said yesterday,
Indian Country recently lost a true leader on Capitol Hill with
the passing of my fellow Native American Caucus vice chair and
Alaska's sole voice in the House for nearly 5 decades,
Congressman Don Young. Though not an official member of this
subcommittee, he always looked forward to these annual tribal
meetings.
Like Don Young and many others in Congress, I recognize
that upholding the tribal trust obligation is a responsibility
shared by all members of Congress regardless of the
congressional district. I also realize the Federal Government
still has a long way to go before fully meeting its trust and
treaty obligations. I suspect we will hear about the important
work that remains to be done from our distinguished witnesses
this afternoon.
That is why my position on the Appropriations Committee is
a great honor, but it is also a heavy responsibility.
Fortunately, I have a friend and partner in Chairwoman Pingree.
And it is my sincere hope that together we can continue the
hard work of our predecessors for more than a decade to
increase the Federal commitment to meeting those trust and
treaty obligations. So, I look forward to listening and
learning from the testimony today and working with my chair and
the rest of my colleagues in the days and weeks ahead to help
you in this next fiscal year.
I yield back, Madam Chair.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you so much, Mr. Joyce, and thank you
for your kind words. I look forward to working on this with
you, and I am also pleased you mentioned our departed
colleague, Don Young. We are all going to miss him very much
and his important commitment to Indian Country.
Do any other members wish to make an opening statement?
[No response.]
Ms. Pingree. Okay. Seeing none, we will begin to hear the
testimony from our witnesses, and thank you all so much for
taking your time to be with us today. We are really looking
forward to having a conversation with you.
I will begin by recognize Mr. Kirk Francis, the president
of the United South and Eastern Tribes, and I feel very
fortunate to have Chief Francis as a chief of an important
Penobscot Tribe in our State. So it is a pleasure to have you
with us today, and it is always good to hear your voice. So
thank you so much for joining us, and please go ahead with your
remarks.
Mr. Francis. Thank you, Congresswoman, and it is great to
see you as well. And so, Congresswoman Pingree, Ranking Member
Joyce, members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to allow me to provide testimony. My name is Kirk
Francis. I serve as president of the United South and Eastern
Tribes Sovereignty Protection Fund. I am also proudly serving
as chief of the Penobscot Indian Nation in the Great State of
Maine.
We are here today to both celebrate historic proposals in
the President's budget request and to also once again remind
you all that the Federal Government continues to fail to
deliver upon its obligations to tribal nations and native
people. This failure has persisted regardless of changes in
administration or Congress. Despite reports, investigations,
recommendations, and consistent advocacy from Indian Country,
it has been evident in the 2003 ``Quiet Crisis'' report, the
2018 ``Broken Promises'' report, and the way the COVID-19 has
ravaged our Nation's people and communities.
Deep and chronic failures require bold, systematic changes.
I am sorry, Congresswoman. Am I not on camera?
Ms. Pingree. No, you are not. It is a tribal symbol, not
you.
Mr. Francis. I just got a notice from your staff. Is that
better?
Ms. Pingree. It is. Technology is jinxed today, so we are
just going to expect this to happen.
Mr. Francis. Deep and chronic failures require bold,
systematic changes, some of which now have been proposed by the
President. This is not a question about addressing poverty and
needs across Indian Country. Our relationship with the United
States is ultimately about honor, fulfilling commitments and
promises. The solutions that we offer involve a fundamental
shift in Federal Indian policy and funding. They will allow
Indian Country to realize its great potential and create
lasting, positive change for tribal nations and our people.
It is critical that the administration propose and Congress
demand budgets that contain full funding for all Federal Indian
agencies and programs. Given our history and unique
relationship, this funding can no longer be subject to the
instability of discretionary spending. We must achieve full and
mandatory funding for all Federal Indian agencies and programs,
and the President's unprecedented request for IHS, though not
entirely reflective of the tribal estimate for full funding, is
an excellent start.
The process under which OMB develops budgets and policy
that impact us require reform also. We believe a strong tribal
affairs office should be created at OMB. In concert with the
office, OMB must be required to produce full, detailed
accountings of the Federal funding distributed to Indian
Country, including only what tribal nations access, not funds
which we are technically eligible for. While we are
appreciative of the inclusion of funding for tribal nations in
the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, this level of
funding is insufficient to address centuries of unmet
infrastructure obligations. A much greater Federal investment
is necessary to rebuild tribal nation infrastructure and
economies. Similar to the U.S. investment in the rebuilding of
post-World War II Europe via Marshall Plan, the legislative and
executive branches should commit to the same investment to
rebuild tribal nations.
As we await further details on the President's request for
fiscal year 2023, we celebrate the historic nature of the
administration's proposal to move IHS and other funding to the
mandatory side of the budget as well as a plan to begin to
close gaps in IHS funding. We are pleased to see the proposed
$1.1 billion increase to programs within DOI Indian Affairs.
However, we also note the historic and continued unmet funding
obligation with regards to BIA's diverse line items. The recent
DOI report cites the full funding obligation of just public
safety and justice lines at $3 billion.
While we firmly believe all Indian Country funding should
be fully funded today, including the IHS, we recognize that the
Biden administration has taken a positive step forward in its
proposal to move us closer to that reality. We now call upon
Congress, and this subcommittee in particular, to work with
tribal nations and the administration to fulfill the
government's responsibilities and to ensure that these
proposals are enacted. While each member of Congress shares
equally in trust and treaty obligations, you have a unique
understanding of these obligations, including unmet funding
obligations, and, more importantly, an opportunity to drive
historic change.
You know how the chronic underfunding of IHS has
contributed to the lack of access to care, health disparities,
and preventable death in Indian Country, especially during the
COVID crisis. We ask that you join us in supporting the
administration's proposal for IHS as well as CSC and 105(l),
and use this knowledge in conversations with colleagues. We
know that it will take tribal leaders an advocates, the
administration, and congressional appropriators working
together to enact these.
In closing, we implore you to lead the change within
Congress that is necessary to improve how the United States
views, honors, and fulfills its promises to Indian Country. The
Federal budget is a reflection of this commitment. We recognize
that there are many issues that this body considers. However,
we ask that you always remember this Nation's first promise to
its first people, the promise that resulted in an exchange
responsible for the vast wealth, power, and influence of this
great country.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I am happy to
answer any questions.
[The statement of Mr. Francis follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much, Chief Francis.
Next, we will hear from Ms. Julie Kitka, the president of
the Alaska Federation of Natives.
Ms. Kitka. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and Ranking Member,
and members of the committee. It is my honor to testify today.
I serve as the president of the Alaska Federation of Natives,
the long-term president.
I want to first thank you for recognizing our long-term
congressman who passed away on March 18. He was in his 25th
term, 49 years in that distinguished body. I don't think that
we have ever really remembered anybody else serving in that
position on that, and so I want to thank you for allowing him
to lie in the Statutory Hall with the respect that was given.
And we are working with our governor on some possible naming
opportunities to be appropriately respectful of his
contributions to rebuilding our State on that, but thank you
for all the courtesies. And he was a character. We know that
there were many things that people liked and a little
controversies, but he had a kind heart, and he really, truly,
deeply loved the native people of Alaska and across the country
and did his best.
I also want to thank you for the Congress' support in the
CARES funding, and the American Rescue, and the Infrastructure
on that. These are historic levels of funding and effort
directed in our communities on that, and they really are making
a difference. When we first were assessing models on the COVID,
the medical models of how that would impact our population, we
were scared to death. The worst-case model had projections of
deaths of 14,000 of our people just in Anchorage and Mat-Su
within 3 months. Fortunately, through the interventions of the
health system and everybody's effort, and just the trajectory
of the virus itself, we didn't have that level of death. I
believe we have had about 250,000 cases in our State, and the
death rate has been hovering, I believe, about a little under
2,000 on that.
But, again, we threw everything into supporting our tribal
health system. Everybody threw everything into working
cooperatively with the State. For the first time ever, we had
our governor request a unified command from the Secretary of
Defense, and so we had a very streamlined response working with
the Federal, and State, and FEMA, and everybody. And I really,
truly believe it was everybody working together with a good
deal of luck that we survived what we did. But we are putting
those resources to good use. We are repairing and replenishing
our health system and building back up our capabilities.
For the record, I would like my written comments to be
considered on some of the regional priorities up here. I
reiterate the need for further funding for public safety, and
bring to your attention we have over 60 of our remote rural
communities that have no on-the-ground public safety presence
at all. And in this security climate that we are dealing with
just across our border, a very aggressive Russia, and seeing
what is happening in Ukraine, and the additional national
security challenges up here, it is totally unacceptable not
have public safety and domain awareness all around our vast
land. So I really want to urge you to support increasing the
public safety and making sure it gets to where it is needed,
but also communications, supporting and expanding
communications.
Historic levels of funding have been put out into expansion
of broadband, and we just need to see that is deployed wisely.
One need that we see on that is the need for coordinating
mechanisms between tribal funding and funding that goes to the
State on that. There are also historical levels going into
State governments. We want to make sure there are no gaps, and
so a focus on setting up coordinating mechanisms of Federal,
State, tribal is really, really much needed both on broadband
as well as infrastructure spending on that. Again, we know
these are historic levels, and we don't want to waste a dollar.
We want to stretch them as far as we can, but unless we are
coordinating all together on that, the risk of things falling
through the cracks are high.
Again, in prioritizing resiliency, climate change is
hitting our communities. We see high levels of erosion. We have
multiple forums that we have had on the damages to erosion both
to our airports, and to our hospitals, and our clinics, and our
military's erosion concerns, housing, community buildings, the
erosion, the melting of the permafrost, the release of methane
gas, lots of challenges and the climate change that need to be
addressed. And, again, the resiliency and adaptation to change
is going to be critical.
Another one I want to bring to your attention is the need
on food security. We recently had 15 of our hunters that were
stranded as they didn't get the fish in their communities and
went further afield to hunt for beluga whales and seals and got
stranded because of the freeze on the rivers on that, and they
were needing to fill their home freezers and food sources for
their community. So the climate change also impacts greatly
food security and the ability for people to continue their way
of life, so I want to bring that to your attention. I also want
to encourage you to support public/private partnerships. That
is the way that we are going to make our leap forward on
economic development and economic recovery. We can't do it all
on government funding. We need to be able to reach out and
build these partnerships, both tribal partnerships with
government, but also bringing in other private sectors in that.
So with that, I want to leave you with one thought. One of
the most effective Federal models for moving Federal resources
to our communities is the compacting model. I want to urge you
to expand the legal ability for compacting to occur in other
departments, such as Department of Justice, dealing with public
safety, but also Department of Education. We have asked for a
solicitor's opinion on using the Department of Interior's
compacting authority to flow other resources into compacting
from other departments and are awaiting that. We are in the
process----
Ms. Pingree. Can I get you to wrap up? I am sorry to
interrupt.
Ms. Kitka. My final comment is urge you to support Federal-
State tribal compacting. We have just gotten an education
compacting demonstration model out of our State Senate on that,
and it will be among the first Federal-State tribal compacts.
And we really do think that there is some coordination and some
innovation that can occur in that.
So with that, thank you very much for the opportunity to
speak with you this morning.
[The statement of Ms. Kitka follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Pingree. Sure. Thank you so much for your time.
Next, we have Mr. Serrell Smokey, the president of Inter-
Tribal Council of Nevada. Please go ahead with your remarks.
Thank you.
Mr. Smokey. [Speaking native language.] My name is Serrell
Smokey. I am the chairman of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada in
California, also the president of the Inter-Tribal Council of
Nevada. Today, I am speaking on behalf of the 27 tribes in the
State of Nevada, and thank you for your time. I am going to
start off with environmental issues, funding for environmental.
Nevada is a huge mining State. Along with mining comes a
lot of environmental issues, air and water quality standards.
Our Superfund sites have been set back by decades from the
previous administration removing EPA and putting in a public
relations specialist. So now we are trying to reestablish all
work that was previously done and get back to a solid base so
we can move forward. General assistance programs, State and
tribal assistance grants funding has remained stagnant for
decades, close to 20 years now, without giving anything more
back to the tribes. They give us the bare minimum to even
maintain operations with environmental areas within our tribe.
Living in the desert, water is a rare commodity. It always
has been. Nevada has a lot of desert. With that, I am going to
bring up climate change. Whether you believe in climate change
or not, in the State of Nevada, we are seeing the serious
effects of it, mainly for the dryness, the lack of water, the
lack of snow that we get every year. Wildfires are huge. Tribal
lands have lost thousands of acres this year, more than in a
long, long time, so we are seeing the effects. Along with that
comes the loss of cultural plants, medicines, and these things
weren't only just wiped out from the fires. They were being
wiped out before that because we are not getting the weather
that we used to, and unless we take action, they are just going
to die off naturally. They will not grow back. Action needs to
be taken. Funding needs to be provided for that, for
restoration. All we have is the hopes that our future
generations will be able to know what these cultural
traditional plants and medicines were instead of them being in
history books. So we need to take action now.
I will give you a specific example. First, the Washoe
people are concerned as the pine nuts and the pine nut trees
are half wiped out by the fire, the other half drying out
because of bug infestations because we don't get the snowpacks
that Nevada used to get. Now, along with that, there is also a
program for cultural language historical preservation. Many of
the tribes in the State of Nevada are very small and very
rural, so we are spread out all across these land bases. And
when program funding comes down as competitive grants, we don't
qualify for them or we don't have the capacity to fulfill the
needs that the grant is expected to. So funding needs to be
provided to make changes in those policies so that it will also
fall under Department of Interior because that is where most of
the tribal monies usually come from.
Law enforcement, public safety, emergency services. Within
the State of Nevada, we have a huge setback, especially for
those tribes that don't have their own law enforcement or their
own court systems. We have wait times, delays of up to 45
minutes response times. That would be fires, life or death
situations, including homicides that have happened that have
taken over 40 minutes to get a response from a tribal law
enforcement officer. So there is a huge deficiency there.
Along with everybody else, within the State of Nevada, we
don't have an IHS facility. Being under the Phoenix region, the
closest IHS facility is in Phoenix, which is an average of 12
hours away from Northern Nevada tribes, which is where the
majority of the Nevada tribes are located. Behavioral health is
a huge issue affecting every community in every reservation. I
know there was a discussion even yesterday about the advanced
appropriations, mandatory appropriations, including the word
``mandatory funding.'' That all needs to be clearly defined for
tribes so that we know exactly what we are getting and so we
know what we can expect on a year-to-year basis. In 2019, we
had the longest shutdown, and we had clinics within the State
of Nevada that we are shutting down that could not service our
people.
In closing, I would just like to say that I hope these
hearings, consultations are all taken seriously. I really
appreciate the work that is all being done by the committees
and subcommittees. And I want to remind everybody that we as
tribes, we are here because of the trust responsibility of the
government. We did not choose this. We were told that this is
the route that we had to go. And as long as we are not allowed
to be true sovereign nations, as is under the definition of
trust responsibilities, then we want to uphold and make sure
that the government is doing what is best for our tribal
nations and taking everybody's comments seriously. And I look
forward to working with everybody. I look forward to future
collaborations, and I hope we can all come together and do the
right thing for native people and Indian Country.
Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Smokey follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Pingree. Thank you so much for your comments, and, yes,
we do put a very high value on your comments and your testimony
today. So thank you for participating.
Next, we are going to hear from Mr. Harold Frazier, the
chairman of the Great Plains Tribal Chairmen's Association.
Please go ahead.
Mr. Frazier. Good morning, and thank you for the
opportunity to testify before your committee. My name is Harold
Frazier, chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe as well as
the chairman of the Great Plains Tribal Chairmen's Association.
One of the things that really been a big issue for us is
roads and billions of dollars that come out for infrastructure.
However, Congress has developed a formula, and this formula
does not benefit large, land-based tribes. I will give you an
example. We have a 3.1 million-acre reservation, and we only
get $2.2 million, and there is just not enough money, so we are
constantly doing a lot of patchwork here and there. One of the
initiatives that we believe in is that Congress needs to
develop an Indian reservation road program where this funding
is just for Indian reservations that have roads, and I really
believe that. There had been a program years ago, but it has
been faded out into transportation facilities, which really
does not benefit a lot of not only the Cheyenne River Sioux
Indian Reservation, but a lot of Great Plains tribes.
Another big issue, however, that really assists us is road
maintenance funding, and right now, I am understanding that
area has been cut, so we really hope that could be restored.
Another other thing we are hoping for, and I am glad you
mentioned that President Biden is going to increase school
construction. That is something that is highly needed here on
our reservation, and we are in discussion with the BIA for a
new school and a new campus. Another impact that we want to
discuss is Head Start. Here on Cheyenne River Sioux Indian
Reservation, we have nine centers. They are scattered across
our reservation, which is over 3.1 million acres. Right now, we
get funding of $2.7 million, and that is our entire budget, and
of that, $1.7 million is in salaries. So 62 percent of our
funding is in salaries, but our Head Start teachers and
teachers' aides are severely under paid. I will give you a
couple quick examples.
Here on the Cheyenne River, a lot of teachers that work for
the BIA, they get started out at $30 an hour, and our head
Start teachers get $20 dollars an hour. And the teachers' aides
at our BIE schools here are paid between $15 and $20 an hour,
and the tribal Head Starts are only paid $9 an hour. And I
bring these up because I think it is high time that this Head
Start program is really looked at. They are the first to start
educating our babies, so I think that this needs to be one of
the high priorities.
Another thing that is really impacting our reservation and
throughout Great Plains is meth, and something that we need
help in is treatment. Right now there is no funding available
for meth treatment centers or even programs. I mean, IHS, we
have been there numerous times to try to get, if not funding,
some assistance on developing good, successful programs to get
our, you know, people off the drug and back to the way they
should be.
Another impact is drought. That is something that we are
faced with is drought, and one of the things that is the
driving force of our reservation is agriculture. But when we
talk about drought, you know, we need programs that will really
benefit native ranchers, and, you know, things get changed. A
lot of regs get changed at the State and the county levels, and
I think it is high time that this funding for agriculture is
sent directly to tribes. So that is something that we believe
in.
And I want to say, you know, thank you guys for
infrastructure dollars. However, very disappointed when it
comes to the infrastructure. A lot of trust responsibilities of
the government was left out. I will give you a quick example.
There was no big dollars, no dollars I seen, for law
enforcement, for education, and for roads. A lot of it was to
close all mines and things like that, and we kind of looked at
that infrastructure bill was that it appeared to be that the
government was paying and cleaning up old debts instead of
really helping us progress, because IHS was fortunate. They
received billions of dollars for water and sewer
infrastructure. But one of the things that really is not very
helpful is that we need to change some language so that these
funds can be used for development. Right now we are being told
that these monies are only for existing systems that are not
deficient anymore. So it really stunts our development and the
growth of a lot of our tribes.
So, again, I want to say thank you for allowing me to
testify, and I wish you guys all good day, unless there are any
questions.
[The statement of Mr. Frazier follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Pingree. Thank you so much. Well, we will look forward
to having a conversation with you, and thank you for your
remarks.
So last we have Mr. Melvin Sheldon, who is the First Vice
President of Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians. Thank you
so much for being with us here today.
Mr. Sheldon. Good morning, or, I should say, good afternoon
to all of you. Chairwoman Pingree, Ranking Member Joyce, and
members of the House Interior Environment and Related Agencies
Subcommittee, thank you, thank you [Speaking native language]
for this to opportunity to testify, especially on the upcoming
fiscal year budget.
Mel Sheldon. I have served on the Tulalip Tribes for going
on my 23rd year in council, and I have been on ATNI for 12
years, and currently the Pacific Northwest delegate at NCAI.
ATNI has been run since 1953, and we represent 57 tribal
governments from Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Southeast Alaska,
Northern California, Western Montana, and Nevada. And probably
today's testimony will be more of a higher view, trying to
bring out all of our issues that may be in common with all of
our tribes that we work with. So also, I would like to say
thank you to the tribal leaders, chairs, and delegates who
spoke before me so eloquent in sharing the important issues
that they represent in their geographic areas. My hand is up to
all of you.
First of all, I would like to thank you again for this last
year, 2022, the amount of money that was in in the Consolidated
Appropriations Act. This increased funding made a big
difference for a lot of tribes. Of course, you know, we can
always use more money as our populations are growing, the
challenges are growing, things like that. Also, thanking the
President for this upcoming 2023 $4.5 billion potential and for
you all's time to decide to and hear from them where it might
be best put, the money for our needs.
So please stop at me at 4:45 into it. I tested this. This
was 9-minutes long what they wrote for me.
Okay. So strengthening tribal communities. Funding under
the age of tribal government is vital to a ATNI's member
tribes. Tribes have an ability to utilize these funds through
Indian self-determination contracts to focus the funding to
provide numerous tribal government services and functions. This
funding provides tribal governments with necessary funds for
the different programs and will ensure, under proper care, the
stability and operations of tribal governments. However,
funding is underfunded, leaving tribes without the additional
tools necessary to offer core tribal government services. ATNI
is requesting the subcommittee increase aid to tribal
governments by $25 million for a total funding of $53.5
million.
One of the issues that is so important to all of us is
ECWA, Indian Child Welfare Act. This is so important for all of
our communities, which was enacted and established. ECWA also
is about custody of our kids and also a competitive grant
funding for tribes to operate child welfare services. This
grant funding is routinely used to ensure proper placement of
native children in foster or adoptive homes, sustained tribal
services to intervene in court proceedings, strengthen tribal
families, and increase native foster homes. So funding is so
important for ECWA, and we strongly urge putting $17 million
into ECWA programming and for the total amount of $36 million.
As mentioned earlier, natural resources management
challenges all of the tribes whether they are a land-based
tribe or a small tribal base, like Tulalip. We are only 22,000
acres, but management of our resources--the timber, the water,
the rivers--are so important to all of the tribes that ATNI
represents. Myself being a fisherman for or most of my life,
the salmon is dwindling, disappearing. How can we ensure that
the salmon survives along with the orca whale out here in the
Northwest, symbols of our culture, of who we are? And any type
of monies that goes for natural resources management will help
out greatly certainly.
And then when you think about the poorest, our land
commissioner has a very interesting program for carbon funding,
the land commissioner, Hilary Franz, and she has got a great
program. I sure hope it succeeds in carbonization of our
forests.
Ms. Pingree. I am going to get you wrap up if you can.
Mr. Sheldon. Okay, we are there. Okay. Good. You have my
written comments submitted for the record. Also, being a
Vietnam veteran, I want to urge funding for all Native-American
veterans across the country. Currently, I am 100-percent
disability as Agent-Orange-related cancer. It will be a fight
until the end for me, but for all veterans, if you all see any
money to go for our veterans, I raise my hands to you and say
[Speaking native language.] Thank you, thank you, thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Sheldon follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Pingree. Thank you so much for your testimony, and we
wish you all the best with your health challenges. I just came
off of a VA subcommittee myself, and we want to do everything
we can to support our veterans, so thank you for your service
and for mentioning that.
Mr. Sheldon. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. Okay. Now we will go into the question
portion, and I will begin with a couple of questions for Chief
Francis.
In your written testimony, you are supporting increased
funding for the tribal courts. I know that is an important
issue, too. The fiscal year 2023 President's budget includes an
additional $9.5 million over the 2022-enacted level for tribal
courts. Can you describe some of the challenges that the USET
tribes face with insufficient tribal court funding, and just
tell me if all of the USET tribes receive some tribal court
funding?
Mr. Francis. Thank you, Congresswoman, for the question.
You know, the institutions of tribal courts within sovereign
governments are extremely important. USET, like all regions,
has a tremendous amount of diversity amongst its memberships,
from law-trained courts like ours at Penobscot, to various
types of traditional base courts, et cetera. But ultimately,
the funding for tribal courts is so extremely important when
you are dealing with, you know, holistic, wraparound approaches
in various ways within the court. I use the Violence Against
Women Act provisions, for example, that were so very important
that this Congress passed recently. Enhancing those
jurisdictional capabilities requires funding and an opportunity
to really strengthen those services, to provide real
opportunities to address real conditions.
So the funding of tribal courts is not simply about funding
a program. It is really about an important institution within
any sovereign government that creates not only justice for our
people in a culturally-sensitive kind of way with, you know,
restorative justice programs and a whole host of other things,
but it is extremely important for the success of any government
to have a competent, enhanced judicial system. So we appreciate
the enhancements to the funding for tribal courts, and we look
forward. And, again, thank you and our delegation for
supporting the main tribes being included in the VAWA
reauthorization, and recognizing the importance of that
institution to the success of our communities.
Ms. Pingree. Well, thank you for that, and, as you know, we
are very supportive of the bill. It means we wouldn't have to
specifically include the main tribes into every piece of
legislation, but I am glad we were able to do that.
Ms. Kitka, you mentioned a little bit about the real
challenges that tribes in Alaska are facing because of climate
change, and I know some of the tribes have already had to begin
relocating or thinking about that. I have just a couple of
minutes, but could you just elaborate some more on the
challenges that tribes are facing, and particularly around
relocation?
Ms. Kitka. Madam Chair and members of the committee, thank
you for the question. Some of the challenges the tribes have is
accessing resources to move buildings. We have been doing some
really creative things to help the tribes on that. For example,
moving health clinics, we have a health clinic model. We have a
movable model, so we have been looking at other ones. What
would be really helpful for some of our communities is support
behind project managers that can piece together different
resources in order to meet the high costs on that. We have seen
success in one community, in particular, that continually got
denied resources for their relocation, but once they got a
project manager that was able to communicate in the same way
with the different funding agencies, they were able to
streamline; the ability to use surplus heavy equipment both for
stand and defend operations for people who don't want to
relocate. They just want to build up barriers in order to
protect themselves from the storms.
The ultimate problem is the high cost in relocation and
getting suitable land close by to do it, and then it is the
physical relocation on that. We have seven communities that are
one major storm away from being wiped out, and so it is real.
People are being really flexible trying to figure out the best
ways to do that. I think that we have good ideas, but, like I
said, the project managers to support piecing the things
together and appoint Federal agencies that are in charge.
During the Obama Administration, they designated the Denali
Commission as the Federal point agency for village relocation.
They a relocation program that they operate that is federally
funded. Plussing up their resources on that would go a long
way. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. Yeah, thank you so much for your response. I
hope we can be helpful in that huge challenge you are facing.
Now I am going to recognize Mr. Joyce for any questions he
may have.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to talk to
President Smokey. The question I have, sir, is your testimony
mentioned the growth of cannabis dispensaries, and I want to
ask you about the law enforcement problems that have been in
the news. In particular, last year, BIA law enforcement
officers raided a home on the land of the Picuris Pueblo in New
Mexico, and they seized a man's legal supply of medical
cannabis, despite the fact that the Pueblo passed laws
legalizing its use. This discriminatory double standard
concerns me greatly. I am wondering if tribes in Nevada have
similar concerns and what we can do to keep the BIA focused on
more pressing public safety and justice needs, including
missing and murdered indigenous women and human trafficking.
Mr. Smokey. Yes, thank you. I have not received any word of
that type of incidents happening with the tribes that do have
legal cannabis and dispensaries in Nevada, but it might be hard
to do when you only have two BIA officers for the whole entire
State. And thank you for bringing that up because that is
actually where the real issue lies is the lack of law
enforcement within the BIA to be able to patrol tribal lands
for all the tribes in the State of Nevada. But that type of
incident specifically, I have not been aware of. Every tribe
has been doing fairly well.
Mr. Joyce. Well, I can't overemphasize the importance of
tribal sovereignty. Tribes existed before the States, and
tribes have just as much of a right to continue to govern
themselves. It is unconscionable the Federal Government would
take a hands-off approach with the States but enforce its will
upon the tribes. It is discriminatory, it is not right, and it
needs to stop.
Your testimony, President Smokey, discusses the importance
of the Environmental Protection Agency's Indian Environmental
General Assistance Program, known as GAP. As you may be aware,
yesterday EPA announced proposed changes to GAP program
guidance and allocations. Can you take a moment to describe the
impact GAP has had on tribes and program change you might
suggest, that could help improve the program's ability to
assist tribes in making environmental decisions to better
protect their air, land, and waters?
Mr. Smokey. Yes. So the GAP Program has actually been
really good to tribes, but as I mentioned even earlier in
testimony, it provides the bare minimum. Tribes are forced to
really compete with other tribes and other organizations for
outside funding in order to really meet the needs that they
have. Tribes do what they can. We are going to do what we can
for our people and for our land with whatever we get. But that
is what our request was, was for more funding towards those
programs because when they remain stagnant, then we don't have
any additional support, and we are stuck with the programs that
we have, and we are not able to move forward while everything
else is happening around us. As we talked about the issues
with, you know, the different changes in climate, we can't
address those without additional funding.
Mr. Joyce. I realize others are on, Madam Chair, so I will
yield back, and if there is a second round, I will have some
time.
Ms. Pingree. All right. We will absolutely have more time.
So it looks like, Mr. Kilmer, we can take you next. We were
looking at the order, but please go next.
Mr. Kilmer. Thanks, Madam Chair, and thanks for holding
this important hearing. First, I want to just thank all the
witnesses for coming and providing such powerful testimony. I
have the honor of representing 12 tribes in Washington 6th
Congressional District. I am honored to have First Vice
President Sheldon from ATNI with us today.
As you know, Congress has taken, I think, some much-needed
and long-needed steps to invest in historically-underfunded and
under-resourced minority-serving institutions in recent years.
These institutions provide access to education and
opportunities to traditionally underrepresented and low-income
students. I have heard, though, from tribal members about their
desire to see additional investments in our tribal colleges and
universities, too. Most of our tribal colleges, like the
Northwest Indian College in Washington State, which serves over
1,200 students annually from more than 75 different tribes, do
not have endowments to support their educational site and their
goals. Endowments help institutions admit students who struggle
to afford the cost of attendance, and conduct research, and
access new technology, and expand and offer academic programs
and more.
So my question is for Vice President Sheldon or any of
other witnesses who wish. Could you just comment on how
additional funding under the Department of Interior's BIE
endowment could help tribal colleges and universities carry out
their missions?
Mr. Sheldon. Thank you, Congressman. Good to see you, and
thank you for your kind words. You know, I am well aware of
Northwest Indian College, and they are doing a great job, and
getting our kids to attend higher education is a challenge
because the funding issues. And, you know, a lot of times, too,
kids are not ready to go to a college that has 40,000 kids
there. And by staying more local, it offers them the time to
familiarize themselves with academia, with the time to
socialize with other tribal kids and build that foundation so
they can be a success in the future, that they will have the
tools as they put more and more tools in.
And certainly, like Northwest Indian College and other
colleges in Montana that are directed towards Native-American
kids, funding is a challenge. Not all tribes have the monies to
send their kids to school. There are not scholarships
everywhere, so if a kid doesn't have the grades, the athletic
prowess to get a tuition paid that way, they are kind of out of
luck. So the type of funding that we could make available,
whether it be through Federal funding or programs, would be
greatly appreciated. I worked my way through college 20 to 40
hours a week, and that had its own way of educating me as well
as getting my degree at the University of Washington. So, you
know, I think anything we can do greatly helps. Thank you for
the question.
Mr. Kilmer. You bet. Let me direct one more to you. Many
tribes in the Northwest and elsewhere have tribal historic
preservation officers, or THPOS, who are responsible for
consulting with Federal agencies and others to protect, and
preserve, and revitalize places of significant historical and
cultural importance to tribes. The number of tribes, though,
with historic preservation officers has steadily increased over
the last 20 years as well as requests for tribal consultations.
So my question to you, Vice President Sheldon or any other
witnesses, if you wish, can you expand on the importance of
tribal historic preservation officers just when it comes to
protecting important cultural and historic sites, and comment
on how the BIA could ensure appropriate tribal consultation.
Mr. Smokey. Thank you very much. Yes, very, very important,
that preservation officer. As we work with different agencies,
whether it be a city, county, and/or State, the opportunity to
share the cultural richness that they may not be aware of is so
important. And we are seeing more and more different groups
sitting across the table than before, but we still got a long
ways to go. For an example, Langley, a small town, they took
down their story poles because they were not made by Native-
American artists, in respect to tribes. And so we will meet
with their city council, thank them, and then hopefully we will
donate a tribal story pole for them in a good way. So a lot of
good things happening in that respect.
It does make a difference having a preservation officer
sharing the culture of who we are and how it how it affects the
non-tribals out there. A lot of times, non-tribal people don't
know the history of us, our time living on the land since time
immemorial, and so a good education and sharing is always
important.
Mr. Kilmer. Thanks so much. Thank you, my friend, and thank
you, Madam Chair, and I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much, Mr. Kilmer.
Mr. Stewart, do you have questions you would like to ask?
Mr. Stewart. Yeah, Madam Chair. Thanks for holding the
hearing. And to all the witnesses, thanks for not only being
here today, but for representing your constituents and your
tribal interests, and it is very important that you have this
interaction with Congress. I mean, if we don't have a chance to
talk to you, we are unaware sometimes of the challenges that
you face. Maybe we are unaware of the intensity of the
challenges, and this is valuable for us to have this
interaction with you. So thank you for doing that.
I am going to be very brief. It is a question that is
particularly interesting to my, or I should say, important to
my district and the tribes that I represent in Utah. But I am
wondering if it may be broader than that as well, and
particularly, Ms. Kitka, you may have some influence or some
background in this. And that is, in these very remote areas
where many of the Native Americans live now on tribal lands and
other remote parts of the West, emergency air evacuation is a
real challenge, and, in fact, it has gotten, in some places, to
be nearly impossible. And some of these families live in areas
that are, you know, a great distance from not only hospitals,
but infrastructure, transportation, just a road that is
drivable, say, in the winter or after heavy rains, for example.
And the only way to evacuate people in a medical emergency is
with air evacuation assets that are diminishing. And we had a
real problem in Southern Utah, for example, where the primary
contractor there just wasn't able to provide the service
because they weren't being reimbursed for it, and it is an
issue that we have been trying to work with for more than 2
years now.
I am wondering are any of you aware of other places that
have the same challenge? And, again, I imagine Alaska would be
a good example because of the remoteness of some of the tribal
lands in Alaska. And if you have any insights that would maybe
help us as we try to fix this problem.
Ms. Kitka. Madam Chair, would you like me to respond
through the chair? Yes. No, those challenges, many of those
challenges were exacerbated with COVID, too, trying to Medevac
critically-ill people from really remote communities that had
COVID on that. You had a lot of carriers that weren't able to
transport people, so that remains for Alaska, our remote
communities, a vital transportation station. In most of our
communities, we are not connected to a road system, and air
traffic, both in healthcare, getting our hospitals a feeder
system. So we only have a few hospitals in the State that feeds
from clinics to regional clinics, to a regional hospital, to
our main hospital on that. And air transport, both in the
medical field, but for any kind of participation, is extremely
vital.
I know that there are programs that support it, and they
could use additional resources, but especially looking at
impacts of COVID and how that put carriers out of business, or
they lost a lot of money during this pandemic. The economic
recovery, they need to be shored up.
Mr. Stewart. So, Julie, let me pursue that just a little
bit. I understand the challenges of COVID, and, again, those
other things we went through in the last couple years. But
putting that aside, did you see the same problem where you have
companies that would be willing and could provide this
emergency medical transportation, but it is nearly impossible
for them, again, because they are just not being reimbursed at
a fair rate. Have you seen that in Alaska, or is that not the
same problem there?
Ms. Kitka. I would have to contact our Alaska Tribal Health
Consortium to get you a written answer on that, and I would be
glad to do that to give you a few examples on that.
Mr. Stewart. Yeah.
Ms. Kitka. I am sure that we have had that situation, but I
can't give you the specifics, but I will get it to you in
writing.
Mr. Stewart. Okay. I appreciate that. And so, Julie, if you
would follow up because if you are having a problem there, it
would help us as we are trying to fix this broadly, or if any
other of the tribal leaders are aware of that, if you would
reach out to my office and let us know. Again, we want to
represent all of you, and if many of you are experiencing the
same challenge, again, if we know about that, it helps us to
address it. So thank you.
And with that, Madam Chair, I will yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you, Mr. Stewart.
We are going to just stick with Nevada here. I think Mrs.
Lee.
Mrs. Lee. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I want to thank
Ranking Member Joyce as well as all of today's witnesses for
being here. President Smokey, it is truly an honor to have you
here representing the Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada. Also,
thank you for your service to our country both as a member of
the Army and the National Guard. You are a true public servant
in every sense of the word, and I give you a warm Nevada
welcome.
I want to ask you a couple questions about issues that are
particularly important to us in Nevada and throughout the West,
and you did touch on it in your testimony: the alarming study
that we just found that basically says that the U.S. West is
experiencing the worst drought in 12 centuries. Secretary of
Interior Haaland has emphasized, and I quote, ``In this time of
climate change bearing down on us, indigenous knowledge about
our natural world will be extremely valuable and important to
all of us.'' She added that, ``Tribes have been on this
continent for millennia, for tens of thousands of years, and
they know how to take care of our land.''
President Smokey, you touched on how the drought is
impacting your communities in Nevada and across the West. Could
you talk about some lessons that the Federal Government could
draw on for how these communities have been responding both to
the current crisis and climate change at large?
Mr. Smokey. Yes, thank you. So I will give you an example
of what we are doing here at the Washoe Tribe around Lake
Tahoe. We have groups of tribal members going around actually
giving speeches and presenting on how the Washoe Tribe used to
use controlled burns around Lake Tahoe area, knowing that it
would grow back for three or four generations to come to
sustain our people. So adding that traditional culture and
history to modern-day practices is what we are trying to do
because we have been here for a long time. Our people haven't
just made it this far for no reason. You know, we adapt. We
know the area. We know what needs to be done, and we have that
through our history.
So, of course, you have to take into account everything,
modern day, what is going on, but when I go back to the
wildfires, this was the issue in the first place was all of
these old practices were not being done. And every time there
is a fire, we want to just put it right out right away because
there are houses, residentials, and everything like that, which
makes it difficult. But at the same time, we could still be
using the old practices to at least mitigate, you know, things
that have happened, especially recently in Nevada with the
Tamarack fire. It was huge, especially impacting the Washoe
Tribe, but there are others all around the State as well, and
they are they are suffering from the same issues.
We are all suffering from the same issues: lack of water,
drying out, trees dying, cultural foods, medicines. You know,
all those things are happening all across, and each tribe has
their specific practices that they have used for their specific
areas. So it would really be helpful if the government would
listen and government agencies would listen to those tribes for
their specific areas to understand how they have maintained
those areas since their existence.
Ms. Kitka. Madam Chair could I address the drought?
Mrs. Lee. Yes.
Ms. Kitka. Alaska had the longest duration of drought that
lasted for 79 weeks beginning in 2018, so the idea of drought
being only in one part of the country, the climate change is
also impacting us here in Alaska. So further attention to
dealing with that, we really support that. Thank you.
Mrs. Lee. Thank you. Madam Chair, I am going to run out of
time before I can ask my second question, so I will yield.
Thank you.
Mrs. Lee. Thanks very much. Chair McCollum, do you have
some questions you would like to ask?
Ms. McCollum. Yes. First off, thank you, Chair Pingree, for
holding this hearing today, and I want to thank all the leaders
from the tribal organizations for sharing their testimony for
what we can do to work together in a better partnership for
Indian Country. I also want to add for the record my thanks to
all national tribal organizations who testified yesterday. I
was chairing another appropriations hearing at the same time. I
was unable to hear the testimony in person, but Rebecca Taylor
from my office, of course, was on that call.
One of the topics that has come up a lot, it has to do with
the President's budget, and it has been getting a lot of
attention from tribal leaders, and it is a proposal to move
certain accounts to mandatory spending. Contract support costs,
payments for tribal leases are proposed to be moved to become
mandatory for the Indian Health Service, the Bureau of Indian
Affairs, and the Bureau of Indian Education. As for the IHS,
the funding is proposed to shift from mandatory, and that would
exempt it from any sequestration in the future, and we need to
also protect it for any possible government shutdown in the
future.
So this is a topic that many of us on this subcommittee
have been discussing with tribal leaders, such as yourself, for
a long time, and I am so excited to see the Biden
administration join in on the conversation. There is no
question that our treaty trust responsibilities are not getting
the investments that they are obligated to get to through the
discretionary appropriations process. And that is not due to
lack of effort for those of us on this committee and for those
of us on both sides of the aisle who work with Indian Country.
But I would like to take a second just to focus in on an
issue that Chief Francis raised, something I have been working
on for 20 years since I got here, and that is the lack of
detail from the Office of Budget and Management and the funding
that reaches Indian Country. Now, OMB, under its new leadership
under Ms. Young, I know understands this problem and will be a
person that we can work with. And as appropriators, we have
tried to do our level best to increase funding for Indian
Country, but it is a challenge for even us here, as close to
OMB as we are, to really watch the investments across the
various subcommittees. Ms. Pingree and I serve on the
Agricultural Subcommittee together, and I know we do our level
best to make sure, where we can help Indian Country in that
committee, we do.
So, Chief Francis, could you please, you know, take 2
minutes plus and tell us what a difference it would make if
OMB, you know, had an account so that, annually, tribes could
see what is really being distributed to all of Indian Country.
And I am going to hold up a piece of paper and one spreadsheet.
Mr. Francis. Thank you, Congresswoman, for the question,
and I appreciate seeing you today. This is a very important
subject. A tribal office within OMB would be extremely
important to deal with this level of detail that should be
accounted for. You know, the OMB crosscut, as you know,
mentions well over $20 billion of resources that are available
to Indian Country. We in Indian Country really feel like that
is a grossly inflated number. We believe that that includes a
lot of money going to States that many times tribes wouldn't
have the internal resources or even the understanding that
those funds may be available within State governments that
tribes could access. It is also important for Congress to be
able to understand what the true, real starting line is here in
terms of the unmet need within Indian Country and within tribal
communities.
So getting that tribal office in a very dedicated way to
detail, not what is potentially available, but what is actually
in reach in Indian Country when we talk about these issues of
unmet needs. And I appreciate you raising, you know, the
mandatory spending. That is an extremely important issue as
well, and they are all tied together in terms of really trying
to understand how to meet the trust and treaty obligations to
Indian tribes. So when we talk about the historic nature of
this budget, for example, and I know we are preaching to the
choir here, but when we talk about the historic nature of this
budget, it is not really about a numbers-driven thing. It is
really about how do we create a new paradigm that really says
Indian Country is not only important. The nation-to-Nation
relationship is not only important. We mandatorily now have to
seek solutions to these issues that face Indian Country.
And I think an office at OMB that would detail these
reports, not only for Indian country, but for the success of
Congress in being able to truly measure how we are addressing
the disparities in funding in Indian Country.
Ms. McCollum. Thank you. [Speaking native language] to all
the testifiers, and thank you, Chair Pingree, for holding this
important hearing.
Ms. Pingree. Sure. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Joyce, did you have some other questions you would like
to ask?
Mr. Joyce. No thank you, Madam Chair. They have been
addressed through some of the other fine questions that have
been asked by our other members.
Ms. Pingree. Great. Yeah, people have been asking some
wonderful questions. I will ask one more, and I think maybe
Representative Lee will come back on.
Let's see. I this is for Mr. Frazier, yeah. Mr. Frazier,
are you available to answer a question?
Mr. Frazier. Yes.
Ms. Pingree. Great. Great. I didn't see you. Okay. Great.
So the committee provides funding to the Bureau of Indian
education for tribal education departments so tribes can have
more control of the curricula for native students. This seems
important. In addition, the committee provides native language
immersion funds to BIE and BIA for students who do not attend
BIE-funded schools. So do you find that funding for tribal
education departments in native language immersion at BIE and
BIA is helping to incorporate native language and culture into
elementary and secondary curricular, but do you have any ideas
about how to increase or improve the use of these funds? I just
want to make sure they are really getting where they need to be
and are being effective.
Mr. Frazier. Yeah, thank you. I think one of the things
that has really been a challenge for a lot of our Lakota
language teachers is to be treated equal as a teacher that
teaches math, et cetera. What we have locally at our BIE and
our contract schools is many a times, particular with a BIE
school, they are, you know, definitely paid a lot less. There
is not enough time in the day to teach our language and
culture. We feel that there needs to be more staffing, you
know, because what I see is, like, one person, they are forced
to teach many areas, such as the culture, the language, the
music, and things like that, versus I think there should be
teachers for each area, you know, for fine arts, et cetera.
And when you talk about curriculum, I feel it is high time
the Bureau of Indian Affairs comes up with standards where we
could teach our children. Right now they don't have any
standards, so we rely on the State wherever we are located, and
here in South Dakota, that is something in the area of social
studies. Our governor was trying to eliminate a lot of Native-
American culture and teachings in the State curriculum, so it
is ongoing battle with that effort.
But I really think that if we could get more bodies on the
ground in particular different areas, I think we will be a lot
more effective. And earlier, I heard a comment, and it is
unfortunate that through COVID, we lost a lot of our elders,
too many of our elders with the language and the culture,
forever gone. But I thank you for that question.
Ms. Pingree. Sure. Thank you. I don't know if any of our
other members have questions. I know it is a busy day, and we
are getting ready to take votes, so a lot of people have had to
leave our Zoom. So unless I see any other hands out there,
which I don't, I am just going to thank all of you. I really
appreciate the time you took, and not only did you all do a
great job with the conversation today, but your written
testimony is just full of a lot of rich information that I
think will be really important as we put together the fiscal
year 2023 appropriations bill. So feel free to stay in touch.
If I don't see any other members raising their hands, I am
going to declare this committee adjourned, and thank you very
much for your time.
Thursday, April 7, 2022.
MEMBERS' DAY
Ms. Pingree. Good morning, and welcome to the members of
Congress witness hearing for the Interior and Environment
Appropriations Subcommittee.
So today we will hear from members of Congress on pressing
issues, including air quality and monitoring, forest
management, remediation of abandoned mine lands, and the
importance of supporting insular areas. The members testifying
today represent the interests of both Republicans and Democrats
from cities and rural areas all over the country facing a broad
range of challenges.
We have 4 members testifying today. Each witness will have
5 minutes to present testimony, and we will be using a timer to
keep us on track. After we hear each testimony, members will
have an opportunity to ask questions.
With that, I would like to turn to my friend, Mr. Joyce, to
see if he has opening remarks.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you for yielding, Chair Pingree, and I
promise to be brief, and thank you for holding today's hearing
to receive testimony from our colleagues. I look forward to
hearing more about the projects and programs in the Interior
and Environment bill that are important to each of your
districts and to communities across our country. Your input
will be critical as we work to fund the agencies under this
subcommittee's jurisdiction including: the Department of the
Interior, the EPA, the U.S. Forest Service, the Indian Health
Service, and several others. Under Chair Pingree's leadership,
we will work to accommodate these priorities as best we can in
the fiscal year 2023 appropriations process as it moves
forward.
Thank you again to each of our colleagues for taking the
time out of your busy schedules to speak with us today. We
thank you for bringing your ideas to our attention. Thank you,
Chair Pingree. I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you. Well, we will go ahead and begin,
and, Representative Griffith, would you like to start us off?
----------
Thursday, April 7, 2022.
HON. H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF
VIRGINIA
Mr. Griffith. Yes, thank you very much. I appreciate it,
and you have got all my materials. But I want to thank you,
Chairwoman Pingree and Ranking Member Joyce, for what you have
done in the Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization, now
known as the AMLER Program. It used to be known as the AML
Pilot Project. It started off with 3 States, and then we were
able to get three additional States added, including Virginia.
In my little corner of Virginia that has coal mines and a
lot of abandoned coal mine areas that date back decades, this
program has brought new hope to a lot of communities. We have
taken down high walls to create industrial development areas.
We have cleaned up a coal finds pit. That is where the coal was
too small, and they just dumped it into a lagoon for decades.
That is just about cleaned up. That will become an economic
development site of about 200 acres with rail. All this stuff,
it has got rail, it has got electric, it has got natural gas,
it has got water, and it is going to be a really great
opportunity for the community to take an area that was just a
blight.
We have done some ecotourism. We have got a solar farm. We
have helped close off portals for the ecotourism stuff. It is
just doing some amazing things. And so I just wanted to
basically say thank you all for what has already been done, and
to let you know there is still a lot to be done because for
over 100 years, mining was done before we got the modern laws
that changed some of the rules. And there are still a lot of
mine portals, and some high walls, and some other things that
we can deal with, and then convert it into things that can be
economic development. The program applies to all, but I can
only speak to my district. It allows us an opportunity to at
least begin the process to change our economic fortunes, which,
as you all know, have not been good over the last couple of
decades with the diminution in coal production.
With that being said, again, I appreciate it. I am happy to
answer any questions, and I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Great. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate
your taking the time to let us know how beneficial that program
has been and how it has really impacted you and your
constituents, so that is wonderful to hear. And kudos to your
own district for taking advantage of those opportunities. It
just seems like a great way to reclaim abandoned mines, so your
firsthand knowledge of that, I think, is really helpful to us.
Mr. Joyce, anything you want to mention?
Mr. Joyce. No, thank you.
Ms. Pingree. Great. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate
you taking the time to fill us in, and we will look forward to
working with you on that program in the future.
[The prepared statement follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Representative Schrier, are you on with us? Do you want
to----
Ms. Schrier. I sure am.
Ms. Pingree. Great. We would love to hear from you. Thank
you so much.
----------
Thursday, April 7, 2022.
HON. KIM SCHRIER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF
WASHINGTON
Ms. Schrier. Excellent. Well, thank you, Chairwoman Pingree
and Ranking Member Joyce, and it is great to see you, Mr.
Griffith. I am here today to discuss a few issues of great
importance to me and my district, specifically funding for
State and Volunteer Fire Assistance, the Legacy Roads and
Trails Program, and the Collaborative Forest Landscape
Restoration Program.
The first program I want to speak about is the State and
Volunteer Fire Capacity Programs, previously known as the State
Volunteer Fire Assistance Programs. Wildfires across my
district and the country have become bigger and more intense in
recent years. In fact, in 2021, roughly 59,000 wildland fires
burned more than 7 million acres and resulted in more than $4.4
dollars in State and Federal suppression expenditures. These
programs are essential for keeping communities in my district
and across the country safe. The State Fire Capacity Program
helps State and local fire departments respond to wildlife and
fires and conduct land management activities that mitigate fire
risk on non-Federal lands. It funds training for State and
local responders, who are often the first to arrive at a
wildland fire, as well as equip them with the tools they need
to put wildland fires out efficiently and safely.
The Volunteer Fire Capacity Program provides support to
volunteer fire departments, protecting communities with
populations of 10,000 or fewer residents. Fire departments
protecting these smaller communities often lack the necessary
resources and rely on more volunteer staffing compared to
departments protecting communities with larger populations. So
increasing funding and capacity for volunteer fire departments
is paramount because they are the first responders to more than
80 percent of wildland fires, whether on State, Federal, or
private lands. I am leading a bipartisan letter on this program
with Congressman Mike Bost and respectfully ask the committee
to fund the State Fire Capacity Program at $79 million and the
Volunteer Fire Capacity Program at $21 million for fiscal year
2023.
Next, I would like to speak about a program that is near
and dear to my heart called the Legacy Roads and Trails
Program. And this program leverages public and private funding
to address water quality issues and access for threatened and
endangered species, like Chinook salmon, bull trout, and
steelhead. It was created in 2008 because the general Forest
Service road maintenance budget was unable to address the sheer
volume of blocked culverts, landslides, and washouts which were
impacting water quality and access for threatened and
endangered species. The need for funding remains great today.
The Forest Service has identified a backlog of over $3.5
billion in deferred maintenance for over 370,000 miles of
roads, hundreds of culvert projects, and over $600 million for
priority watershed restoration.
I also want to comment on some troubling information that I
heard recently that a significant portion of the funding for
Legacy Roads and Trails may be redirected to wildfire-related
work. And let me be clear: as you just heard, you will not find
a bigger champion for wildfire funding than me, but it is
critical that funding for this program, which addresses
critical clean water and aquatic habitat work, is protected.
The language I have pushed for clearly outlines that Legacy
Roads and Trails' purpose is to protect or improve water
quality and drinking water and restore habitat for threatened
or endangered species. Few programs deliver the recreational,
environmental, and economic benefits as this program, and I
respectfully request $100 million for this program in 2023.
Finally, and I can't see my time, I want to speak about the
Forest Service's Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration
Program, which funds science-based ecosystem restoration of
priority forest landscapes, particularly in Western fire-prone
States, like my home State. It leverages national, local, and
private resources to fund these community-based forest
management programs, and these programs also support rural
communities. My district contains many areas identified most at
risk for catastrophic wildfire, and this program is incredibly
important. I urge you to support this vital program by
providing full funding for CFLRP in fiscal year 2023.
And I sincerely thank you for this opportunity and ask for
that support. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. Yeah, thank you so much for your thoughts and
your remarks, and for the brilliance of doing that in exactly 5
minutes without seeing the clock. You are exactly on time, so
clearly you have been in Congress long enough to master the 5-
minute set of remarks.
So just a couple things I wanted to say. Well, I know from
having the privilege of serving with you on the Agriculture
Committee and both of us coming from States that are heavily
forested, we share a lot of the same concerns, and so I
appreciate your speaking up about the things that you are
observing. And I was really pleased to see that on the
Collaborative Forest Landscape Restorations Program, we were
able to secure a significant investment in that and, I think,
actually doubled the funding for that program. So we are going
to continue to focus on that, and it is really helpful to hear
your sense of how important it is.
I just wanted to mention one thing on the Legacy Roads and
Trails and the Cooperative Fire Assistance programs. I think it
is helpful to hear kind of what you are hearing out there. You
know, when the committee did what we called the fire fix, the
aim was to reduce fire spendings' impact on the rest of the
Forest Service budget because, as you mentioned, this is just a
growing problem, and it often eats up a lot of the Forest
Service budget. So we also in 2022 reinstated the Legacy Roads
and Trails line item as a separate program aligned to better
assist tracking of those dollars.
So we can talk further about this, but I would love to hear
more about, you know, sort of your insights into how that money
is not getting to where it needs to be because we consider it
an important program. We are trying to make sure that the money
goes where it needs to go. It is there for a critical purpose,
and we fully understand that it is very hard to fund wildfires
at the rate that it is going now. But as I said, that was what
sort of the quote ``fire fix'' was all about. So we can follow
up with you on that, but I really appreciate you bringing it to
our attention, and really thank you for taking the time to come
before our committee today.
Mr. Joyce, do you want to add anything else or are you
good?
Ms. Pingree. Okay. Good. All right. Well, we will keep
moving on. Thank you, Representative Schrier.
[The prepared statement follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Pingree. Representative Garcia, thank you so much for
being with us today. We would love to hear from you if you are
able.
----------
Thursday, April 7, 2022.
HON. SYLVIA R. GARCIA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF
TEXAS
Ms. Garcia. Yes, ma'am. Well, first of all, thank you so
much, Chairwoman Pingree, for inviting me today, and Ranking
Member Joyce, I hope you are comfortable over there. And to any
of the committee members that may be listening in, I am pleased
to share with you my fiscal year 2023 appropriations
priorities.
I am proud to represent the Texas 29th Congressional
District that includes part of Houston, South Houston,
Pasadena, Jacinto City, and Galena Park. Most of those cities
are in and around the Houston Ship Channel in our industrial
complex. My district is about 78 percent Latino. The average
household income is about $48,000, and about one-third of my
district is uninsured. In fact, just last week when the ACS
Survey was announced, it was also announced that my district
now has the highest number of people that are uninsured of any
district in the country, so it is an area where we are really
very concerned about health risks.
So for my district, environmental issues are not just
health issues but also social justice issues. There are racial
justice issues. In the last decade, a slew of chemical and
natural disasters have impacted the air quality of the Greater
Houston Region. Additionally, the region has struggled with air
quality control and air monitoring due high amounts of ozone
pollution and smog. For example, air monitors uncovered
unusually high levels of a cancer-causing chemical,
formaldehyde, in Houston in 2021. My community has taken great
strides to monitor air quality more closely and more equitably
through local communities, State, Federal, and private
initiatives.
I remember well when I was county commissioner that we
worked real hard to try to get more monitoring in and around
our Houston Ship Channel, but that is not enough. Increasing
the number of air monitors is one step in the right direction
so that we can ensure that communities of color are not
disproportionately impacted by poor air quality, and we can
hold bad actors accountable, but certainly more needs to be
done.
That is why I am proud to champion a request this year,
among my colleagues, for strong, robust funding for fiscal year
2023 Clear Air programs. Specifically, I am asking the
committee and my colleagues to robustly fund the Environmental
Protection Agency's State and Tribal Assistance Grants Program.
The EPA State and Tribal Grants Program offers a variety of
Clean Water and Clean Air Initiatives. My letter asked for
strong funding for this program, specifically for air
monitoring and pollution abatement programs. This funding would
greatly help communities like mine across the country that have
long been underserved.
Everyone deserves the right to breathe clean air. These
monitors can mitigate the harmful pollution that leads to poor
health outcomes, higher healthcare costs, and potential long-
term disabilities and illnesses that prevent people from
working. I am proud to see that the committee prioritized
strong funding last time, and I encourage us to continue that
funding and make it a little bit more robust. We already have a
handful of co-signers in our current letter, and, again, our
priorities for funding is critical, and it is one that can
benefit everyone: lower/middle income and racially and
ethnically diverse. Those communities have been the victims of
environmental injustice for decades, and we can do better.
Thank you for the consideration to my request. I sincerely
appreciate the time and hard work that the committee and you
have spent on making sure that the work of your committee
reflects the needs and priorities of the districts. So, again,
I am happy to answer any questions, and thank you so much for
your time.
I yield back. I yield back the balance of my time.
[The prepared statement follows:]
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Pingree. Great, and you had 40 seconds left, so you had
plenty to yield back. Thank you so much. We really appreciate
your taking the time to come before us and talk a little bit
about the impact in your community, and I think having the lens
of environmental justice is so important as we really think how
our programs are funded and implemented. And actually, I just
want you to know that your leadership has been very helpful in
securing increased funding for this program, so it does make a
big difference that you have chosen to advocate for this.
I know we are going to be working towards robust funding in
the fiscal year 2023 bill, but I just wonder if you have any
suggestions about other ways that EPA could strengthen these
programs to ensure that they are being as effective as possible
in your district.
Ms. Garcia. Well, if there is any way to make sure that if
the dollars go through our State, that they are guardrails to
make sure that they do go for this purpose. As you know, I come
from a State that has a governor that sometimes holds the
dollars at the capitol and sometimes uses those dollars for
purposes that the Congress doesn't intend. So finding a way to
quickly get the money on the ground because I can tell you that
it seems like Houston has an incident almost, you know,
sometimes once a month, you know. Some are really bad and some
are not, but there is something always going on because, you
know, we are the energy capital of the world. My district is
home to almost the entire petrochemical complex except for
Exxon, you know. I am right in the heart of the Houston Ship
Channel. It is all there, but my workers need to be protected.
We need more air monitoring, and we need more programs for
mitigation.
Ms. Pingree. Great. Well, that is very helpful to hear.
Again, I really appreciate your advocating for this. It is
extremely important, and your district is a good example of
that. Anything you want to add, Mr. Joyce?
Mr. Joyce. No. Thank you, Chair Pingree.
Ms. Pingree. That is quite all right.
Mr. Garcia. [Inaudible.]
Ms. Pingree. We are just glad to have your presence, so
thank you for that.
And, yes, do we have one more witness? And we are so happy
to hear from American Samoa, and, Representative Radewagen,
please tell me if I am mispronouncing your name. And go ahead,
and we would love to hear from you.
----------
Thursday, April 7, 2022.
HON. AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN RADEWAGEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM
THE AMERICAN SAMOA
Mrs. Radewagen. Perfect. Thank you, Chair Pingree and
Ranking Member Joyce, for the opportunity to testify on behalf
of an increase for the American Samoa operations account at the
Department of Interior Office of Insular Affairs for fiscal
year 2023.
While the worst is behind most States on Mainland USA,
almost 10,000 miles away in the Pacific, Omicron rages.
American Samoa is at its worst state since the pandemic
outbreak with over 4,000 new cases just in the past few weeks.
The governor has implemented a Code Red lockdown which will
last for the foreseeable future. The Federal Government has
responded quickly and forcefully. I accompanied a FEMA response
team to American Samoa a few weeks ago, and we in American
Samoa appreciate their support as our healthcare system has
been overwhelmed. FEMA had to contract 40 healthcare
professionals, doctors, nurses, and technicians just to help us
out at our hospital, which the Army Corps of Engineers has
reported to Congress is in a state of ``abject failure.''
Adding to the difficulties, over 1,000 of my constituents
were stranded away from home for more than 1 year when our
borders were closed as a protective measure against the
pandemic. I myself could not get back to my own home district
for almost 2 years. Can you imagine that? Even when I had the
opportunity to travel home with the FEMA team, it was for short
times. I was called back to Washington.
I humbly ask this committee to help us get a functioning
hospital, which is a primary charge of the DOI, OIA, ASP
Account. Additional funding will be needed from other agencies,
such as DOD, VA, HHS, and the local government, but it is this
committee's help that is crucial as Interior is the lead. I
hope that this committee can work with other agencies to find
comprehensive funding consistent with the Army Corps' findings
reported to Congress almost 3 years ago.
Inflation and COVID have taken their toll physically and
economically in American Samoa. Our tourism is mostly eco- and
adventure tourism to the American Samoa National Park with
family run-ins and bed and breakfasts, family businesses that
were hit especially hard. We were last to receive unemployment
relief. Months after the rest of the country was getting their
last checks, we were just getting our first because it took
that long for the Labor Department to implement the program.
Similarly, we were shut out of the initial rounds of PPP and
EIDL Small Business funds. Adjustments were made in the
American Rescue plan, and other COVID relief measures have been
a significant aid the past 2 years. Inflation is exacerbated in
marine-based island economies where food and fuel must be
shipped in, and local fishermen's fuel costs have skyrocketed
while the Chinese continue to fish illegally around our EEC and
marine monuments, seizing even more market share while we play
fairly by the international rules that restrict our fishing
days.
So I ask you, Chair Pingree and Ranking Member Joyce, to
please look at the well-documented record of the Army Corps of
Engineers' findings for the need for hospital funding and
proffered options that range in the hundreds of millions of
dollars. I am most appreciative of the subcommittee's past work
to provide increases. I hope that the committee can agree that
those needs remain and have only increased. Some offset of
these recent inflationary pressures is needed, and the Army
Corps report spells out the replacement needs. These funds are
dedicated to the health and education of our local community,
which continues to lead the Nation in per capita recruitment to
the United States Army from our high school ranks. We are a
proud people always ready to serve our country.
Thank you both for your time and consideration of the
people of American Samoa. Madam Chair, I yield back my time.
[The prepared statement follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Pingree. Well, thank you very much. Thank you for your
excellent work in representing the people of American Samoa,
and we are really appreciative that you came before us today.
My deepest sympathy to the people back home given the COVID
challenges that they are dealing with right now. You know, it
is easy for some of us when things seem to be slowing down to
forget that there are all kinds of places that are in different
stages of dealing with this horrific illness. So I hope for the
best, and I hope we can support you in any way.
And I am just so sorry to hear that you and so many others
have been restricted from even going home. I can't imagine how
challenging that must be, but, you know, we want to be able to
support you in any way possible. I know that the committee put
$2.5 million in the fiscal year 2022 bill for some of the
initial planning and design work for the hospital replacement.
And while it might take multiple sources to get the full
funding, I certainly pledge, you know, our support to doing all
that we can to getting that done and, again, to support you in
any way.
You know, it is not on the same scale, but I come from a
State, Maine, where tourism is our largest industry, and so in
2020, when we were hardest hit by the pandemic, we greatly
benefited from having PPP and so many other programs. So I
can't imagine how difficult it has been for all of you not
having access to that program or having the delays. That really
had to be extremely difficult. So we will look forward to
continuing to work with you and working with you on the fiscal
year 2023 budget, and, again, just thank you so much for the
work you do and for being before us today.
Anything, Mr. Joyce that you want to add?
Mr. Joyce. I second your comments, Madam Chair.
Ms. Pingree. There we go. Well, with that, I think we have
heard from all of the members who are interested in testifying
today, and if there are no other members to come before us. I
don't have any closing remarks, and I don't think Mr. Joyce
does either, so we will just call this meeting of our committee
adjourned. So thank you again, everyone, for being with us
today.
Wednesday, April 27, 2022.
U.S. FOREST SERVICE
WITNESSES
RANDY MOORE, CHIEF, U.S. FOREST SERVICE, ACCOMPANIED BY ANDRIA WEEKS,
ACTING DIRECTOR FOR STRATEGIC PLANNING, BUDGET, AND ACCOUNTABILITY,
U.S. FOREST SERVICE
Ms. Pingree. Good afternoon. This hearing will now come to
order.
I would like to welcome to the subcommittee the 20th chief
of the USDA Forest Service, Randy Moore. We are so pleased to
have the chance to talk with you today and hear your thoughts
on the fiscal year 2023 budget request for the Forest Service.
Joining the chief today is Andria Weeks, acting director of
strategic planning, budget, and accountability.
Our hearing today will address the President's 2023 budget
request for the USDA Forest Service. I am pleased to see
investments included for climate science and the promotion of
healthy forests. The budget request includes items, such as
$320 million for hazardous fuel projects, an increase of $134
million over the 2022 enacted level; $2.18 billion for the
National Forest System, an increase of $314 million over the
2022 enacted level; and $76 million for research and
development programs, an increase of $26 million over enacted.
These investments will build upon the fiscal year 2022
investments this subcommittee secured, including a significant
increase for wildland fire management funding to allow for the
implementation of the new Federal $15-per-hour minimum wage for
firefighters. Also included, a historic investment of $28
million in the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration
Program, doubling the funding for this program to promote
collaboration and foster local investment in our forest
communities across the country; an increase of $35 million for
forest and rangeland research, both to fuel essential research
that underpins all the Service's work, and for staff for
inventory and analysis work, which provides the framework
necessary for carbon accounting on the national forest land;
and the reinstatement of the legacy roads and trails line item
to emphasize the importance of roads and trail remediation work
that helps threatened species and improves water quality.
From creating economic development in rural communities to
reducing extreme heat in urban areas, healthy forests are
essential to our Nation. Moreover, forests across the country
are a crucial part of our fight against climate change. One of
the largest obstacles to healthy forests and long-term carbon
sequestration is the increase of high-intensity wildfires,
which are affecting our landscapes. I am concerned to see that
this year looks like it will be another severe year for
wildfires. The committee has provided significant investments
to prevent, combat, and recover from these wildfires in recent
years. While the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has
further provided supplementary funding for these activities, I
know more needs to be done. I look forward to discussing the
impact these investments will have and where any gaps in our
response may still remain.
I would now like to yield to our ranking member, Mr. Joyce,
for his opening remarks.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you for yielding, Chair Pingree, and for
holding today's hearing. I look forward to partnering with you
and our colleagues on the subcommittee as we begin our work on
the fiscal year 2023 budget. I am pleased we are joined today
by the 20th chief of the U.S. Forest Service, Randy Moore, and
Ms. Weeks. Chief Moore, congratulations on your appointment,
and welcome to your first hearing before the subcommittee. We
are a tough crowd.
I have no doubt that your long career at the Forest Service
will serve the Nation and our forests and grasslands well. You
bring a unique perspective to the chief role since you
previously served as a Regional Forester in both the Pacific
Southwest Region and the Eastern Region. I look forward to
hearing your perspective on the Forest Service's planned
investments and goals for the upcoming fiscal year, and how
these reasonably build on the funding Congress provided in
fiscal year 2022.
For fiscal year 2023, the request asks for an additional
$1.04 billion in base Forest Service funding, nearly a 20-
percent increase over the enacted level. While was proud of the
key investments Congress provided for the Forest Service in
fiscal year 2022 to protect and manage our Nation's forests and
support our wild and firefighters, I have serious concerns
about the scale of increases proposed in the President's
request this year. As the Nation faces record inflation, we
must be extremely cognizant of the financial decisions we are
making and do not saddle our future generations with
unnecessary economic burdens and debt.
Like all Americans, the Federal Government must live within
its means, and doing so will require us to make difficult
choices and discern wants from actual needs. While it will be
financially difficult to provide the Forest Service's full
request, I look forward to working with you, Chair Pingree, and
our colleagues to ensure the Agency has the resources it needs
to carry out its important mission.
I was pleased to see that wildland fire management
continues to be a top priority for the Agency in fiscal year
2023. The request includes significant funding to support our
wildland firefighters, aviation resources, and high priority
hazardous fuels and forest resilience projects. While fire
investments are critical, we cannot forget that we must also
provide the resources and flexibilities for the Forest Service
to actively manage and treat our Nation's forests. Proactive
forest management is key to improving wildlife habitat, making
our forests more resilient to diseases and invasive species,
and mitigating the risk and skyrocketing costs of catastrophic
wildfires.
Perhaps now more than ever, forest management is a critical
tool to protecting the long-term vitality of one of our
Nation's most valued domestic natural resources and ensuring we
do not need to rely on foreign countries for wood products.
Chief Moore, given your time as Regional Forester for the
Eastern Region, it probably comes as no surprise to you that I
am also interested in discussing how the fiscal year 2023
request supports State and Private Forestry programs. The Urban
and Community Forestry, Forest Health Management, and Forest
Stewardship programs are critical in my home State of Ohio and
other States across the Eastern Region, where a large
percentage of forest land is privately owned, and urban forests
are prevalent. While I noticed some slight reductions to these
program, I look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure
that they receive the attention and the resources they deserve.
State and Private Forestry funds are crucial to keeping our
State and private forests protected and healthy and our forest
canopies robust so they can continue to provide communities
with clean air and water, recreational opportunities, mineral
and energy resources, and jobs.
Today, we are also interested in hearing about the Forest
Service's ongoing work related to the Great American Outdoors
Act. As the Agency prepares for a third year of GAOA funding,
it would be good to understand how these investments have
helped the Forest Service make strides in conserving public
lands, tackling maintenance backlogs, and increasing visitor
access and recreational opportunities, and where potential
roadblocks might exist. Finally, it would be good to discuss
the Forest Service's plans for implementing the Infrastructure
Investment and Jobs Act, which provided billions of dollars in
advance appropriations for the Forest Service. Over the coming
years, we intend to engage in active oversight of the spending
of those funds to ensure there is a value for the taxpayer and
our natural resources without waste, fraud, and abuse.
Chief Moore, thank you again for joining us this afternoon.
Your stewardship of the Forest Service is important to our
environment and communities across the U.S., and we wish you
all the best in this role. I look forward to our discussion and
working with you.
Thank you, again, Chair Pingree. I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you, Mr. Joyce, very much for your
statement, and, Chief Moore, you can see we are very excited to
have you at our committee today, and we would love to hear your
opening remarks.
Mr. Moore. So, Chair Pingree, Ranking Member Joyce, and
members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to
testify before you today. You know, as I close in on my first
year as chief, I appreciate the opportunity to provide an
overview of the benefits that the Forest Service delivers to
the American people and the outcomes we plan to achieve with
the resources provided in this proposed fiscal year 2023
budget.
The bottom line for the Forest Service is in our motto:
``Caring for the Land and Serving People.'' It's really what we
are about. Our job is to sustain healthy, resilient landscapes
for current and future generations. The national forests and
grasslands cover about 193 million acres in 43 different
States, including Puerto Rico. They are the source of drinking
water for more than 60 million people living in 3,400
communities across 36 States. In 2020, the National Forest
System supported more than 370,000 jobs and contributed more
than $35 billion to the GDP.
But the benefits that Americans get from their forests and
grasslands are now at risk. The risks include wildfire crisis
facing the Nation and the impacts of our changing climate. The
Forest Service is squarely facing these risks. Improving the
conditions that we are seeing will require sound science,
sustained resources, the use of all the tools in our toolbox, a
robust workforce, hard work, and collaboration with our
partners. I appreciate the confidence that Congress has
demonstrated in the Forest Service with the Infrastructure
Investment and Jobs Act. These funds, coupled with the fiscal
year 2023 budget request, will help restore the long-term
health and resilience of the Nation's forests and grasslands.
The Forest Service's fiscal year 2023 discretionary budget
request is $9 billion. Working with our partners, we will
improve the resilience of landscapes and watersheds across
boundaries and reduce wildfire risk by treating the right acres
at the right scale. We will restore infrastructure, support
outdoor recreation, and invest in reforested landscapes that
have been ravaged by wildfires, storms, and other events.
The wildfire crisis has been building for decades, as you
know, but we now have the science and tools to implement
projects that will truly make a difference. The budget, as you
indicated, dedicates about $321 million for hazardous fuels.
This will support about 308 million acres of hazard fuels
reduction treatment projects. This investment supports the
Agency's 10-year strategy to confront the Nation's wildfire
crisis. At the same time, we are preparing for another long and
arduous fire year, made worse by a continuing severe drought
across the West. Our priority is to protect the health, safety,
and well-being of the fire management community and the public
we serve.
The budget dedicates $1 billion to wildland fire management
salaries and expenses. This investment will enable us to pay
all firefighters at least $15 an hour, fund more than 300
additional firefighters and support personnel, and support
resilient and mental health programs. But we need to find a
permanent solution to increase our firefighters' pay and make
other system changes to ensure firefighting is a career that
others will pursue in the future, and I want to work with you
on that.
Climate change is altering ecosystems nationwide. It has
amplified impacts of fire, disease, insects, and invasive
species, and it is shrinking our habitat for our native plans
and wildlife. The fiscal year 2023 budget builds on the climate
change investments contained in the fiscal year 2022 budget.
Our fiscal year 2023 budget request of $318 million of forest
and rangeland research will continue our work in addressing
climate change and other critical research needs.
Our infrastructure needs are pressing as are our economic
needs of Americans. The fiscal year 2023 budget request
stimulates construction and maintenance activities in national,
regional, and local economies. We are grateful for the Great
Outdoors American Act funds. That helped stabilize our $6.3
billion maintenance backlog.
The National forests and grasslands belong to every
American. They encompass ancestral lands and tribal
territories. Every person should feel the personal invitation
and connection to these lands. The Forest Service is addressing
inequity by ensuring that historically-underserved groups can
more fully access and participate in Agency programs and
services. We have taken significant steps to improve policies,
accountability, and training to ensure a work environment that
is equitable, respectful, and free from harassments of any
kind.
So, in closing, we know what is at stake if we do not
address the wildfire crisis: the health of our communities, the
clean water, the camping trips, the wood products, jobs that
Americans depend on for the national forests and grasslands to
provide. The risks facing these lands are significant and
growing. That is why we need to act now. We need to act
together and act with dedication to meet the challenges before
us with sound science as our guide. So we are all in. We are
ready to serve, and we have been here since 1905. Again, thank
you, and we are grateful to you all for your interest and
support, and I look forward to any questions that you may have.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you so much, Chief Moore, for your
testimony. We really appreciate the years of experience you
bring to this job and looking forward to working with you going
into the future.
I will start the questioning with my own questions, and I
am going to jump right into some of the issues related to wood
innovation. It is an important topic in my home State of Maine
and certainly in many others as we look forward to new and
innovative wood products. We held a hearing on this topic last
year and discussed the work of the Forest Products Laboratory
as well as programs, such as wood innovation grants. In the
subsequent House bill and fiscal year 2022 enacted bill, we
included milestone investments in programs that promote the use
of small diameter timber and innovative wood products that
utilize sustainable forestry. The fiscal year 2022 bill
included $12 million for the Community Wood Energy Program and
$20 million for wood innovation grants and language regarding
mass timber and other promising wood topics.
So I would love to hear you talk about this a little bit,
and it would be great if you can cover a little bit about how
these investments will be implemented and the on-the-ground
effects of these investments that the public will see in rural
communities, including economic development. And I would also
love it if you could include what progress has been made in the
last year to expand the market and potentially uses for low-
value and hazardous fuels type of timber, and what other
challenges do you see existing as we move forward.
Mr. Moore. So, Chairwoman, you know, that is really a great
question, and I just had conversations just last week up in
Skamania with industry talking about helping the Forest Service
shift gears and us working together with our environmental
community on what is needed based on the type of material that
we have out on the national forests and, really, on those
landscapes to remove. You know, it is not just about sell-offs
anymore. It is really about low-value, small-diameter wood.
That is what we have. That is what we have an abundance on our
forests, and that is what is serving as ladder fuels and
kindling for these fires that we are seeing across the
landscape.
So the question really is, is there a different way to look
at utilizing material that we have to remove while we create
jobs in these small rural communities where most of this is
located, and can we look at wood innovation as a way to help us
do that. So we are asking industry to work with us, and we are
asking the environmental community to work with us. Now, the
Forest Service really provides leadership on innovative wood
products, and, you know, we feel that this potential is
critical to the future of sustainable forest management. The
market for innovative wood, really, we are looking at
incentivizing forest stewardship to help keep forests as
forests.
So in our research and development, it is really supporting
some of the largest forest management and wood research
innovation in the world. And our Forest Products Lab there in
Madison, Wisconsin, is really serving as a hub for basic and
applied research where we coordinate the work of numerous
academic, governmental, industrial, and nonprofit groups to
kick off and accelerate the development of innovative forest
products that will provide some economic and environmental
benefits to the Nation. So we are moving rapidly and looking at
some of these bio-char, cross-laminated timber as some of those
things, looking at nanotechnology, advanced composites, and
advanced structural material working with the architectural
industry.
So we are rapidly working with the different groups to
really help us make a shift from where we are to where we need
to be, and actually I am pretty excited about the reception
that we are getting, looking at different uses of this material
that is really serving as kindling for these large catastrophic
wildfires.
Ms. Pingree. Great. Well, thank you. Thank you for the work
that you are doing and the Lab is doing, and I think we have a
lot of exciting things to talk about going into the future. So
I will yield back my own time and go to the ranking member for
his questions.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you, Madam Chair. I recently hosted a
roundtable in my district with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland
and local conservancy folks to discuss, among other issues, the
benefits of turning abandoned properties into green spaces and
the positive impact these areas and urban reforestation efforts
can have on hard-hit communities, like those on the East side
of Cleveland. Chief Moore, having previously served as a
Regional Forester overseeing the Eastern Region, which has the
largest number of urban areas of all nine Forest Service
regions, could you take a moment to discuss the positive
impacts urban reforestation has on children and their
communities to public health and the environment?
Mr. Moore. Ranking Member, thank you for that question as
well. Let me start by saying when I was in the Eastern Region,
I created the Urban Connections Program, and there was a need,
just like you have described, to really get into a lot of the
large urban areas to not only just learn how to bring people in
urban areas out to the forest, but how do we create the green
space within these urban areas, and how do we take parts of a
city and turn it into green space? And so we partnered with
some of our partners in some ways to create what we call pocket
parks and green alleyways. And so when I was in the Eastern
Region, we had some initial starts. We started in Boston,
Detroit, Minneapolis, and New York. And so that is where we
started putting employees there to have education opportunities
to talk about urban populations.
You know, one of the things that we recognize is that urban
forests are about 20 percent of all forests in the U.S., and
they provide really an important opportunity to increase carbon
sequestration and really look at trying to mitigate the effects
of climate change. And, you know, we have seen areas in large
cities where there are no trees, and we know the value of trees
in some of these areas cutting down on utility bills. We also
know the value of urban trees bringing birds into the
neighborhood. We know that there is a lot of peace, and just
serenity in just being able to sit out under trees. We also
have been working with doctors who write a prescription for a
walk in the woods.
And so I think it is demonstrated that there is a lot of
value in this, and so the question for us, I believe, is that
how do we do more of this kind of work to reach more people, to
create that stewardship ethic within as well as outside these
urban areas. And so we would love to work with you going
forward on some ideas that you may have, but here, again, we
are all in on this ideal, and we have began to put a lot of
positions into these areas so that we can learn from our public
in these urban areas what is it that they are looking for. What
is it that they would like to have? So we will continue to seek
opportunities to increase reforestation in urban areas and on
State, and tribal, and private lands across the country.
Mr. Joyce. And it would appear that Chair McCollum has the
perfect backdrop there with all those green trees in her
background. As you well know, Ohio and other Eastern Region
states rely heavily on the State and Private Forestry programs,
especially Urban and Community Forestry. Unfortunately,
compared to the enacted level, the President's fiscal year 2023
budget proposes cutting Urban and Community Forest funding.
What impact would this potential funding cut have on the Forest
Service's ability to build on prior year Urban and Community
Forestry efforts, address threats to urban forest health and
resilience, and promote urban reforestation like we have seen
working in Cleveland?
Mr. Moore. Well, I think we have some opportunities within
the budgets that we have, and even though we may have a certain
amount set aside for certain things, I think when we look at
landscape perspectives, and we look at our partners, and we
look at how do we bring all of our community to the table, and
how do we look at how we work together to do more. And so even
if and even when our budget may be reduced in one program area,
one budget area, the challenge is really to bring that greater
community to help leverage what we might want to do and what we
might not be able to do in order to get this work done. You
know, there is a rural-to-urban gradient, and when you look at
landscape-level treatments, I think we have to be inclusive. We
have to look at having equity in our disadvantaged communities.
We have to look across the whole spectrum and not necessarily
be guided by what is in a particular budget when you look at
the direction and the guidelines in the budget, I think in some
cases we have more flexibility than what we might think that we
do.
And I certainly think that working with partners leverage
our ability to do more of this kind of work because it is, as
you indicated, it is important.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you, sir. I have exceeded my time, Madam
Chair. I yield back what little time I have left.
Ms. Pingree. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Joyce, and next
we go to Chairwoman McCollum. Thank you very much for bringing
some trees to our hearing today, and we will let you proceed
with your questions.
Ms. McCollum. Well, thank you, Chairwoman Pingree, for
having today's hearing. And first and foremost,
congratulations, Chief Moore, the 24th Forest Service chief.
Congratulations to you. And I am singing Mr. Joyce's song here.
I am up at tree level, and the urban birds really do want your
attention, so I will be working with Mr. Joyce on that.
I would like to take just a moment to talk about the Office
of International Programs on the work that you do partnering
overseas to support sustainability, forest management, and the
conservation of biodiversity. I had the opportunity to travel
internationally to see some of your projects in the countries
you work in, the best soft power we have. You work on climate
change, illegal logging, associated trade disaster assistance,
to stop illegal timber harvest, and undercutting the wood
production here in the U.S. So all the same time you are doing
global conservation, saving our planet. So hats off to the work
you do there.
I want to talk about watersheds. We don't put the right
value on water because water is life sustaining. And, you know,
as you pointed out, out 53 percent of the total of certain
forests, modern U.S. forests, right? So the Forest Service has
a special responsibility to protect those watersheds, including
the priceless watershed and the water in Minnesota, our
Boundary Waters National Canoe Wilderness Area. So I am
grateful for the Biden administration for restarting the study
on the mineral withdrawals in the watershed. I look forward to
seeing that as soon as possible. There have been a couple
delays, but we are hopeful that we will have it in the next
month or two.
So I know you can't comment on any further than that. The
study is the study, right? But could you maybe talk a little
more about what the [inaudible] role that you play on that, and
then [inaudible] role and sometimes how you are in conflict.
You are on the surface, and the BLM has the subsurface. So just
talk about your role in protecting our water.
Mr. Moore. Okay. So, Congresswoman McCollum, I think I
heard most of what you were saying. I don't know if it is my
system or yours, but you were coming in and out. So let me
start with where you originally started talking in terms of
working internationally across boundaries of the different
countries. And, you know, we have participated in the past
looking at going over and providing technical assistance to
other countries, and we still do. What is interesting, though,
is that that even though we go over to provide technical
assistance, we learn so much. Ecosystem services is one of
those things that we have learned from other countries that we
know has a place here in the U.S. And I know that wasn't your
question, and we can talk about that later, but that is one of
the new frontiers I think we have to explore.
The other piece is really around water, and I think you
would agree that water is the most important natural resources
that flows from the forest. And one of the things I found out
just this past year is that the Forest Service manages the
largest single source of water in the U.S., which is about 18
percent of the water that flows off through national forest
managed lands. That is a significant amount of water, and if
you had to put a value on that water, it is in the hundreds of
billions of dollars.
So, first of all, thank you for increased funding for
vegetation and watershed management in fiscal year 2022
compared to fiscal year 2021. And, you know, I would just make
a note that in fiscal year 2023, the budget requests a
significant increase for that program which I think will help
us really look at supporting healthy, resilient watersheds and
sustain that production of clean water that I just talked
about, the 18 percent of the total water flowing through and
off national forests.
I think in fiscal year 2023, our goal is to look at
improving 16 watersheds in Condition Class 1. That is the
highest level of a watershed function. So we go in and we do an
assessment. We look at the existing condition of a Watershed
Condition Class 3, 2, 1, 1 being the best. And so the question,
and it is rhetorical, but the question that I would lay out
there is, at some point we should pursue looking at outcomes
versus outputs. And the Watershed Condition Class is a great
example of how to look at outcomes of doing the work in a
watershed rather than the outputs of acres treated, as an
example. So rather than acres treated, did we move that
Watershed Condition Class from 3 to 2 or from 2 to 1, and what
does it take to do that? So I think it is just a different way
of looking at how can we be responsible to Congress, and how
can we be responsible to the American people. And I think we
need to pursue looking at outcomes a bit more.
Ms. Pingree. Chief Moore?
Mr. Moore. Yes?
Ms. Pingree. I have to cut you off. Chair McCollum, do you
want me to try to get the last question? It was a little hard
to hear you on the question about BLM and the watershed, so I
am not sure that you have got your full question. Maybe we
could put it into the second round? Yeah. I am just going to
move on because she has a tough connection.
So next we are going to go to Mr. Stewart for your 5
minutes.
Mr. Stewart. Chairwoman, thank you. Chief, thanks for being
with us. Thanks for your leadership on a lot of these tough
issues. I think, as I recall, you were working in my neck of
the woods up in the Cashew International Forest at some point.
Is that true, Chief?
Mr. Moore. That is correct.
Mr. Stewart. Well, I am sure you miss it. We miss you. It
was one of the most beautiful forests in the country, a
beautiful area. Thanks for your service there, and as I look at
your bio, really all around the country you have a diverse
background, and we know you will be able to apply much of that
knowledge because your problems aren't just in the West. The
forest has concerns, you know, across the country as you have
indicated here today.
Hey, could I hit a couple things quickly, and I think we
really can do it quickly. One of them is just to tell you thank
you. My former chief of staff here in Washington, D.C., is now
the director of natural resources for the State of Utah, and he
wanted me to convey to you the shared stewardship and the
success you have had we feel like we have had with you and that
it really has been a great partnership. And because we feel
like it has worked so well, we hope you and the Forest Service
agree and that you will continue and a commitment to work
together on that in solving some of these resource problems.
So, again, thank you, and we hope that you will continue to
work with Utah and with directors.
A concern I have, and I will bet you do, too, as well,
Chief, is that, as you indicated fire management is, of course,
one of the primary things we want to talk about. As Ms. Pingree
noted, it is likely this year is not going to be better than
last year. In fact, it is probably going to be worse based on
the drought conditions in the West. And so we have appropriated
more money, but you know, Chief, a 10-year plan, half of that
money, 5 years of it is supplemented through the infrastructure
bill. And it worries me that we get your 5, and now we have a
50-percent reduction. And I wondered if you could comment on
that and how you think the best way to address it.
Mr. Moore. So, Congressman, you know, we have a 10-year
strategy that we developed, and we are looking at a 5-year
plan. And we are so grateful for Congress passing the
infrastructure bill because it has given us more hope than we
have had in a very long time in this Agency. I also want to
point out, though, that as welcome as that amount of money is,
we want everyone to understand this is only a downpayment to
try to really get at addressing a problem that we see ourselves
facing in this country. And when you look at the 66 or so
million acres of National Forest System lands alone, not to
mention the other 100 or so million acres of other private,
Federal, and tribal lands, you would understand that it just is
not nearly enough to really get at the problem, but it is a
good downpayment.
I think, you know, when you look at the accountability of
what Congress has done for the American people and for the
Forest Service, it is up to us now to work with our partners on
the accountability end. We want to demonstrate to Congress and
the American people that here is what we are doing with what we
have. If we had more, we would do more. But we feel like we owe
it to you to demonstrate that we can be effective and
successful in trying to address this problem that we have out
here, particularly on our Western landscapes, but not only the
Western landscapes. You know, we have disease and insects,
hurricanes in the East and the South, and so we have problems
all across the country.
Mr. Stewart. Yeah.
Mr. Moore. And we want to demonstrate to you what we are
going to do with what we have.
Mr. Stewart. Well, Chief, I appreciate that, and if I could
just make one suggestion. And then, again, I know that you have
considered this many times. But that supplemental
appropriations for forest fire, which, again, we know is going
to be a challenge, but we hope you will consider as well the
forest management side of that, that, you know, rather than,
you know, having fires and just appropriating money to fight
the fires, to be, as I know you are, lean into that, be
progressive and to be aggressive in how do we manage our
forests to mitigate fires or, you know, to actually decrease
the likelihood of that fires spread. And, again, I know you
have had that conversation.
Could I mention one other thing? So now, two things, and,
Chief, keeping track for us, shared stewardship. I hope you
will work with us on that, forest management plans to minimize
the actual number of fires. And then finally, and I didn't know
that I would be talking to you about this. It is kind of an
unusual subject, but it has been brought to my attention that
we have a bit of a bee controversy in Utah in the sense that we
have got bee owners, and I grew up farming, and we had hives on
my father's farm. And we got free honey for that. That was
great deal, but we have some beehive owners and others who
would love to, you know, put some of their hives on Federal
lands. And we feel like there is some real benefit of that and
the colonization that they would provide. But then we have some
who oppose that. They say that it crowds out the natural
pollinators.
I mean, I didn't know that there was bee crowding on our
Federal lands. In fact, I think a lot of us are fearful that,
you know, our honeybees and others, there is a diminishing
population. But I wonder if you could comment on that or if
that is something that, you know, we could work with you as
well to maybe make that opportunity available for private bee
owners who would like to, again, put hives on public lands.
Ms. Pingree. I am sorry to say, Mr. Stewart, but you have
gone over your time. So, Mr. Moore, if you could just either
answer it in writing or we will save it for the second round.
Mr. Stewart. Yeah, Chief, if you would, maybe we will just
talk to you writing. I am sorry, Ms. Pingree. We don't have a
timer, so I have a tendency to lose track, but thank you.
Ms. Pingree. They were all, you know, excellent remarks, so
we appreciate your comments.
Mr. Stewart. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. Mr. Kilmer, to you.
Mr. Kilmer. Thank you, Madam Chair, and, Chief, thanks for
being with us today. I am really grateful for the work that the
Forest Service does all over our country, but I want to focus
on my first and top priority, which is the Olympic National
Forest. That is an ecological and economic backbone for the
region that I represent. First, I want to just extend a
standing invitation to you to come to our neck of the woods to
see some of the challenges and some of the opportunities that
we are having on the Olympic.
The issues surrounding timber and the Olympic peninsula are
very personal to me. I grew up in Port Angeles. I was in high
school right around the time that the timber industry took it
on the chin. I saw a lot of my friends' parents lose their
jobs, a lot of my neighbors lose their jobs, and I am tired of
watching our rural economies that depend on Federal timber
harvest struggle and folks lose their jobs, and we need your
help. You know, for the past few years, at every Forest Service
budget hearing, the concern I have expressed is that the
Olympic National Forest has persistently failed to produce the
meaningful harvest levels that are needed, not just to support
timber-dependent communities, but to improve forest health and
to deal with critical salmon spawning habitats as well.
We have really good and really dedicated people working in
our forest and in our region, but the outcomes just have not
been acceptable. I have consistently asked the Forest Service
what can I do, what can this committee do to address the acute
challenges at the Olympic National Forest. I know that resource
limitations have impacted operations service-wide, and that is
something our committee has been working to address. But we are
experiencing some acute challenges on the Olympic that I could
really use your help on. I honestly cannot remember the last
time the ONF met its annual harvest target. We have got to do
better.
The timber target in fiscal year 2021 was 20 million board
feet. The actual was 6. We visited the leadership at the forest
and we were just told recently that the goal for ONF would be
down the next couple of years, too. So there are real concerns
that we are not going to provide adequate predictable harvest.
So that brings me to the opportunities.
We have got the Olympic Forest Collaborative that has
actually united folks from the environmental community and the
timber industry around a common goal of responsibly increasing
harvest levels on the ONF. And I am proud to say that we have
actually executed a few pilot projects that would help the ONF
produce a couple million additional board feet of timber, also
accomplishing some important restoration tools. These projects
have demonstrated the power of collaborative forest planning
for meeting the goals of our region, but we need to scale up,
and we really need your help to achieve these benefits,
especially as rural communities throughout my district continue
to take it on the chin.
So I want to be really clear. I am grateful for the
partnership with the regional forester, Glenn Casamassa, and
the ONF supervisor, Kelly Lawrence, and her team. Both share my
commitment to supporting the work of the collaborative, but
there is only so much we can accomplish without dedicated
support and resources. So here are the questions I want to ask.
One, how do you plan to support our region's efforts to
increase harvest levels and forest restoration projects on the
Olympic National Forest? Two, what do you need from me and from
this committee to support that effort because we need your
help. And three, what resources does the Forest Service need to
help support forest collaboratives like the Olympic Forest
Collaborative that don't qualify for the Collaborative Forest
Landscape Restoration dollars?
Mr. Moore. So, Congressman Kilmer, first of all, I have to
compliment you on how well informed you are about what is going
on that forest in your congressional district. So unlike in the
past where, you are correct, the Olympic National Forest only
provides about 6 million board feet out of a 20 million board
feet target, this year I will have you know that the Olympic
National Forest is on track to sell approximately 18 million
board feet of timber in this fiscal year. And that is a really
a mix of Good Neighbor Authority and other Forest Service
sales.
Now, the Good Neighbor Authority is one of those tools that
we have been pretty proud of, and we are getting a lot of
mileage out of that, particularly with our partners. And so
last year, they did sell about 6 million board feet out of a
20-million board feet target. My conversation with the regional
forester is that they have looked at creating a plan, a 3-year
plan, and it is not going to take him 3 years to do it. They
are going to get it done this year. But it is a 3-year plan
where they can build a pipeline of timber so that when things
happen, whether there are fires, or disease and insects, or
some of those things then, you know, the industry doesn't
suffer because we really need industry if we are going to work
our way out of this problem that we have in this country. And
so it is in everyone's best interest that the industry
continues to survive in this country because it is one of the
primary tools that we need to help us with this situation that
we are in.
So we are monitoring the Olympic. The regional forester
there is well aware of your concerns, and I think that you have
already had more effect than what you may realize because they
have really turned it around this year, and we are working with
them to sustain this level.
Ms. Pingree. Sorry I have to cut you off, but if you want
to continue that, we can do so in another round. And I am going
to move on to Mr. Cartwright.
Mr. Cartwright. Thank you, Chair Pingree, and thank you,
Chief Moore, for being with us this afternoon.
As you know, my district in Northeastern Pennsylvania, is
the home of the first head of the National Forest Service, and
that was Gifford Pinchot, who was also the 28th governor of
Pennsylvania. But maybe more importantly, my district is home
to a lot of forest land, including two State forests, Delaware
State Forest and the Pinchot State Forest, which are important
components of the economy and the lifestyle of the region. We
also have thousands of acres of privately-owned forests used
for recreation, forest products, natural resource conservation.
I want to talk about riparian buffers for a moment. As you
know, my district is in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, which is
the largest estuary in the United States. Unfortunately, for
decades, the Chesapeake Bay has been polluted by toxic
contaminants, like pesticides, pharmaceuticals, metals, and the
effort to restore the Bay has disproportionately fallen on the
shoulders of people in my district, people who are already
struggling just to get by. Now, since joining this committee, I
have fought hard to secure as much Federal money as possible to
help offset this local burden by helping townships in my
district improve their stormwater management systems. These
investments have been really important for my district but.
But improving stormwater infrastructure is just one of the
many strategies that can be used to improve water quality in
the Chesapeake Bay watershed. As you know, another way we can
manage pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed is by
restoring riparian forest buffers, which are, essentially, just
the forests alongside a body of water. These buffers mitigate
the impacts of water pollution by trapping and filtering
sediment and pollutants carried by stormwater before it flows
into the Bay. So the question is, how do resources for riparian
forest buffers requested in your fiscal year 2023 budget help
Chesapeake Bay watershed States, like Pennsylvania, meet their
EPA pollution reduction mandates?
Mr. Moore. So, Congressman, thank you. So we work through
our State and private programs on part of the Forest Service,
and the Forest Service is spearheading a riparian forest buffer
initiative this spring, and it is things like webinars,
reports, roundtables. And it is really culminating today with a
high-level workshop that is being held, and this is for State
partners to reveal their strategic action plan for riparian
buffer zones. So we play a supporting role in EPA's watershed
implementation plans, and this is things like helping with
funding communications, reporting, coordination on all of their
forestry-related goals.
We have also been working with Farm Service Agency to
provide grants for 12 riparian foresters in the watershed to
provide additional outreach and technical assistance for these
riparian buffer zones. So the riparian buffer is largely an
agriculture practice for the Chesapeake Bay Program, and
forestry is providing the technical expertise on the forestry
section of that. But we are engaged, in some cases, as a
supporting role. For other cases, we provide the technical
institute. In other cases, we provide funding to bring on the
needed skills that others may need. And so we are actively
engaged, sir.
Mr. Cartwright. Well, I thank you for that, Chief, and,
Madam Chair, I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you for your question. Mr. Harder,
harder do you have questions today?
Mr. Harder. I do. Thank you so much, Madam Chair, for
holding this hearing, and, Chief, thank you so much for
attending and for your incredible work.
As you know, wildfires are an existential issue for
communities like mine in California's Central Valley. Last
year, we experienced 60 smoke days due to these wildfires, 2
months out of the year where the air was so filled with smoke
that it was unsafe for kids to play outside. I grew up with
childhood asthma. I know how bad it gets out here, and these
wildfires are only making the air quality situation a lot
worse. And as you know, I am a huge supporter of the incredible
work our firefighters are doing to prevent and to fight these
fires, and I am concerned about the continued shortages. I know
this budget request is intended to address some of those
shortages, those labor shortages that we are seeing across
California and the West.
You have requested about a billion dollars to fund hiring
additional firefighters. Can you talk about what it will take
to get the Forest Service fully staffed for the fire years that
we are seeing right now, and what more might be necessary based
on the budget request that you are seeing now?
Mr. Moore. Yeah, thank you. So, Congressman Harder, I know
all too well about these wildfires, particularly in California,
after just coming from there. You know, it is getting tougher:
99 days last year, which is a record of planning Level 4 and 5.
This is pretty darn significant, and so we have to do something
about that. The 10-year strategy takes on a piece of that, and
I think it is the main piece of how we try to get at this
problem. Now, to be more specific on the question that you
asked, we had planned to hire about 11,400 firefighters this
year. We have brought on about 90 percent of that already.
There is a lot of competition out there for firefighters, and
so we feel like we are ready. We can make up for that 10
percent. We are going to do a number of things to make up for
that, and we say that because we find ourselves in a situation
in New Mexico and Arizona as we speak in terms of wildfires
taking place there and the staffing level. Are we ready?
New Mexico is into an activity level that normally happens
about 4 to 6 weeks from now. It is that much earlier this year
there, and the winds are compounding that. We have the ability
to hire private contract firefighters. We have the ability to
hire more of what we call ADs. That is administratively
determined employees. We are also looking to having some
additional rounds of hiring of seasonal and permanent
firefighters. And so we going to continue to do all these
things all the way up and through the year.
So we are prepared at 90 percent. We know how to make up
that 10 percent. And so we feel like we are a long ways toward
where we wanted to be, and we will get there at 100 percent
shortly, and we do have that ability internally. I mentioned
11,400 firefighters, but we also have just a firefighting
community, whether that is with other Department of Interior
firefighters, State firefighters, local firefighters, and
private firefighters. So we have a pretty large workforce of
firefighters to call upon.
Mr. Harder. Thank you, Chief. That is very helpful. Is
11,400 the right number because I am concerned that that is
only a 10-percent increase on the forestry personnel that we
have seen historically. These wildfires aren't getting 10
percent worse. They are getting 10 times worse. Are you
confident that that is going to be enough to really keep our
community safe?
Mr. Moore. Well, let me tell you, I don't know if we will
ever have enough, Congressman, unless we do something
differently than what is taking place now. We have to address
the vegetation situation out there on the forest because most
of these fire-adaptive ecosystems, where you had ponderosa pine
mixed conifer. I don't want to get too detailed, but I want to
just explain that most of these ecosystems that we are talking
about was fire dependent. And what has happened, though, like a
ponderosa pine mixed conifer, per acre, they used to have about
40 to 60 trees per acre. Now that same veg type has anywhere
from 600 to 1,000 trees per acre.
And so while we are talking about having enough
firefighters to suppress the fires, we really need to be
talking about how do we manage the vegetation out there so that
when these fires do happen, it does its natural thing, and it
is not really destructive like it is now. And so that is a very
important piece. That is what the 10-year strategy is for, but
you are right. We have to put the fires out that are taking
place now.
And just to give you some context of the Forest Service,
even though we talk about 11,400 professional full-time
firefighters, the Forest Service also has a number of other
firefighters that do other duties, like timber, like
recreation, special uses, those sorts of things, and we can
call on them from anywhere across the country. Last year, we
had 29,000 firefighters fighting fires primarily in the West,
and it still wasn't enough. And so that is why we can have
discussions about do we have enough, and that is a valid
question to ask, but we have to be really aggressive and
forthright in trying to reduce the conditions that are the root
cause of these fires out there.
Mr. Harder. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. Okay. Thank you so much for your question and
your answers. I don't know how many members want to ask a
second question, but I think a couple do, so I am just going to
start a second round. And I will start with one topic.
I am interested in this question around the forest industry
inventory. I didn't mean to say ``industry.'' Forest inventory
and old-growth forests. The committee included a strong
investment in forest inventory work in the fiscal year 2022
bill, including $22 million in the program line and $216
million in forest and rangeland research salaries and expenses.
And I know last week on Earth Day, the administration made a
joint announcement about a plan to better catalog old-growth
forests. So I just want to hear you talk a little bit about how
you are going to move forward on that, how you will work with
the Department of Interior to implement the executive order.
What funding will be utilized for the work? Do you kind of have
a roadmap for how you are going about doing it? And just any
other information you can share about the scope of the
initiative and also the topic of how you will define mature and
old growth forests in this context?
Mr. Moore. Well, thank you, Madam Chair. So we are still
reviewing the language and what it means for the Forest
Service. Now, you know, we want to have a full understanding of
the direction, and we want to ensure that our understanding is
shared with the Department of Interior and vice versa. We
believe that the executive order really outlines a science-
based approach. We will be working with DOI, again, here trying
to define and conduct an inventory that can be easily shared
with the public.
So it is framed within the context of wildfire risk, so it
is critically important that we can implement the landscape
scale treatments that reduce the risk to these communities, but
also reduce the risk to infrastructure and also the natural
resources, but at the same time conserve our old and mature
forests, which is really our important components of climate
mitigation. And so we have to keep that. I think that executive
order really addresses that.
I think the wood products industry is also another
important partner in trying to achieve this wildfire risk
reduction goal, and the executive order speaks to the need for
sustainable wood products industries but using a science-based
approach to active forest management. So we are looking forward
to working with all of the stakeholders moving forward on how
we might implement that executive order to really get at the
bottom line, which is to create healthy, resilient forests.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you, and we will be anxious to just
continue to have this conversation as you move forward.
I will turn to Mr. Joyce. Did you have any other questions
you would like to ask?
Mr. Joyce. I certainly do. Thank you. Chief Moore, I would
like to discuss a newer issue that we have been tracking, beech
leaf disease. Does it ring a bell?
Mr. Moore. Yes. I am sorry.
Mr. Joyce. The potential destructive impact it could have
on trees in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and New England
States. In Northeast Ohio, maple beech forests make up about 25
percent of the woodland, so the disease could be extremely
problematic for the forest canopy, the wildlife, and the
ecosystem. I am proud that groups in my district are working
diligently to learn more about the disease, how it spreads, and
how to potentially breed resistant trees. But as we have
learned through our experience with the emerald ash borer,
controlling beech leaf disease will require comprehensive work
at the local, State, and Federal levels. Can you discuss the
work the Forest Service is currently carrying out related to
the beech leaf disease, and how does the fiscal year 2023
request support research and research partnerships on newer
diseases like the beech leaf disease?
Mr. Moore. So thank you, Congressman. So this beech leaf
disease, you know, we call it BLB, and, you know, it is an
emerging disease that is affecting the American beech. And it
has reached across about 10 States in as many years. So it was
first detected, of course, in Ohio, and it appears to be caused
by what we call the phytopathogenic nematode, and it likely
came from somewhere in Asia. We are currently conducting
surveys across the range of this disease, as we understand it
now, to try to track and understand how it is moving across the
country. Like I said, 10 states in 10 years, that is pretty
aggressive, in our opinion.
So we are also working with State partners to help us to
determine the scale of this. I mean, are we missing things? Has
it occurred somewhere else? So our Forest Health Protection
Program has provided a number of grants to support State
surveys, including Ohio, New York, and many other States. And
so we are working with the States to really do some aggressive
surveying to really get the extent of this problem so that we
can map it.
Now, we have partnered also with the Cleveland Parks and
Recreation in Ohio to develop and implement what we call a
reporting app, which any citizen or a citizen scientist. You
know, we have different things. But any citizen scientists can
really log in and delineate where they see, you know, the beech
tree and just see where we are seeing some of this. And so we
think that that app is going to do a really good job of helping
us to identify and really help us to map out the extent of
this. But we are dialed in on this issue. We have our
scientists working with other science partners across
particularly the East trying to get a handle on this problem.
But we feel like it is a pretty significant disease that is
beginning to spread at what I would consider a rapid rate.
Mr. Joyce. Well, thank you, and one last quick one. The
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided significant
funding and new authorities to help mitigate catastrophic
wildfires. Chief, can you provide an update on what the Forest
Service is doing to expedite that funding and directives to
help combat wildfires in the West?
Mr. Moore. So, yes, and I don't know if we will run out of
time, but I can certainly give it to you in writing. But in
short, we have developed a strategy. We call it a 10-year
strategy. It is a wildfire risk reduction strategy. We have
also announced the 10 landscapes that we are going to begin the
work in. We are going to focus on high-priority fires sheds,
protecting communities and resources. We are actually funding
about $130 million this year on projects that are ready to go.
And so we looked at the 10 landscapes across 8 States, and we
are beginning work this year on trying to reduce the fire
hazard potential in these different fire sheds.
So this is one of the most aggressive approaches that we
have taken in a very long time. And so we have gone from
developing a strategy, implementing a strategy in less than 7
months, and that is almost a record for us in terms of how
quickly we have moved. But we understand the urgency of this
problem. We have been doing this with our partners, and I have
got to give a lot of credit to our partners. We are all in this
together. We seem to be working seamlessly across many
different perspectives and spectrums. And so I am really
excited about how the community of leaders and partners are
coming together to address this significant issue.
Mr. Joyce. While IIJA is a down payment on the work that
needs to be done, how much funding does the Forest Service
realistically need to make a sizable dent in the backlog of
forest management work?
Mr. Moore. Well, we figure, you know, there is another $20
billion to really get at the heart of this problem. And while
that is a lot of money, when you look at the amount of money we
are spending on suppression, and you look at the amount of
money that we are spending on communities that have been
destroyed, lives that have been turned upside down, it is
really not a sufficient amount compared to the damage of not
doing that and what it is causing to the American people.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you. I yield back, Madam Chair. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you, Mr. Joyce. Mr. Kilmer, do you have
another question you would like to discuss?
Mr. Kilmer. I do. Thanks, Madam Chair. In the first round,
I asked about harvest levels in the near term. I think there is
an understanding that probably the most significant impact in
terms of long term is the forest plan. So I wanted to ask about
forest plan updates. The Northwest Forest Plan was, as you
know, Chief, created at a time of crisis. It wasn't intended to
be extended in perpetuity. It was meant to be revised over
time. I think there is a sense that we have learned more over
time about what works for species, and what works for forest
health, and what is manageable from the standpoint of both
economic and environmental sustainability.
When I got to Congress, I asked about the plan to update
the Northwest Forest Plan. I was told at that time that there
would be an update in the next 5 years. That was 2013. In the
fiscal year 2022 bill that the President recently signed, the
committee requested the Service to create a report on the
current list of forest management plans requiring revision or
completion, a proposed course of action, and a timeline for
compliance. I guess my question is, when can we expect to
receive save that report? And if you have any information on
the plan to update the Northwest Forest Plan, I would sure love
to hear that, or I am happy to wait for the report back from
the language that we put in requesting an update.
Mr. Moore. So the fiscal year 2023 budget does allow us to
really address that issue, Congressman. Now, I will tell you,
when I was in California, I worked with my counterpart, Glenn
Casamassa, there, and we were looking at really being really
aggressive to update the Northwest Forest Plan Area. And so we
had begun conversations with the environmental community,
industry, and a lot of other partners about, you know, looking
at just the scientific literature that is out in those areas.
But as you know probably better than me, support for forest
plan revision, it ebbs and flows. And so whether we are able to
do that or not depends really on how that support ebbs and
flows in terms of getting that work done. But we are pulling
together a report of all the plans that are currently outdated.
There are a significant number of them.
We also are looking at finalizing our plan for how we would
really go about that, and I think that once we do that,
Congressman, we would love to have a conversation with Congress
about what we see, what we think it will take, and get some
support and perspectives from you and others as we look at
trying to finalize that with the administration.
Mr. Kilmer. I appreciate that, and, again, would just once
again extend an invitation to you. We would love to have you
come out to our neck of the woods. I think folks in the Olympic
would love to talk to you about some of these short-term issues
and some of the long-term challenges and how we might get
through them together, so would happily host you. Thank you,
Madam Chair.
Mr. Moore. I would love to visit.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much. Mr. Cartwright do you
have another question you would like to ask?
Mr. Cartwright. I do. Thank you, Chair Pingree. Chief
Moore, I am happy to see you have specifically added language
concerning providing technical and financial assistance for
invasive plants into this State and private forest budgeting
line in this year's request. You and I both know that invasive
plant species can have devastating impacts. The National
Recreation Area in my district, which is the Delaware Water Gap
National Recreation Area, is constantly dealing with the
decline in native plants and the problem of invasive species.
In fact, plants like the Japanese knotweed, very difficult to
eradicate, and they are all over the place. Last year, I
introduced the bipartisan Native Plant Species Pilot Program
Act, and it combats invasive species by establishing a pilot
program to promote and increase the use of native plants within
the National Park Service. Would a similar or analogous program
be beneficial to the Forest Service?
Mr. Moore. So, Congressman, there is no question that non-
native invasive species are really confounding climate
adaptation plans in forest management, and conservation, in
general. You know, for forests to be resilient to climate
change and invasive species, native tree diversity and vigor
must be maintained and enhanced to the greatest extent
possible. Now, our native plant material policy, which was
developed back in 2008, promotes the use of genetically--now
let me get that right--genetically-appropriate, climate-
resilient native plant materials for use in revegetation,
restoration, and rehabilitation of native ecosystems. And so
when you look at the amount of work that we need to do in terms
of revegetating or reforesting these landscapes where we need
to really go in and do some work, that is going to be a really
critical piece of how we do that.
Now, I will just be up front with you. I was once asked by
scientists and, you know, he asked me he said so, you know, the
fact that you don't want to introduce non-native species into
an area doesn't mean that all non-natives are bad. Well, you
know, that is a matter of perspective, right? I think the point
that we are trying to make, though, is that, in many cases, a
lot of non-native invasive species is really creating a problem
for us from a climate perspective, from a forest management
perspective, and really from a perspective of trying to look at
conservation.
And so we are happy to review your legislation that you are
looking at. We are happy to work with your staff to provide
some comments and applicability to Forest Service lands. But I
do think it is a vital and critical thing that we need to pay
attention to, and, again, we would be happy to look at your
legislation, sir.
Mr. Kilmer. I appreciate your attention to that and your
offer to work with us on it, Chief Moore. Thanks very much, and
thanks for your presence here today. I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you, Mr. Cartwright. Mr. Harder, would
you like to ask another question?
Mr. Harder. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Chair Pingree,
and thank you again, Chief, for being here. I wanted to ask
about the hazardous fuel management money that was allocated in
the infrastructure bill. I believe there was about $2\1/2\
billion that was allocated then. We are looking for another
$650 in this budget request to consider. When you look at the
$2.5 billion that was allocated last year, how do you think
about the risk reduction that has happened because of that? How
do you explain the value of where we would be if that money
hadn't actually gone out, and where do you think the remaining
$650 million that we are looking for in this budget request
will get us?
Mr. Moore. Yeah. Congressman Harder, let's look at your
State as an example, and I think it is pretty typical of many
other States. Our approach has really been trying to take the
dollars that we have and give everyone a little bit to try and
get some work done in their areas. The problem with that, and
it has happened over time. It didn't happen right away, but the
problem with that is that the scale of these fires has far
exceeded our current method for trying to provide restoration
and resilience on these landscapes. And let me stick with
California for a minute, but we have many other examples. If I
look at the Caldor fire that happened last year in California,
that fire started down on the Eldorado National Forest, and
that fire started in an area where we had a lot of small
restoration-type projects around that area. We call those
random acts of restoration, but we had a lot of support for the
funding.
What happened when the Caldor fire started, it burned right
through that type of a treatment, and until they got to Lake
Tahoe Basin, it did not slow down. It slowed down there for a
number of reasons. One of the biggest reasons is that we had
restoration treatment over time at scale. And that is further
verified by looking at the fire boundary and how consistent it
was with that landscape level of treatment, the large-scale
treatments.
And so I think a part of solution going forward is not
necessarily doing a lot of those small projects again, but how
do we bring the community of people together to really get at
making the scale of work on the ground match the scale of fires
that we are seeing. And that is why we need a lot of other
entities, like the industry as an example, wood innovation,
which Madam Chairwoman talked about. There are a number of
things that need to take place, and I think we are having an
opportunity through the Collaborative to bring in the
environmental community, industry, and everything in between to
talk about how do we move forward at that landscape scale so
that we get the social license to do what we think needs to
happen on the ground to stop----
Mr. Harder. Thank you, Chief. That is helpful. Just so I
understand, how much of the $2\1/2\ billion that was allocated
last year has been spent, and are we on track to hit the Forest
Service goals in terms of the number of acres on which the
hazardous fuels have been reduced?
Mr. Moore. Yeah, and I probably didn't do a good job. So
last year, our goal was to treat about 3.2 million acres with
that money. Because of the fire situation and other things, we
treated about 2.9 million acres, but those 2.9 million acres or
the 3.2 million acres is what I am talking about. They are
small, random areas of how we treat it. The difference this
year, we are looking at the additional increases to increase
those small plots where we were working to large landscape-type
treatments because we know that that is what is going to stop
how that fire behaves as it moves across the landscape. And so
the answer is we got 2.9 million of the 3.2 we planned to. We
also are looking at about 3.8 million acres in addition to what
we are doing based on the infrastructure dollars. We will
implement that differently than what we have been doing in the
past.
Mr. Harder. I guess my only question, and I know I am
running out of time, is, you know, if we were able to hit 2.9
million acres with $2\1/2\ billion, is an additional $650
million enough to get us where we need to be, because that is
what this budget request is, and it gives me a little bit of
pause because it seems like we might need even more support in
order to make sure that we are protecting as many acres as are
needed. Is that right?
Mr. Moore. Yeah, that is right, and not all acres are the
same. There are some acres we can treat fairly reasonable.
There are some areas that is going to be really expensive to
treat. The closer you get into communities, the more expensive
it is to treat those areas. And so, you know, I feel pretty
optimistic about it. I am happy to have a further conversation
with you and others on these specific plans for how we are
planning to approach the additional dollars and the work that
we are doing. We will also look at unit costs, you know, per-
acre costs to put these treatments on the ground. And so we are
happy to share that with you, and sit down with you, and answer
any detailed questions you might have, Congressman.
Mr. Harder. Thank you so much, Chief. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much for your questions. Well,
we really appreciate, Chief Moore and Ms. Weeks, that you spent
the time with us today, and we had a chance to have this
conversation with you. And I know we will continue to have many
more as we work through the budget process. So I appreciate
your time, your testimony.
And if there are no other questions, this hearing is now
adjourned.
Mr. Moore. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Pingree. Thanks. Thanks, everybody.
[Answers to submitted questions follow:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Thursday, April 28, 2022.
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
WITNESSES
HON. DEB HAALAND, SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
DENISE FLANAGAN, DIRECTOR OF BUDGET, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Ms. Pingree. So, good morning. This hearing will now to
come to order.
As this hearing is fully virtual, we must address a few
housekeeping matters.
For today's meeting, the chair, or staff designated by the
chair, may mute the participants' microphones when they are not
under recognition for the purposes of eliminating inadvertent
background noise. Members are responsible for muting and
unmuting themselves.
If I notice that you have not unmuted yourself, I will ask
you if you would like the staff to unmute you. If you indicate
approval by nodding, staff will unmute your microphone.
I remind all members and witnesses that the 5-minute clock
still applies. If there is a technology issue, we will move to
the next member until the issue is resolved, and you will
retain the balance of your time.
You will notice a clock on your screen that will show how
much time is remaining. At 1 minute remaining, the clock will
turn to yellow. At 30 seconds remaining, I will gently tap the
gavel to remind members that their time is almost expired. When
your time has expired, the clock will turn red, and I will
begin to recognize the next member.
In terms of the speaking order, we will follow the order
set forth in the House rules, beginning with the chair and
ranking member. Then members present at the time the hearing is
called to order will be recognized in order of seniority and,
finally, members not present at the time the hearing is called
to order.
Finally, House rules require me to remind you that we have
set up an email address to which members can send anything they
wish to submit in writing at any of our hearings or markups.
That email address has been provided in advance to your staff.
Okay. Now we can officially start.
So, good morning, Secretary Haaland. We are so excited to
have you with us today, and thank you being here to discuss the
fiscal year 2023 budget request for Department of the Interior.
Joining the Secretary today is Denise Flanagan, the Director of
the Budget.
Our focus for today's hearing is the President's $16.1
billion request for the Department of the Interior, an increase
of $1.9 billion, 12 percent, over the fiscal year 2022 enacted
level. Notable increases include advancing science and
conservation efforts, renewable energy, remediating and
reclaiming orphan oil and gas wells and abandoned mine lands,
upholding our treaty and trust obligations, as well as
bolstering wildland fire management. We are very much looking
forward to a robust discussion on these topics.
I am proud that our fiscal year 2022 bill continued to
build upon the increases this subcommittee has provided since
taking over the majority in fiscal year 2021 to address the
needs of Native Americans and Alaska Natives, preserve the
biodiversity and ecosystem services, and ensure the protection
or our air, water, and natural and cultural resources for
present and future generations.
To illustrate that point, since the last Obama budget, the
subcommittee has provided a 31 percent increase for the U.S.
Geological Survey. For fiscal year 2023, I look forward to
expanding upon that work with significant and impactful funding
that, in tandem with the resources provided in the
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, will enable us to focus
on improving our Nation's economic prosperity while
concurrently addressing the threats of climate change in our
interconnected world.
Secretary Haaland, President Biden has again laid out an
ambitious agenda for the fiscal year 2023. I know you have a
big challenge ahead for the Department to rebuild staff
capacity and morale, reestablish trust in the Department and
its science, and address a myriad of programmatic issues such
as Indian education, wild horses and burros, and clean energy
development.
I hope our discussion today will allow us the opportunity
to better understand your priorities, both short term and long
term, as well as discuss how the subcommittee can advance the
important work of the Department of the Interior and achieve
our mutual goals and objectives.
I would now like to yield to our ranking member, Mr. Joyce,
for his opening remarks.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you, Madam Chair.
It is my honor to join you in welcoming back Secretary Deb
Haaland and her Director of Budget, Ms. Denise Flanagan.
I also want to thank you, Madam Secretary, for coming to
Cleveland, Ohio, and visiting northeastern Ohio last month. I
appreciated talking with some of our constituents about our
importance in urban reforestation and the habitat restoration
in underserved communities in the Cleveland area and the
significant role spending time outside played in our lives as
children.
As we learned from these constituents, and as I mentioned
in the hearing last year, conserving our Nation's natural
resources, preserving our diverse cultural heritage, and
upholding our trust responsibilities are goals we all share.
And while we may disagree on many of the details, we remain
united in pursuit of those goals.
To that end, the Department's fiscal year 2023 budget
proposal before this subcommittee is over $16 billion, a 14
percent increase over fiscal year 2022. This proposed increase
comes on the heels of a nearly 6 percent increase for fiscal
year 2022 and a $20 billion supplemental appropriation in the
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Some are calling these investments a ``once in a lifetime
opportunity.'' I remain deeply concerned that the deficit
spending is getting worse, not better. It is imperative that
the Federal Government finds a way to live within its means so
that we do not saddle future generations with even more
economic burden than what already awaits them.
Inflation is at a 40-year high, due in part to excessive
Government spending. Interest rates are on the verge of
climbing again, which would impact everything from borrowing
for a new home to the cost of servicing this Nation's $30
trillion national debt. Until the President's fiscal year 2023
budget proposal is coupled with credible offsets and bipartisan
plans for long-term deficit reduction, I believe the proposal
before us today for the Department of the Interior is excessive
and unrealistic.
In addition to the spending, what concerns me most is that
the proposal continues America's fall from energy independence
under this administration. Last year, the administration
announced a freeze on new Federal leases and canceled pipelines
that would have fed U.S. refineries and yet lifted sanctions to
allow Russia to profit from its own oil. This year, this
administration is drawing down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve
to dangerously low levels, is vilifying domestic producers for
delayed use of existing leases that are slowed by environmental
reviews and litigation, and begging Saudi Arabia and Venezuela
to sell us more oil, and has finally come around to the
realization that buying Russian oil isn't sound policy.
The Department's fiscal year 2023 budget makes no mention
of meeting its mandate for a 5-year offshore leasing plan,
which is set to expire on June 30 and is a prerequisite for any
new offshore oil and gas lease sales. Further, the budget makes
no mention of resuming mandated quarterly onshore lease sales.
Instead, the budget proposes new and increased fees to
further disincentivize production. Just days ago, when the
administration finally scheduled a handful of onshore lease
sales, the Department highlighted that these sales constituted
an 80 percent reduction in the onshore acreage nominated for
leasing and increase in royalty rates.
Let me be clear. We share the same goal of clean,
affordable, reliable energy, but we disagree on the speed and
the approach for achieving it.
The U.S. and most of the world are dependent upon fossil
energy for the foreseeable future, whether this administration
likes it or not. As has become painfully apparent, shutting off
our own supplies doesn't speed our transition to renewable
energy. It only makes us more dependent on others.
Top-down policies that force hardships on Americans never
works when the costs outweigh the benefits on their everyday
lives. The price of a gallon of gasoline is more than $4, and
Americans are feeling the pain not only at the pump, but
throughout the supply chain. A stunning recent poll by Consumer
Energy Alliance found that a majority of Americans of every
age, gender, race, ethnic, geographic, and political
demographic support immediate domestic energy production over
increased imports.
Madam Secretary, I once again urge you not to lock out
America for the domestic energy and minerals it needs for a
smooth transition to a cleaner energy future and work with us
to help our constituents mitigate climate risk in their
everyday lives while we pursue realistic free market and
innovative solutions to climate change and protect the
interests of the American people, our communities, and our
country's economic well-being.
Thank you again for being here today, Madam Secretary. I
look forward to our discussion.
And thank you as always, Chair Pingree, for yielding time.
I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you so much, Mr. Joyce.
And Secretary Haaland, we are looking forward to hearing
from you. Please go ahead.
Secretary Haaland. Thank you so much, Madam Chair, Ranking
Member Joyce, members of the subcommittee. It is an honor and
privilege for me to be here on the ancestral homelands of the
Anacostan and Piscataway people to speak with you today on
behalf of the President's 2023 budget for the Department of the
Interior.
Thank you for your support of Interior's programs in the
2022 omnibus appropriation. I appreciate your efforts to build
capacity within the Department and to fully fund our fixed
costs, which are must-pay bills.
I have had the honor of being the Secretary of the Interior
for over a year now, and I recognize the importance of this
moment for the future of the Department and for our country.
Through my travels and while working here in D.C., I have
seen firsthand how every day in every corner of the country our
employees go to work with a focus on results. They work with
their local communities, States, tribal nations, and other
partners to conserve and steward our Nation's natural resources
and cultural heritage for the benefit of everyone. Interior's
programs are helping generate jobs, grow the economy, and build
resilience to the challenges of our changing climate.
I am grateful to have visited many of you in your home
districts and meet the great people you represent. The work we
do would not be possible without your leadership and support,
and I look forward to our continued partnership.
Working together, we have the ability to make tangible
differences in the lives of families across the country. With
your support, we have already made great progress this year.
We took steps to accelerate the development of renewable
energy on public lands and waters. We launched the first
Federal Boarding School Initiative to address the
intergenerational impact of Indian boarding schools, deployed
resources to build resilience to address the drought crisis,
pursued justice for missing and murdered indigenous people and
worked to keep tribal communities safe, and helped communities
prepare against the threat of wildland fire by strengthening
our Federal firefighting workforce and the resilience of our
lands.
We also began implementing the bipartisan infrastructure
law, once in a generation investments that will help
communities tackle the climate crisis while creating jobs,
advancing environmental justice, and boosting local economies.
This funding is already at work at Interior, kickstarting
ongoing efforts to address intensifying drought, wildfires,
flooding, and legacy pollution.
The President's 2023 budget request complements this with a
request of $18.1 billion for the Interior Department. Of this,
$16.6 billion is within the jurisdiction of this subcommittee.
Our total request is a 12 percent increase from the 2022
enacted appropriation.
Specifically, the President's budget invests in our country
with an unprecedented total of $4.5 billion for Indian Affairs
programs focused on tribal sovereignty and stronger tribal
communities.
Up to $1.5 billion for wildland fire management to increase
firefighting capacity, continue the transformation to a more
permanent and professional wildland fire workforce, and ensure
Federal firefighters are paid at least $15 an hour.
A total of $4.9 billion across Interior to strengthen
natural resource management and improve the resilience of
tribal and Interior-managed lands.
$125 million to advance the President's ambitious clean
energy goals by increasing offshore wind energy power
generation and permitting of onshore renewable energy
technologies.
More than $1.4 billion for research and development
programs across the Department to ensure science continues to
underpin Interior's core mission activities, and implementation
of our Department-wide diversity, equity, inclusion, and
accessibility initiative to proactively advance equity, civil
rights, racial justice, and equal opportunity.
I have great ambitions for the Department of the Interior
and what we can accomplish on behalf of the American people.
Working together, we can do more to create good-paying union
jobs, increase the resilience of our lands, expand our ability
to fight wildland fires, and mitigate drought, strengthen
Tribal Nations, and improve the lives of Americans everywhere.
I look forward to continuing our strong partnership.
In conclusion, we are doing our part to advance priorities
that build a better America. Thank you again for having me, and
I am happy to answer any questions you may have.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much, Madam Secretary. We are
so pleased to have you with us this morning, and I know we are
going to have a lively discussion with a lot of questions
coming from the committee.
I wanted to start with a very specific issue that actually
relates to the wonderful visit we had with you in the State of
Maine, and that is regarding the Indian Boarding School
Initiative.
In fiscal year 2022, Congress provided $7 million for the
Indian Boarding School Initiative, and I know this initiative
is a personal priority for you. Last June, you and I had the
wonderful experience, when you visited Acadia National Park, of
joining with the Wabanaki and other tribal leaders in Maine to
welcome the sun, which I think was around 4:00 in the morning--
a very early start to our day--and take part in a talking
circle with the tribal leaders. They shared their experiences
with the devastating intergenerational trauma that has been
caused by these Indian boarding schools.
Immediately after that visit, you signed a secretarial
order requiring the Department to create a plan for the Indian
Boarding School Initiative. I appreciate that you have done
this. I want to commend you for that. And I just want to hear a
little more about the progress that has been made by the
Department.
So can you talk about that to us, about the Department's
work on this initiative that is so important? How are the funds
we provided being used to support the initiative? I understand
a report is being prepared, and I am curious to know when that
will be finalized. So would love to hear from you on that.
Secretary Haaland. Thank you very much, Chair Pingree.
And yes, thank you. The trip to your State was really a
wonderful experience for me, and I appreciated your hosting us.
So thank you very much.
And I appreciate your interest and the committee's interest
in this issue. Some of you may have read my op-ed. I talked
about my grandparents being taken away from their families when
they were both 8 years old and sent to boarding school for 5
years, away from their mothers, away from their community. So
it is important for me to make sure that people know we care
about this issue, and that we are doing something about it,
giving them a chance to heal from this intergenerational
trauma.
We are working on the Boarding School Initiative. It should
be out very soon. We are incredibly grateful for the $7 million
in the 2022 funding. Thank you very much for that. That will
help us to continue to work on this issue.
Part of it is making sure that we are really connecting
with tribes. Tribal consultation has been very important in
this to make sure we are doing what various tribes would like
us to do. Tribes have different customs, different traditions.
Some may want to repatriate or bring back their children who
have been buried away from their homeland. Others may not want
to.
So it will depend on what each individual tribe wants to
do, but I think the initial start in getting a full listing of
exactly what Federal boarding schools were in this country,
where burial sites are, what tribes were relegated to these
various boarding schools, those are the important facts that we
are working on now and will get out soon. And of course, we
will update you when we have some news about the rollout of the
first report.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you. Thanks so much for that.
I will now turn over to Ranking Member Joyce to see if he
has any questions.
Mr. Joyce. Just a few. Thank you, Madam Chair.
As you know, Secretary Haaland, the President on day one
issued an executive order temporarily banning new oil and gas
leasing on the Federal estate and directed the Department to
conduct a thorough review. The Department delivered its report
last November. It has been almost 18 months since a lease sale
has been signed on the Federal estate.
On April 18, the White House press secretary reiterated
that the administration's policy is to ban additional oil and
gas leasing on Federal lands. As you also know, the law
requires quarterly lease sales. Can you please clarify the
administration's position? And if the law requires the
administration to conduct oil and gas leasing, how can it be
the administration's policy to ban such leasing?
Secretary Haaland. Ranking Member Joyce, thank you so much
for the question.
And as you may know, the Department was required by Federal
court injunction, which the Department is appealing, to move
forward with onshore oil and gas leases. But knowing that we
had to move forward, we made sure that the lease sales
reflected the highest and best use of public lands.
I said many times that our public lands belong to every
single American, and so we felt the need to include significant
reforms that would benefit taxpayers. We want to make sure that
we are consulting with tribes, and taking climate change into
account because this is really the challenge of our time.
I will continue to implement the oil and gas program in a
way that is consistent with the law and with my authority as
Secretary. I am not able to make specific announcements right
now, but please know that there are about 9,000 permits
currently available to the oil companies that have not been
drilled, as well as 11 million acres of land that has been
leased.
So I feel that the industry is set, and we are continuing
to work in the best way possible.
Mr. Joyce. I hear that a lot. Unfortunately, if by
regulation and design they can't exercise those leases and
execute on those leases, the fact we have 9,000 leases doesn't
make a lot of difference to our supply. But if this
Department's recent announcement for limited onshore leasing is
driven by a court order, then is it fair to say that the
administration would still have a ban on new leasing if it
weren't for the courts? And if so, then why does the ban
continue even after the Department delivered its report,
pursuant to the executive order?
Secretary Haaland. With all due respect, Ranking Member
Joyce, there is no ban on leasing right now. And the 9,000
permits, those have already been approved, and the industry is
free to use those permits in the way they see fit. They just
haven't acted on those.
Permitting actually continues on the land that has already
been leased, and so, as I mentioned, I feel the industry is
set. And in fact, production is essentially higher than it has
been in a couple decades. So on the Federal lands, we are doing
what we need to do, and we are following the law and making
sure that we are moving those issues forward.
Mr. Joyce. I beg to differ with you there, Madam Secretary,
but I will yield back, Madam Chair, because I know other
members of this fine committee all wanted to ask questions as
well.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much, Mr. Joyce.
Chair McCollum, do you have questions this morning?
Ms. McCollum. Yes, I do. And first, to my fellow committee
members, I apologize for the shaky connection we had yesterday.
Secretary Haaland, we are so happy to have you back, and I
am proud, very proud of the increases that this subcommittee
provided under the leadership of Chair Pingree for 2022. Using
the 2023 budget request as a base, I hope we can build on that
success to deliver more resources to implement the Department's
broad mission, including the conservation of our public lands
and ecosystem, protecting biodiversity, endangered species, and
addressing climate change with scientific research.
But I am going to focus on a part of the Interior's budget
that funds our trust and treaty obligations to tribal nations,
the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian
Education. First, I want to applaud you and President Biden for
listening to tribal leaders who have advocated for embracing
and expanding the Tiwahe Initiative. Fiscal year 2023 budget
request will not only sustain funding for existing Tiwahe
sites, including the Red Lake Nation in Minnesota, but allow
for additional tribal nations to participate in this holistic,
culturally affirming approach to family and community.
The President's budget also includes significant increases
for the Bureau of Indian Education construction. This
committee, as you know, works in a very strong bipartisan--I
say nonpartisan--fashion, and we have prioritized children
because we believe no child should attend a school with exposed
wires, cracked walls, insufficient heat or air conditioning,
many of the problems that we see in BIE schools.
So the fiscal year 2022 funding that this subcommittee
provided BIE replacement projects will fund the completion of
three schools. The 2023 proposal would fund an additional six,
but we know that there is still not enough funding to fill out
the priority list.
Could you let us know how the Department is looking at
issuing new priority replacement school lists to inform tribal
leaders and this subcommittee which schools are next in line?
And I want to make clear, I wished every single school was next
in line, but I know you are faced with hard choices.
Secretary Haaland. Thank you very much, Congresswoman, and
I appreciate you caring so much about Indian Country in this
way.
Yes, we wish we could replace every single school that
needs to be replaced as well. But for the time being, there
will be six replacement school projects to be started in 2023--
the Cheyenne-Eagle Butte School in South Dakota, the Cottonwood
Day School in Arizona, the Little Wound Day School in South
Dakota, Standing Rock Community School in New Mexico, Pierre
Indian Learning Center in South Dakota, and Santa Rosa Day
School in Arizona.
There are many more. It will take us a couple decades at
this funding level to get to the schools that need to be
replaced as a priority. We will continue to work on that as we
can but certainly recognize the need in Indian Country for
children to attend schools that are safe and a place where they
can truly learn.
Ms. McCollum. Serving on the authorization committee
currently this year, as well as on the Appropriations Committee
that oversees this, I hesitate to speak for Mr. Simpson, but we
have traveled in Indian Country ourselves. So we have seen the
condition of the schools and the roads. And whatever authority
you need in order to hold contractors accountable and have
better contract outcome is something that I know I would look
forward to working with you on.
Mr. Calvert, when he was chair, we were just shocked at the
condition at which some of the schools actually were built at,
with not having the right kind of oversight on construction
done by the Bureau. So if you need more authority with that or
something different in the contracts, please let us know so we
can be of help.
Thank you.
Secretary Haaland. Thank you very much.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much. Mr. Simpson, do you have
questions this morning?
Mr. Simpson. Yes, thank you.
I agree with what Representative McCollum just said about
the schools and the need to address those, and we can't wait
two decades. That is somebody is born and they become an adult
before we can improve their school, that is just too long. We
have got to do something about this.
But let me, first of all, Secretary, thank you for your
participation with CEQ and with other agencies in addressing a
perplexing problem in the Pacific Northwest dealing with salmon
and salmon recovery of the major species up there and the
importance that that is to the tribes and, actually, to all of
the Pacific Northwest. So I appreciate your participation in
that collaboration that you are working on.
Let me ask a couple of questions first. With the 6 percent
increase that we had last year and the 12 percent proposed this
year, we are still facing a real challenge, and that is with
finding employees. Everywhere I go, not just in Idaho, but
across the country, BLM, other agencies--and this is not just
an Interior problem. I also find it in the Department of
Agriculture, with ARS or Forest Service or others. We are
having trouble getting our job done because we can't get the
employees or we are so behind on employees. What is the problem
there? Are we having problems hiring people to do the jobs and
stuff?
As an example, when we authorized the Great American
Outdoors Act, there is an awful lot of programs in there that
we wanted to see started and stuff, but they are telling me
that the delays in getting the projects approved and stuff are
because we don't have the employees to approve those projects
and stuff. What is the problem there?
Secretary Haaland. Thank you so much for the question,
Congressman Simpson. And thank you for recognizing this issue.
As I am traveling across the country, everywhere I go, I
make it a point to meet personally with DOI employees. We have
some of the best employees, I think, in the Federal Government,
who are very dedicated, dedicated to our mission. And I know it
is a priority for me, working to build up our workforce
capacity across the Department.
We have a special emphasis right now in certain areas. One
is wildland fire, and you probably have seen the wildland fires
across the Southwest right now, namely in my State of New
Mexico. So the wildfire preparedness in the BLM is something
that we are paying very close attention to and working to
fulfill.
Being able to pay firefighters a little bit more money is
helping us to recruit some folks there, and also with the land
management bureaus, the national parks, the national wildlife
refuges, you probably have seen there has been up to a 60
percent increase in visitation in some of these areas across
the country, namely since COVID happened. People just find the
need to get outdoors more than they have in the past.
So those are all priorities for us. We are going to focus
on positions needed to break logjams in human resources and
contracting. We are expanding access to qualified candidate
lists across the bureaus, and in some cases, we are working
with OPM to address competitive hiring markets.
So we will continue to pay attention to this. I appreciate
your interest in it. We are always happy to make sure that we
give you updates. Don't hesitate to reach out to us, and if we
have anything else to add, we will absolutely keep you
informed.
Mr. Simpson. Well, I appreciate that. But basically, we can
put all the money into a program in the world. If we don't have
the personnel to carry out the projects and so forth that is
necessary, it doesn't really do any good. So those personnel
and making sure that we have sufficient personnel in the right
areas is something that is critical for us.
And along those same lines, you talked about paying
firefighters. I went out to the Fort Hall Indian Reservation,
where we did a community-financed project to help them rebuild
their fire station out there that needed to get done, and what
I found out from the policemen and the firemen out there, one
of their biggest challenges is they are the training ground for
local community fire stations in Blackfoot, Pocatello, Idaho
Falls.
They train them in Fort Hall. As soon as they get trained,
they get hired at a higher pay rate in Blackfoot or in
Pocatello and leave. So how do we keep those?
And we will talk about this later because my time is
running out, but we have got to find a way to keep these people
on the reservation, be able to pay them enough so that they can
stay with the organizations that have trained them. But we will
talk about that later.
I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you, Mr. Simpson. That is certainly an
issue I have heard about. So I hope we will get a chance to
discuss that.
Next, Mr. Kilmer, do you have questions this morning?
Mr. Kilmer. I do. Thanks, Madam Chair.
And thanks, Madam Secretary, for being with us and for your
leadership and your commitment to ensuring the Federal
Government fulfills its unmet treaty and trust responsibilities
to Native American communities.
I am really grateful for your visit out to my neck of the
woods last summer to tour the Quinault Indian Nation's Taholah
Village Relocation Project, which is an effort to move that
village to higher ground in response to increasing threats from
climate change and rising sea levels and erosion and flooding
and tsunami risk. Thank you for coming to see these challenges
firsthand and meeting with tribal leaders from across the
region I represent.
And as you will recall, it is not just the Quinault that
face urgent and existential threats exacerbated by climate
change, as you heard during your visit. The Quileute Tribal
School in La Push is in the crosshairs of a rising ocean. The
Hoh Indian Tribe is located in a tsunami flood zone, and the
only developed road in and out of the reservation is regularly
impassable as a result of heavy storms.
The Makah Indian Tribe urgently needs to relocate their
health center, which is not only in a tsunami zone, but also a
cell and Internet service shadow that impedes emergency
communication. So climate change and coastal challenges are
real threats, and they also threaten significant cultural
landmarks and heritage.
Just earlier this week, I spoke with several tribal
historic preservation officers who perform critical work
protecting important cultural sites. They told me that
increasing erosion caused by rising oceans have exposed
ancestral remains and resting places. Unfortunately, they don't
have the resources they need to monitor and mitigate that
erosion risk.
So I share these details in part because I want to just
emphasize the sheer need and the importance of urgent and bold
action, and I know that you share that sense of urgency. And it
is why I appreciate your commitment to addressing climate
challenges and building resilient communities during your first
year as Secretary, and in this year's budget proposal, I am
glad you specifically highlighted the $62 million for the
Tribal Climate Resilience Program in this year's budget
request, which is almost double the 2022 enacted level. I am
also pleased that this committee passed nearly $3.6 million in
community project funding to help with the relocation efforts
of three tribes in my neck of the woods that are trying to move
to higher ground.
But I think we know that addressing these challenges fully
will require significant investment above and beyond what we
have done so far. As NCAI president and Quinault Vice President
Fawn Sharp testified to our committee earlier this month, the
cost of the Quinault relocation project alone is $180 million.
So we are talking about literally relocating entire
communities. That is homes and schools and health clinics and
justice centers and community centers and more.
So, one, I just want to hear your thoughts on how your
agency and the Biden administration can work with Congress to
develop and execute a more comprehensive and coordinated plan
to help tribes that are facing imminent displacement from their
ancestral homelands and their territory that they have occupied
since immemorial due to climate change and coastal erosion. And
secondly, what do you need from us? What does the
administration need from this subcommittee so that we can be
good partners to you in this effort?
Secretary Haaland. Thank you very much, Congressman, and
thank you for your dedication to Indian Country not only in
your district, but across the country. It is very much
appreciated, given the mission of the Department of the
Interior.
Yes, everything you said I completely agree with,
especially the part about me coming to your district. Thank you
for being such a wonderful host and I thoroughly enjoyed the
opportunity to be with the chair and the vice chair.
You know, funding is one thing. Yes, it is an expensive
undertaking. There are tribes in Alaska as well that are
falling victim to coastal erosion. A lot of those communities
are on permafrost that is melting currently.
And all the funding in the world would really help these
tribes when they need to relocate, but I think one of the most
important things that you spoke about and that we are committed
to is tribal consultation. These tribes, that is their
ancestral homeland. They don't know where to live anywhere
else.
Often, tribes have been relocated at the behest of the
Federal Government. But for certain tribes who have been in the
same place since time immemorial, it is very difficult--it is
emotional, and it is spiritual--it is a shock to their
spiritual well-being when they have to move from a land that
means a tremendous amount to them.
So absolutely putting tribal consultation as a priority is
something that we feel very committed to. How does the tribe
want to move? How do they want to plan, and where do they want
to plan? These are all things that we have to take into
consideration, and we do that.
Later this summer, BIA will announce bipartisan
infrastructural allocations for community relocation
demonstration pilot sites. Given the estimated $5 billion cost
to relocate communities, in Alaska and the Lower 48, we will
need your help. So we would love to make sure we are staying in
touch with you.
I also want to add that President Biden has charged us all
with an ``all of Government'' approach to Indian Country. It is
not just the Department of the Interior that is working on
these issues. It is every other department. It is the
Department of Education when schools need to move. It is the
Environmental Protection Agency. It is the Department of
Energy. It is Housing and Urban Development.
All of us are charged with ensuring that we are giving
Indian Country what they need, and certainly, when a whole
community is relocating, all of us will be responsible for
making sure it is a successful move.
So, we are always here to discuss this with you further.
Don't hesitate to reach out to us if we can answer any specific
questions, and I appreciate the question.
Mr. Kilmer. Thank you, Madam Secretary.
Thank you, Madam Chair, for giving us a little extra time
on this subject. Thank you. I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. An important topic, and I am looking forward
to hearing more.
Mr. Stewart, do you have questions this morning?
Mr. Stewart. I do. Thanks, Chairwoman.
And Madam Secretary, thanks for joining with us, and thanks
for the work that you do.
You will forgive me. I want to emphasize my agreement with
Ranking Member Joyce and his concerns regarding energy and oil
production in the West. I mean, one of the first things the
administration did was we could argue over the numbers or
whether they shut it down or just made it very, very
restrictive, but oil and gas permitting in the West, ANWAR,
offshore.
A greater concern is the demonization of the oil and gas
industry, which is an industry that every American depends on,
and the attempts to demonetize them, make it hard for them to
get the financing that they need.
And the bottom line, Madam Secretary, is it leads to, as
has been pointed out, nearly doubling in oil and gas prices and
energy prices. And if you are a working family, if you are the
working poor, this is a real challenge for people. And so we
hope we can work with you in the future as we try to take
advantage of our own natural resources here, and so we don't
have to go to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and Iraq and ask them
to increase their gas and oil production.
Two questions for you, if I could, Madam Secretary, and I
think they are things that we can work together on, at least I
hope we can. They are local issues, but very important to my
constituents.
A good friend of mine, one of the great sheriffs that we
have in my district--and I would argue in the entire State or
country--is a friend of mine, Sheriff Perkins. Calf Creek Falls
is a beautiful area in southern Utah. It is part of the Grand
Escalante National Monument. It is such a beautiful place that
it is an area that I have asked that we could designate as a
national park.
Many, many visitors take the 3-hour hike to Calf Creek
Falls. It is very, very remote, as you can imagine, and very
difficult to provide for search and rescue and, many cases, the
actual rescue.
It is so difficult that Sheriff Perkins can't get
volunteers to go make these--carry people out who have been
sick or injured. Three hours to get in, more than 3 hours to
get out. Takes a 12-man team. And as I said, he just can't get
people to do it. It is so difficult, so dangerous, so
exhausting.
Here is a very simple solution. All we have to do is clear
out some willows. We don't have to do any excavation. We don't
have to build any structures, cut any trees. If we could just
clear out some willows, we could provide a landing area for
rescue helicopters, which could do this flight in about 20
minutes. And yet we have been unable to do that. It really is a
life or death situation.
Madam Secretary, can we count on you to work with us to
implement a solution that we know will save lives and make this
area actually safer and more accessible to people?
Secretary Haaland. Thank you very much, Congressman.
I appreciate knowing about this. Of course, we are always
willing to talk with you. We are always willing to work with
you. We feel very committed to the safety of any American who
is out in an outdoor Federal space.
We will be more than happy to follow up with you on this
issue.
Mr. Stewart. Yes.
Secretary Haaland. There is probably a lot more to it than
just thinking about all the things involved with an issue like
that.
Mr. Stewart. Yes.
Secretary Haaland. We would be more than happy to follow up
with you on it.
Mr. Stewart. Okay. Thank you. And that is what I was hoping
you would say, and of course, I suspected you wouldn't be aware
of this issue. There is no way you could be. It was, as I say,
a local issue.
And Madam Secretary, again, if we were asking for a great
excavation or a change in the landscape or anything like that,
I would understand the hesitancy of the administration, but it
really is a simple solution. It is just some willows that we
would be able to clear, and it would be--as I said, it really
is a life or death situation now.
One other thing, if I could mention it really quickly in
the 55 seconds that I have left--and again, this is something
that we would look forward to working with you. And that is we
have a bit of a conflict in Bryce Canyon National Park. We have
the concessionaires, which we support, and I know that you do
as well. They take these horse guides down the trails.
There is a bit of a conflict between the concessionaires
and then a large number of private individuals who are doing
the same thing. We think it has become a bit of a safety issue
as well, and we would ask once again your commitment to work
with us to try to find a solution that enhances the experience
for people, but also leads to additional safety.
Secretary Haaland. Absolutely. Very happy to follow up with
you on this.
As you know, we are very proud that we now have onboard the
National Park Service Director, Chuck Sams. He is top-notch. I
will make sure that we are in touch with you about this issue.
Mr. Stewart. Thank you so much for your help. We look
forward to working with you.
And thanks, Madam Chair.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you so much. Mr. Harder, questions from
you this morning?
Mr. Harder. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Chair Pingree.
And Secretary Haaland, it is so good to see you. I smile
every time I say ``Secretary Haaland.'' It is great to see you
still in this position and to see your leadership of the
Department.
I will join many of my colleagues in thanking you for your
visit to my district. One of the things that we talked about
when you came out was the impact that the Western drought is
having. And since that visit, things have only gotten worse.
You heard from a lot of the farmers in our area, and one of the
things that has come up again and again in our discussions is
people looking at this year, seeing the limited snow pack and
fearing that we could be headed into an even tougher third year
when our reservoirs are even lower than they have been.
I wanted to get a progress report on the investments in
Western water infrastructure that were passed last year in the
bipartisan infrastructure law. There was about $1.7 billion
that was allocated to Western water infrastructure in that. It
is one thing to have it allocated. It is another thing to get
it out the door and making sure that it is going to good
projects that are putting shovels in the dirt.
Could you give us a progress report on how the Department
has been using those funds and what projects we might be
anticipating that being invested in?
Secretary Haaland. Thank you so much, Congressman.
Yes, I fully understand the severity of the drought. We
have staff here at the Department who work on that issue every
single day. So I want you to know that it is a top priority for
us, and our heart goes out to so many people who are feeling
the negative effects of that drought.
The significant investment in drought and water
infrastructure available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure
bill and supplemental funding is much needed, and it is very
much appreciated. It is important that we leverage this once in
a lifetime investment to get the most benefit for those
communities being hit by drought.
Reclamation is taking this responsibility seriously. There
is a robust program management plan in place. A team of leaders
across Reclamation's regions and directorates addresses each
program area funded through the bill. And detailed spending
plans for 2022 and 2023 are publicly available. We will
absolutely make sure that we get you a copy of that forwarded
to your staff so that you have it on hand.
And of course, Reclamation is advancing various water
storage and conveyance projects under the bill that will
address water scarcity and enhance operational flexibility.
Reclamation has and will also target projects that advance the
statutory intent.
It is an issue that, as I said, we work on every single
day, and we know how much you care about it. So we will
continue to make sure that we are connecting with the local
folks on the ground there and do our very best.
Mr. Harder. Thank you. I really appreciate that.
And I would just underline here that I think implementation
of this bill is actually more important than the dollars that
were allocated to begin with. I think one of the things that we
found again and again with water infrastructure is it can be
one thing to get the dollars in a bank account. It can be
another to actually make sure that they go out the door.
We passed a water bond in California a few years ago that
was well-intentioned. And yet, even in the midst of a historic
drought like the one we are seeing, a lot of that money has not
actually gone toward projects that are desperately needed, and
I want to make sure that we get this right here.
Do you have a sense of how much of that $1.7 billion has
actually been invested in projects so far, or can you give us
some sort of a timeline of when you would expect that money to
actually be fully invested?
Secretary Haaland. Congressman, I appreciate the question.
I really feel the need to make sure that Reclamation follows up
with you directly. I don't want to misquote or misstate
anything. But I will make sure that they get to you and answer
your question specifically so that we can be on the same page.
Mr. Harder. Perfect. That sounds great. That would be very
helpful. It would just be great to get some sort of a timeline.
I know it to be a lot to really work out these agreements with
individual agencies. And obviously, there are a lot of projects
in our neck of the woods that we have our eye on, and we want
to make sure, especially in the drought that we are seeing
right now, that that money is actually invested in the types of
projects that we know are very much in need.
So thank you so much for your leadership, and I will yield
back the remaining 4 seconds of my time.
Ms. Pingree. That is a very generous yielding back there.
So, Mr. Amodei, do you have questions this morning?
Mr. Amodei. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I do.
Good morning, Madam Secretary. It is good to see you.
And I am going to kind of take the same route that some
other members have taken that there are some things we would
like to interact with your staff with, but we won't try to do
it in the magic 5 minutes of this context. And I will give you
a little heads-up on some of them.
Obviously, we want to talk about how the administration's
more recent announcement in terms of supporting a green energy
agenda, what they have announced that they are going to be
doing through your Department, how that meshes with how it
helps and arguably doesn't help or whatever. But that is a
discussion that is better with staff.
But I want to put something on your radar screen because
there has been an application in Nevada for a land withdrawal
by a fellow administration agency, NASA. And so that is fine.
You know, they have got a satellite GPS kind of station in
Railroad Valley, Nevada, and they are concerned about that
valley maybe being altered--although there is no present
threat--altered by potential lithium exploration and stuff like
that.
So, great. They have applied, Madam Secretary, and they are
going through the NEPA process, all well and good. Story is
fine so far. Until we get to the part where this agency in NEPA
had a request from the county that has planning and zoning
jurisdiction over Railroad Valley to be a cooperating agency.
Now you know, and everybody on this committee knows, the
NEPA process well enough. It is like they just want to be made
a cooperating agency so that they can provide their input
directly since it is located in their county. And with all due
respect to the folks at the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, they have said no.
Now, as a credit to your folks in the Bureau of Land
Management, you know, your State people, the district managers,
they are kind of like, hey, well, you know, whatever. And
NASA's response is, oh, well, we will certainly take whatever
they have to say into account. But--and these are my words,
nobody else's--but we just have the impression that it is less
complicated if we don't let them be a cooperating agency.
So let me touch rather quick. Ultimately, you will make the
decision on that land withdrawal, and that is great. But I also
think that we all have an obligation to respect the system. And
so when somebody asks to be a cooperating agency who is the
county in which the application is made, and your people have
been told no, and BLM--by NASA.
You will get a kick out of this. So I said, okay, I want to
be a cooperating agency as a Member of Congress with oversight
authority and budget authority over you. Guess what? They
basically turned the volume off on me. Now that won't be the
last word, but I am sitting here going this is phenomenal
procedural arrogance in the part of--and it is going to be your
guys' stuff.
So the reason I told you all that is we are going to be
asking to get on whoever the appropriate person at the
Department of the Interior's calendar, along with the BLM
person, to say, hey, as the agency who ultimately is going to
make the decision because NASA had to apply at BLM, it is like
can we please show a little respect for the NEPA process other
than as the applicant?
Now I get if it was something where--but it is like, Jesus,
if the county in which it is located is told no by an agency, I
mean, what does that say for our process? So, anyhow, I just
wanted to give you a heads-up on that where it is like we would
really like to work--it is like, listen, BLM and Interior will
make whatever decision they want after taking all the evidence,
which is fine. But to tell somebody they are not welcome to
have a voice in the process formally? I just--it is like, well,
how disrespectful to the whole NEPA process.
So we will look forward to talking to you about that, and
like I said, there are a couple of other things. But I wanted
to put that on your radar screen because I have never seen that
in all the time, regardless of what you think about NEPA, where
you are going, no, you are not welcome to come talk, even
though it is in your county. Holy mackerel.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Secretary Haaland. Congressman, just very quickly, I will
say that I believe very strongly that stakeholders deserve to
be heard. I appreciate you going into detail about this, and I
will make sure that our BLM Director follows up with you.
Mr. Amodei. Great. Thank you. I look forward to speaking
with you guys on it.
Madam Chair, I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Yes, thank you so much. Next we have
Representative Lee.
Mrs. Lee. Thank you, Madam Chair and Ranking Member Joyce,
for hosting today's hearing.
It is great to see you, Madam Secretary, and as mentioned
here by many people, thank you for taking the time to come
visit my district and our State. And as you know, no State
south of Alaska has more Federal lands than the State of
Nevada, most of which is overseen by the BLM. And as Member
Simpson said here that the staffing shortage has been an issue
across the West, and it has inhibited us from meeting some
public lands challenges with the urgency they deserve.
In Clark County, in my district, which has fully funded
parks and trails projects on BLM lands and already funded with
local funds, it could currently take up to 2 years or more for
BLM to sign off on the Recreation and Public Purposes Act
leases that would allow these counties to move these projects
forward and, more importantly, help the Department carry out
the America the Beautiful Initiative.
Could you--other than staffing, could you speak to why this
approval process takes so long and what we can be doing
together to help expedite it?
Secretary Haaland. Thank you so much for the question,
Congresswoman, and I appreciate knowing how you feel about
this.
Yes, we recognize that building capacity in the BLM is a
priority for us, and we are working on ways to expedite hiring
for positions that support operations such as contracting
officers, engineers, and human resources. All those efforts are
ongoing, and I want you to know that we are working on it, and
we are happy to follow up with you in any way, shape, or form
that we can. But please know that we recognize this is an
issue, and we are doing our best to remedy it.
Mrs. Lee. Thank you. Yes, we will follow up on that.
Maybe there is a way where we can prioritize projects that
have the funding, are sort of shovel ready, and get them out
the door to ease up some of this backlog. And again, I
completely understand the staffing issue and so have some
sympathy on that as well, but I would love to see those
projects move forward.
I want to turn now to renewable energy. And as we know, it
is imperative to make this transition, and obviously, time is
of the essence. And last week, the Department released its
roadmap for achieving the 10 gigawatts of renewable energy on
public lands by the end of next year, nearly doubling capacity.
But across the West, we have seen instances where late or
insufficient community consultation has prevented some
renewable projects from proceeding. And in fact, last week
developers of what would have been southern Nevada's largest
solar facility pulled their project amid pushback from local
residents and some conservation groups.
And so as the Department continues to fast track renewable
energy development, what are you doing to ensure this kind of
proactive early concentration with relevant communities and
stakeholders, let us work to prevent the spread of
misinformation, protect key resources, and keep our projects
moving forward in the right direction so that we can actually
get them constructed. What are your plans to do that?
Secretary Haaland. Thank you very much, Congresswoman.
And yes, I couldn't agree with you more. Proactively
engaging States, counties, local communities, Indian tribes,
other interested stakeholders are certainly important to moving
a project forward. Thank you for that.
In early 2022, we established an agreement with five
agencies--the USDA, the EPA, Energy, Defense, and us--to
coordinate permitting. The BLM is establishing a renewable
energy coordinating office to work with key partners. We think
that might help to move the issue forward.
I have a few examples for you. We have had robust
coordination in combining multiple projects under a single EIS.
There are seven solar projects proposed near Tonopah, Nevada,
that you likely know about. DOI, BLM, NPS were facilitating
stakeholder engagement.
And stakeholder engagement is incredibly important to me. I
feel like we have really tried to do that well and I will make
sure that we are paying very close attention to that. Regarding
stakeholder engagement on the Lava Ridge wind proposal in
Idaho, that will address concerns on potential impact
surrounding a national historic site there.
There is a BLM updated policy to rank wind and solar
projects as high, medium, low priority. We are happy to share
more about that with you. We want to focus our resources on
most developed proposals with least anticipated natural and
cultural resource conflict. They are not all easy, but getting
the easy ones done first seems like a good plan to get these
things moving.
We will continue to work on that. Thank you for your
patience, and certainly, I will have my staff reach out to you
so that we can answer any specific questions that you have.
Mrs. Lee. Thank you, Madam Secretary. Yes, this is
obviously an important issue in our State, where we have many
opportunities for this type of development. So, love to work
with your team.
Thank you. And I yield.
Ms. Pingree. Chair Kaptur, do you have questions this
morning?
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you so
very much, and so glad you chair this subcommittee.
And I will just say, seeing Mr. Joyce from Ohio, it is a
modern miracle that there are actually two Great Lakers. We
both also co-chair the Great Lakes Task Force, and Madam
Secretary, we are very grateful for your visit to Ohio in your
early years of service at the Department of the Interior. That
was a great honor for us.
And I want to go back to that visit and just discuss with
you and with the staff that is over there at the Department,
compared to some of our Western colleagues who are very
connected to the Department of the Interior, in areas like ours
east of the Mississippi River, we have some small--at least in
Ohio--Department of the Interior assets. But the connectivity
east of the Mississippi with the Department of the Interior is
nothing like what exists west of the Mississippi. So your
experience, your travels, your attitude gives us a moment to
perhaps use some Department resources in ways we hadn't before.
For example, where you visited, the Ottawa Wildlife Refuge,
actually came about many years ago from duck hunters, both that
one and the Cedar Point Refuge. We have built what were very
tiny assets that were held privately into major points of
visitation largely without the help of the Department of the
Interior, although the Fish and Wildlife Service, where you
visited that one site, over the years, we have been able to
work with them to increase holdings along Lake Erie, the most
fragile of the Great Lakes. The shallowest, the most used by
visitors.
We have millions of boaters, and we have lots of fish. And
we have I think it is about a $7 billion fishery, about a $16
billion boating industry. So we are talking about a lot of
money, all of it threatened by the Asian carp.
But what would help us, I think, is to have some type of
effort working with the Department to bring some of your
planning staff where we could bring our local stakeholders, the
Fish and Wildlife Service from the Cleveland area, the National
Park Service--because the Cuyahoga Valley National Park is one
of the largest and most visited in the country. It is in the
top 10. But there is no connectivity.
We have a Perry's Memorial that is probably the smallest
Federal park that sits out by the lake memorializing what
happened related to the war in 1812. But there is no
connectivity. There is no common interpretation. There is no
pathway that people move through Department of the Interior
holdings. There is almost no cooperation between the National
Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service. It is like two
different creatures.
So with the funding in your bill, as well as the new
funding in BIF that provides for such things as cross-lake
interconnectivity and trail connectivity, it would be very
valuable to us to have a discussion, working with our State
park people. We have very few forests up in our part of the
State, but there are some down in the southern part of Ohio.
But the metro parks, the Toledo metro parks, for example,
were number-one metro parks in the country last year--Toledo,
Ohio. We are so proud of our community. And the Cuyahoga Valley
park and some of the metro parks in the Cleveland, Greater
Cleveland area just have historic visitation.
We are about to receive along the lake at our refuges
hundreds of thousands of birders. We have built up birding into
nature tourism as a major economic development sector for our
region. But all of this is just dots on the map. There is no
connectivity.
So I am just asking if you could consider some type of
meeting that we could hold, a working meeting where we could
bring together all these stakeholders that can make a
difference, and then think about a future where the former
Northwest Territory, which settled America after the 13
colonies, would have interpretation.
That does not exist in the mindset of the Department of the
Interior. But with your leadership, I think maybe we can take a
step in that direction. So I am just asking with my question,
can you think about helping us connect the assets there with
common interpretation, working our State and local
stakeholders?
Secretary Haaland. Thank you very much, Congresswoman.
And yes, I recall being at the wildlife refuge with you and
you talking about this, and actually seeing it in real life. It
was a beautiful place, and I am so grateful that I had the
chance to be there with you.
We are absolutely happy to speak with you. I will make sure
that my staff reaches out to your staff, and we would love to
engage in a conversation about this. And thank you so much for
caring about the area and really wanting, wanting that space
for folks to truly enjoy.
So we will be in touch, and I appreciate the question.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you. And I will just say in terms of
historical tourism, and I will end with this, if you think
about the name of Lake Erie, many of the counties you were in--
Cuyahoga, Erie, Ottawa--there is a Native American history
there that has never been allowed to be brought up, as well as
the fact that we were on the Underground Railroad, and that
particular lake and its connectivity with Canada is an historic
place. It is as though it never happened, but it did happen.
And so I feel a responsibility, and I think with your
leadership, maybe for the first time in modern history we can
do something that has been left out of America's history books.
Thank you so much.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you, Chair Kaptur. Sounds like you have
got [inaudible].
Chair Cartwright.
Mr. Cartwright. Thank you, Madam Chair.
And Secretary Haaland, what a delight it is for us to have
you at the helm of Interior. You are carrying on a proud family
legacy of public service, with your father a 30-year Marine
Corps combat veteran, recipient of the Silver Star for Valor.
Your mother, a Navy veteran, 25 years in the BIA herself. Thank
you for doing this service and carrying on your proud family
legacy.
It was a thrill to have you in my district. It seems like
you have visited everybody's district on this whole
subcommittee. What are you up to here?
And you were up in my district in the chill of winter. I
know it gets cold in Albuquerque, too, but it was pretty cold
in northeastern Pennsylvania when you toured abandoned mine
land sites with me. And thank you for all the work you are
doing to implement the IIJA and its devotion to cleaning up
abandoned mine lands and acid mine drainage, and we will be
talking a lot about that.
I also was thrilled to have NPS Director Chuck Sams up in
my district last week. On Friday, we were in the Delaware Water
Gap National Recreation Area together. What a terrific guy. It
was a thrill to meet him.
But I want to say, I want to talk about the MMIW, something
that you brought to our attention in your time in the House.
You were a leader in tackling the crisis of violence against
Native Americans, in particular the crisis of missing and
murdered indigenous women and persons in general. Under your
leadership, our 116th Congress, we passed the Not Invisible Act
of 2019, which directed the Department of the Interior and the
Department of Justice to establish a joint commission to advise
both departments on intergovernmental coordination and best
practice, looking to hear from law enforcement, tribal leaders,
survivors, and other important voices.
Now in October of last year, 2021, in response to a GAO
recommendation, Interior said that it had created a timeline
for that commission and was in the process of receiving and
reviewing nominations for it. Madam Secretary, would you be
able to update us on the status of that commission, its
nominations, and the proposed timeline for action?
Secretary Haaland. Thank you very much, Congressman.
Yes, it was wonderful, even though it was cold. It does get
cold in Albuquerque. The thing is, winter only lasts about 2
weeks there. I am getting used to the cold weather fast. In
fact, last week I was in the highest point in the United States
in Utqiagvik, Alaska, and it was 4 degrees up there. And I
survived.
But nonetheless, I appreciate the issue. You might remember
that I worked hard on the Not Invisible Act when I was in
Congress. I was very proud to get that passed and, of course,
now I am proud to implement it.
We are working hard on that. We had a lot of interest from
folks sending in their names. People, they want to participate,
and that is really a good thing. I don't have an exact date for
you right now, but we are working closely with the Department
of Justice as we need to on this issue, and you can expect an
announcement soon. And we will absolutely make sure that you
know about it when we do.
Mr. Cartwright. Good. And as chair of the House
Appropriations Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee, I
am particularly interested in the collaboration of Interior
with Justice. Will you keep us posted on the collaboration and
the extent of cooperation that is going on there?
Secretary Haaland. Absolutely. We will absolutely keep you
informed, yes.
Mr. Cartwright. Thanks so much. And Chair Pingree, I yield
back.
Ms. Pingree. Thanks very much for your important question.
Well, Secretary Haaland, with your indulgence, we will go
to a second round of questions for any members who have things
that they would like to discuss, and I will just start with a
topic that I am interested in, these are the USGS Climate
Adaptation Science Centers.
In fiscal year 2022, the bill provided an increase of $10.6
million for the National and Regional Climate Adaption Science
Centers, known as CASCs. This is a great partnership-driven
program based out of host universities that goes ahead and
analyzes the impact of climate change on ecosystems and natural
resources and develops adaptations to protect natural places
and local communities.
So I am curious to hear you talk about how the funding
increase in 2022 will be allocated, what critical science needs
it will be focused on, and in the 2023 budget, there is an
increase of $32.5 million for National and Regional Climate
Adaptation Science Centers, and I would love to hear more about
how this will further the ongoing work of supporting climate
science needs.
So can you discuss that a little bit?
Secretary Haaland. Thank you very much, Chairwoman.
I am really proud. We have the best team of scientists at
the USGS, and they work hard every single day, and I have had a
chance to visit with many of them.
The USGS Climate Science Center has partnerships with the
universities, and they conduct climate research and strategies
to minimize regional climate impacts. In the Southwest, we are
partnering with the U.S. Forest Service and other public land
managers to inform post fire forest recovery strategies, which
we know in this day and age is extremely important, especially
in light of climate change.
In your State, we are working with the Wabanaki Tribal
Nations to mitigate climate impacts to critical tribal natural
resources, building a regional tribal network for climate
adaptation, and documenting culturally appropriate adaptive
management tools and techniques for tribal leaders. We feel
very committed to ensuring that tribes have opportunities to
move on these issues as well.
And I want to mention here, Chairwoman, that tribal
ecological knowledge is something that is extremely important
to us. We feel very committed to and grateful, in fact, that we
are able to learn from tribes who have stewarded these lands
since time immemorial, for a lot longer than our country has
been a country. So wherever it is possible, we are working with
tribes in that area as well.
Ms. Pingree. Yes, thank you for bringing that up, and I
really appreciate your unique perspective on that. As you say,
we have a lot to learn from the tribes and their long-term
preservation of the land. So it is an important time to be
melding those two things.
And also I am excited about this work at the USGS. I feel
like that is one of our underrecognized and extremely important
agencies of science, and given the fact that so much of our
future focus is going to be on the science of weather, they are
in such a good position to do it. So I hope we can continue to
support their work in any way possible.
And lastly, I would just like to say thank you so much for
your strong support of science and bringing back science to the
Department of the Interior and recognizing it as a critical
role that you play. So we want to continue to support you with
that.
And with that, I will recognize Mr. Joyce for any questions
he has.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you again, Madam Chair.
I hate to sound like a broken record, Madam Secretary, but
the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act requires the Department
to prepare and maintain a 5-year offshore leasing program that
best meets the national energy needs. The current 5-year plan
expires on July 1 and authorizes three areas for lease sales on
which the Department has not acted.
Question. Will the Department have a new offshore 5-year
plan in place on July 1? And if not, does the Department intend
to finalize the next 5-year plan in fiscal year 2023?
Further, does the Department intend to conduct further
lease sales in fiscal years 2022 and 2023, and when does the
Department anticipate resuming holding lease sales in the Gulf
of Mexico that are already authorized in the current 5-year
plan?
Secretary Haaland. Thank you very much, Ranking Member
Joyce. I will try to answer all of your questions. If I forget
one, please remind me. I appreciate that.
So with respect to the new 5-year plan, you may know that
the previous administration, had stopped all the work on a new
5-year plan in 2018. That was after their proposal received a
lot of opposition for drilling in places where folks didn't
want drilling.
The internal work at BOEM has been moving forward on a new
5-year plan. Our staff there has been working hard on this.
There is significant amount of internal work that still needs
to be done. You also know that there is a lot of varying and
conflicting litigation that has been a complicating factor for
our Department, and of course, we are always happy to update
you on timing as our work continues in that area.
And were you asking about the status of remaining lease
sales as well?
Mr. Joyce. Yes.
Secretary Haaland. Okay. So the current 2017 through 2022
National OCS Program that expires on June 30 has three
scheduled lease sales remaining--258, 259, and 261. Recent
court decisions have impacted work on remaining lease sales for
that period of time, and BOEM's internal work remains ongoing.
As I always say, we want to make sure we are following the law
on these things.
No decisions have been made regarding the remaining lease
sales for that period, 2017 to 2022, and so I don't have any
updates today. But of course, we are always happy to be in
touch with you and your office.
Mr. Joyce. I certainly appreciate that and any updates that
may follow.
I want to switch subjects to something else that is of
interest. Last September at Picuris Pueblo in northern New
Mexico, BIA law enforcement confiscated nine cannabis plants
from a man who was growing them in his house. He was enrolled
in the State's medical marijuana program to ease post traumatic
stress and anxiety, and these plants provided a full year of
treatment.
Though not a tribal member, the gentleman lives on the
pueblo, where the tribe, like the State, has decriminalized
medical marijuana. The incident had sent a chill through Indian
Country as tribes are unsure if the Federal Government will
continue to enforce and prioritize Federal marijuana laws only
on reservations.
Do you agree with BIA's law enforcement action in this
case? And further, have you taken any or do you plan to take
any steps to change policy from such actions occurring in the
future where both the State and the tribes have legalized
medicinal marijuana?
Secretary Haaland. Thank you so much for that question,
Ranking Member Joyce.
And of course, this question involves the authority and
policy of the Department of Justice as well as the BIA, and
therefore, I respect that we have to have a unified
administration approach on this issue. Tribes have authority to
make marijuana legal on their reservations under tribal law.
Although I cannot change the Federal law, I understand the
issue. I understand what tribes are saying, and I respect
tribal laws. We want to work in partnership with tribes on any
public safety issues and their priorities.
Here, this specific policy approach involves the Department
of Justice, and what I can say is I am always happy to work
with the Department of Justice on a variety of Indian Country
issues. And I will be happy to continue to update you or speak
more specifically about this issue. I understand and appreciate
you caring about it.
Mr. Joyce. Well, God bless you, Madam Secretary, and all
your hard work. And I continue to look forward to working with
you, together with Chair Pingree and the rest of this
committee, moving forward.
Thank you. I yield what no time I have back. [Laughter.]
Ms. Pingree. There was imaginary time you yielded back.
And thank you for bringing up that last topic. I think that
is important, and I hope we can have a further conversation
about it.
Chair McCollum, do you have a second question you would
like to ask?
Ms. McCollum. Yes, I do. I am going to kind of go back to
the budget in general. I think something that has been very
frustrating for all of us in a nonpartisan fashion is as we
want to move Indian Country forward, we find ourselves trapped
in spending patterns that were developed by past
administrations. We can go back hundreds of years on this for
Indian Country.
So I am encouraged to see the administration trying to do
the right thing in moving towards the way contract support
costs are being held and payments for tribal leases are being
held by changing that in a way to reclassify them as mandatory
spending. Because they are obligations. They are not options.
And when this committee is forced to treat them as options
because Chair Pingree has EPA, Bureau of Land Management, and
so many other responsibilities in here, to try to get the right
thing done the right way becomes very hard.
So I would like you to talk a little more about how living
up to our trust and treaty responsibilities by treating these
as mandatory will not only help right wrongs in Indian Country
but will also help engage all the important work that you do
side by side with this committee for all the other spending we
need to do.
And if you have a comment, and maybe in lieu of taxes also
I believe used to be mandatory, and then it was made
nonmandatory by a previous Congress. That has also had a huge
impact on our ability to do things right for the Department of
the Interior. And that year alone, it has a 10 percent
increase. And I am a recipient. My State is a recipient of
payment in lieu of taxes. I think it is the right thing to do,
but that also should be mandatory.
So I am going to give you 3 minutes to talk big picture
about how we can right size this budget. Thank you.
Secretary Haaland. Thank you very much, Congresswoman.
Generally, if tribes don't have to worry about certain
parts of their budgets, then they are free to work on things
that they know will help their communities. I think it is
difficult for them sometimes to plan ahead when they don't know
what they can expect. And of course, we appreciate everything
that the Congress does and your committee does to ensure that
we have the best support possible to give to tribes.
With respect to contract support costs and tribal lease
payments, the budget proposes to reclassify funding for tribal
contract support costs and tribal 105(l) lease payments from
discretionary to mandatory in 2023. That would be a game-
changer for tribes. And as I mentioned, they wouldn't have to
fight for these funds every year or trade off or cuts to other
tribal programs. If you recall when I first came into Congress,
shortly before I was sworn in, the U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights came out with the Broken Promises report and pretty much
laid that out over decades and decades that tribes have been
underfunded in so many ways.
So we recognize that. We think that the 105(l) lease
funding would allow tribes to drive infrastructure investments,
which we know is incredibly important to them. Sometimes folks
just want to have running water, or they just want to be able
to log on to the Internet, and their kids should be able to
attend a school that isn't going to flood when they walk in.
These are all things that we know would be a tremendous
help to Indian Country. This proposal, with respect to the
105(l) leases, would ensure that funds are available without
reducing funding for other tribal priorities.
Everything is a priority in Indian Country, and so we will
absolutely do our best to make sure that whatever we can do, we
will do. And a lot of these priorities we learned because we
feel that tribal consultation is a hallmark of this
administration. It is President Biden's priority. It is our
priority not just at the Department of the Interior, but across
the Federal Government to consult with tribes. Those are the
things they tell us, and we are very grateful that you are
listening as well.
Ms. Pingree. I think you are muted, Chair McCollum, if you
were saying something else.
Ms. McCollum. I was just thanking you for being so gracious
and such a fabulous chair. And thanking the Secretary.
Ms. Pingree. Whoa, thank you. There is never enough
thanking of the Secretary.
Representative Simpson, do you have a question you would
like to ask?
Mr. Simpson. There we go. Okay. Yes, I would like to--first
of all, I would like to thank you, Secretary, for being here
today. And as you can tell, both Republicans and Democrats,
whether it is under Chairman Pingree or McCollum or Ken Calvert
or myself--even back to Norm Dicks or Jim Moran--when I served
on this committee, in a bipartisan fashion, we have all been
committed to keeping our treaty obligations and trust
obligations with tribes.
And you have got a committee that will work with you to try
to make sure we do that. So I appreciate that, and I appreciate
the emphasis that the administration and you have placed on
that. And we want to work with you on that.
Three things I do want to bring up. Two of them are just a
little advice maybe, and the last one is a question.
So the first one is, as you know, I have been able to put
language in the appropriation bill for several years preventing
the listing of sage-grouse in the West. It is not because we
don't care about sage-grouse. It is because when it was
originally started under Secretary Salazar, he encouraged the
States to get together and create sage-grouse plans with local
communities and the Federal Government and then to enact those
plans.
And States have worked very hard to do that. Idaho has
worked very hard to do that. If we are going to save sage-
grouse and the habitat for sage-grouse, it is going to take the
local communities, it is going to take the States, and it's
going to take the Federal Government.
When you list sage-grouse, all of a sudden, you eliminate
the State and local input or the desire to participate in that.
So I want you to keep track of that and remember we need to
keep the States and local communities involved in that. That is
the only reason we put that language in there so that we don't
list them. It is not to prevent--that we don't care about sage-
grouse going extinct. That is not the case at all.
So that is just a little piece of advice to look forward.
The other one I want to get back to is the personnel in this
Department. And coming from the West, you know that the reason
that many of us live in the West is because we love our public
lands and we want to have access to those public lands. Access
is an issue.
The Great American Outdoors Act, it was supposed to
increase the access to these public lands and stuff, but we are
having a real difficult time in trying to enact some of those
programs and some of the projects because we don't have the
personnel to do that. So whatever we can do to help you get the
personnel so that we can move on those in a quicker fashion and
implement the intent of the Great American Outdoors Act, as
well as other programs, let us know because that is critical.
As I said, you can have the best--you can put a lot of
money into these programs, but if you don't have the personnel
to carry them out, it doesn't really mean anything.
The last issue that I want to bring up is we have talked a
lot about gas and oil. The other issue is our supply chain in
critical minerals in this country. It is a huge issue that we
are dependent on, frankly, countries that don't really like us
for a lot of the critical minerals.
As an example, in Idaho, we have a mine that is developing
antimony, gold and antimony that will actually do a clean-up of
a previous mine from World War II. Spent 6 years in trying to
get that permitted, which is just crazy.
We have another one that is cobalt mines. They have been
over a decade getting the permitting for that.
What are you doing or what should we be doing to streamline
the permitting process so that we can have access? We have all
these critical minerals and rare earths in the United States.
Most of them are located on public lands. So we need the
access. We need to streamline the permitting process so that
there could be some certainty in that and that we don't become
more and more dependent on, frankly, people that don't like us
for some of these rare earths and critical minerals.
So what can we do to help you streamline this process so
that we can get access to these things?
Secretary Haaland. Thank you so much for the question,
Congressman.
The permitting process ensures mining of critical minerals
is not done at the expense of natural resource consideration
and tribal and rural communities. We recognize the importance
of critical minerals and the need to improve the process. As
you know, President Biden believes very strongly in energy
independence here in our country, and critical minerals are
important to our transition to clean energy.
We established an interagency working group that will
recommend reforms to the hard rock mining laws and permitting
regulations. One of the goals of that interagency working group
is to improve permitting efficiency.
Yes, 10 years is a long time. I recognize that. This report
will be delivered to Congress later this year with
recommendations. We would appreciate your input at that point.
Just know that BLM continues to process mining applications
currently, including those for lithium, vanadium, and other
critical minerals. They will continue to do that, and we are
working on the permitting efficiency and outcome.
Thank you so much for the question and I'm happy to give
you more details as time goes on.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you. I look forward to working with you
on that because it is something critical we have got to do. And
of course, with the goal of batteries, wind power, nuclear
power, all of those kind of things, a mineral like antimony is
critical to all of those things. So achieving some of your
goals, it is important that we have those critical minerals.
But thank you, Chairwoman Pingree, and thanks for this
hearing.
And thank you, Secretary, for being here today.
Ms. Pingree. Yes, thank you very much, Mr. Simpson. I think
that is a really important topic that you brought up at the
end, and I will look forward to having a chance to hear more
about it. I think we are all going to learn the names of
minerals that we never knew existed before, and we got to do a
crash course in that.
So, Secretary Haaland, thank you so much for the time you
spent with our committee today. We are really pleased to have
you in your role. Thank you for bringing your experience and
your perspective to that role. We look forward to continuing to
work with you on this year's budget.
And thank you to Mr. Joyce for being part of this important
hearing.
And with that, seeing no more questions, the hearing is now
adjourned.
Secretary Haaland. Thank you.
Friday, April 29, 2022.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
WITNESSES
MICHAEL REGAN, ADMINISTRATOR, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY,
ACCOMPANIED BY FAISAL AMIN, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, ENVIRONMENTAL
PROTECTION AGENCY
Ms. Pingree. Good morning. This hearing will now come to
order.
Today, the Interior, Environment Subcommittee will examine
the President's fiscal year 2023 budget request for the
Environmental Protection Agency. Joining with us this morning
is EPA Administrator Michael Regan. With him is Chief financial
Officer, Faisal Amin. It is good to see you, Mr. Administrator,
and welcome, Mr. Amin.
Before you start, I want to personally thank both of you
for your partnership in completing the fiscal year 2022 bill,
and I look forward to working with you as we begin our work on
the fiscal year 2023 bill. Administrator Regan, I also want to
thank you so much for your visit to Saco a couple of months
ago. I appreciated your insight and commitment to help not just
with our PFAS issues in Maine but across the country.
For fiscal year 2023, the President is requesting $11.9
billion for the EPA, a $2.3 billion increase over the enacted
level. In addition to this request, the EPA has released its
strategic plan with seven clear and ambitious goals. For this
first time, this plan includes a goal focused on solely on
addressing climate change. This also includes an unprecedented
goal to advance environmental justice and civil rights. I
applaud you for taking on these two critical issues and look
forward to supporting you in these efforts. During this
hearing, I hope that we can explore further how this request
will support your strategic plan and primary mission to protect
human health and the environment.
Some highlights of the budget request include increasing
staffing after years of decline to its highest levels in over a
decade; tackling the climate crisis head on through robust
funding for the EPA science, and technology, and environment
programs; taking decisive action to address environmental
justice and civil rights so that we can finally make
significant strides in communities that have been historically
under served and overburdened; and building on the funding
provided in the American Rescue Plan and the Infrastructure
Investment and Jobs Act to fix our Nation's crumbling
infrastructure and to address public health challenges that we
currently face.
I firmly believe the EPA's missions is achievable when it
is fully resourced and staffed. That is why our fiscal year
2022 bill provided the EPA with the second-largest increase to
its budget in over a decade. We also funded environmental
justice at $100 million, which is the largest increase the
program has seen in its 50-year history. The President's
request builds on the success of our fiscal year 2022 bill, and
I look forward to collaborating closely with the administrator
and President Biden in achieving our shared vision for a safer,
more prosperous, and more just Nation.
I would now like to yield to my friend, the ranking member
of the subcommittee, Mr. Joyce, for any opening remarks he
would like to make.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you for yielding, Madam Chair. I
appreciate today's opportunity to discuss the Environmental
Protection Agency's fiscal year 2023 budget proposal. Welcome
back, Administrator Regan. Thanks to you and Mr. Amin for
joining us this morning. Mr. Amin, I believe this is your first
time appearing before the subcommittee in this capacity, so
congratulation on your appointment and welcome.
Mr. Regan, your stewardship of the EPA is important, and we
value the work you and your staff do day in and day out to keep
our air, land, and water clean. I also appreciate that you have
made a point to travel around the country, including to my home
State of Ohio, to see how States and tribes rely on EPA funding
to manage core environmental programs, make critical
infrastructure upgrades, and protect our natural resources.
When you appeared before us last year, I raised the
importance of reining in our Federal spending following the
pandemic. Regrettably, the administration's fiscal year 2023
budget is a substantial departure from the bipartisan funding
agreement Congress passed last month. For EPA, this request
includes an additional $2.3 billion and seeks to add well over
1,000 new Federal employees. Notably, the budget proposal is
nearly $650 million more than the administration's request last
year. We seem to be moving in the wrong direction,
Administrator.
Right now, inflation is at a 40-year high, gas prices are
skyrocketing, and Americans across the country are struggling
to pay their bills. To create a vibrant economy today and for
our kids and grandkids, Congress and this committee, in
particular, cannot entertain unrealistic spending levels. We
have a duty to the taxpayer to work within spending
constraints, implement fiscally-responsible policies, and
ensure that every dollar we provide to the EPA helps to meet
your mission.
To that point, I was pleased to see EPA's requests focuses
on providing funds to ensure clean and safe water for our
Nation's citizens, support much-needed infrastructure
improvements, revitalize contaminated areas through the Brown
fields Program, and to partner with States, tribes, and local
stakeholders to address environmental and public health
threats. Notably, these programs make substantial differences
in communities without the use of top-down, heavy-handed
regulations. Unfortunately, these core investments are
overshadowed by the Agency's emphasis on providing
extraordinary funding levels to write regulations, hire more
lawyers, push unrealistic climate goals, and carry out a robust
enforcement agenda. I plan to work with the chair to ensure the
programs that have significant impact in States and localities,
like the Superfund cleanup programs, rural water technical
assistance grants, and regional water programs, receive the
attention and increases they deserve.
Restoring geographic program dollars, like those provided
through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, are essential
in protecting some of our Nation's most valuable natural
resources. I know firsthand that now is not the time to take
our foot off the gas, especially when it comes to protecting
the lakes. Building on the GLRI investment from fiscal year
2022 is vital to ensuring that the Great Lakes, which provide
clean drinking water to 48 million Americans, support more than
1-and-a-half million jobs, and generate over $62 billion in
wages each year, are safeguarded from longstanding threats,
like harmful algae blooms, water pollution, invasive species,
and coastal erosion.
I have no doubt that we will also have a robust policy
discussion given what is playing out on the world stage. With
the conflict rating in Ukraine and the steep prices we are
seeing at the gas pump, it is now more important than ever that
we continue to promote an all-of-the-above domestic energy
strategy. Utilizing all of our domestic resources to increase
production and brings stability to the marketplace, reduces
energy costs, spurs economic growth, and creates good-paying
jobs. More than that, it puts America on a path to energy
independence, which is imperative to our national security.
I am concerned, though, that this administration is
pursuing an agenda that, simply put, undermines the American
energy sector and fails to put American industries first and
businesses first. Rather than imposing burdensome and costly
regulations, EPA and its Federal partners should be
collaborating with the energy sector to leverage free-market
solutions, spur innovation, and enhance emission reduction
technology to unleash energy production here at home. If not,
we and our allies will be forced to turn to foreign countries
to meet our energy needs.
I look forward to having a constructive conversation about
how the fiscal year 2023 budget can support, rather than
sideline, American energy. I also look forward to understanding
how the Agency is implementing commonsense, cost-effective
rulemakings to help us protect the environment while providing
regulatory certainty to our small businesses, farmers, and
ranchers. We have all struggled the last couple of years, and I
want to ensure the EPA is doing its part to boost, not burden,
all sectors of the economy.
Thank you, again, for joining us this morning,
Administrator Regan. As the fiscal year 2023 process moves
forward, I look forward to working with the chair to provide
the EPA with the necessary resources to meet its mission to
protect the American people and our environment. Thank you,
Chair Pingree. I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you so much for your Statement. Mr.
Regan, we would love to hear from you now. Thank you very much
for joining us this morning.
Mr. Regan. Well, thank you, Chairwoman Pingree, and Ranking
Member Joyce, and members of the committee. You know, I really
appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to
discuss the bold vision laid out in the U.S. EPA's proposed
fiscal year 2023 budget. In this budget request, we lay out an
ambitious and transformative plan for the EPA with the goal of
a healthier, more prosperous Nation where all people have equal
access to clean air, clean water, and healthy communities.
President Biden's proposed fiscal year 2023 budget request
for EPA provides $11.9 billion to advance key priorities
tackling the climate crisis, delivering environmental justice
and equity for everyone, protecting air quality, upgrading the
Nation's aging water infrastructure, revitalizing our Nation's
magnificent water bodies, and rebuilding core functions at EPA
to keep pace with the growing economy. Over the last year, we
have made important progress towards many of these goals, and I
am proud of the foundations we have laid and partnerships that
have underpinned our successes. But there is still so much more
work to do to ensure that all children have safe, healthy
places to lives, learn, and play, to build a stronger, more
sustainable economy, and to advance American innovation and
ingenuity in ways we haven't seen. Put simply, investing in EPA
is an investment in the health and the well-being of all of the
communities we serve. It is also an investment in the economic
vitality of our Nation.
I have had the privilege to visit many communities in your
States and see firsthand the environmental and public health
challenges that many of your constituents continue to
experience, from unprecedented flood experiences to crumbling
water infrastructure. I have spoken with mothers whose children
have been lead poisoned. I have met with people who are living
with toxic waste in their backyards, and I have seen conditions
that are simply unacceptable in the United States of America.
From investing in our Nation's climate resilience to cleaning
up contaminated land, there is no shortage of critical work
that needs to be done.
Members of the committee, EPA is up to the task, and we are
ready to partner with you. We are eager to work with all of you
to deliver for our fellow Americans and to secure our Nation's
global competitiveness, but we need your support. Both the
urgency and economic opportunity presented by the climate
change crisis require that we leave no stone unturned. The
fiscal year 2023 budget invests $773 million towards tackling
the climate crisis and reaping the benefits that come with
that: healthier communities, good-paying jobs, and increased
energy security.
The communities hit hardest by pollution and climate change
are most often communities of color, indigenous communities,
our rural communities, and economically-disadvantaged
communities. For generations, many of these vulnerable
communities have been overburdened with higher instances of
pollution in their air, water, and land. This inequity of
environmental protection is not just an environmental justice
issue, but it is also civil right concern. In the fiscal year
2023 budget, EPA will expand upon the historic investments made
in environmental justice and civil rights to reduce the
historically-disproportionate health impacts of pollution in
communities with environmental justice concerns.
Across the budget, EPA is investing more than $1.4 billion
to advance environmental justice, clean up legacy pollution,
and create good-paying jobs in the process in those
communities. Across the country, poor air quality affects
millions of people, perpetuating harmful health and economic
impacts. For the fiscal year 2023 budget, the Agency will
protect our air quality by cutting emissions of ozone-forming
pollutants, particulate matter, and air toxics. The President's
budget also includes $1.1 billion to improve air quality and
set standards that reduce pollution from mobile and stationary
sources.
A thriving economy also requires clean and safe water for
all. Although progress has been made, many still lack access to
healthy water, face inadequate wastewater infrastructure, and
suffer from the effects of lead pipes. America's water systems
are also facing new challenges, including cybersecurity
threats, climate change, and emerging contaminants like PFAs.
The fiscal year 2023 budget positions EPA to create durable
environmental policy that sets our Nation on a path to win the
21st century. It will allow us to meet the pressing needs faced
by millions of Americans and fundamentally improve people's
lives for the better.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here today and offer
this testimony, and I look forward to our continued
partnership, and I look forward to the conversation that we are
going to have today.
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Ms. Pingree. Thank you so much for your opening remarks,
and thank for your service. We are looking forward to
discussing many topics with you today.
I am going to start the questions myself, and I just want
to dive right into something that is critically important to my
State. I mentioned before that you were kind enough to come and
visit in the State of Maine, and you joined with me in a really
challenging meeting talking to people who are dealing with the
front lines of the crisis around PFAS contamination,
particularly in agricultural land in our State, but also in
drinking water and beyond. This is a growing environmental
crisis for us, and I imagine this is going on in many other
States, but perhaps it is undetected. We continue to learn more
about these chemicals' health effects, and more Americans are
becoming deeply concerned that their families could be at
serious risk.
Along with the billions provided in the Infrastructure
Investment and Jobs Act, this subcommittee has provided
significant resources to address PFAS. I was pleased to see
that the budget request builds on this funding and continues a
strong focus on PFAS research and regulatory action. Can you
talk about that a little bit, give us some more insight into
the EPA's current and future work on this very complicated set
of chemicals, and also give us some ideas of how that work ties
into the Agency's PFAS strategic roadmap.
Mr. Regan. Absolutely, and first and foremost, Chair
Pingree, thank you for inviting me to your district to have
that important conversation. I think my decisions have been
shaped by my personal experiences as the secretary in North
Carolina dealing with the PFAS crisis. And the roundtable that
you and I had and the roundtables that I have held really are
informing this sense of urgency around these forever chemicals.
So we are taking action.
In October of last year, I announced a PFAS strategic
roadmap which lays an all-of-the-above, comprehensive approach
across all of EPA's media offices. Since I have announced that
group, we have taken action. We started a rulemaking
designating PFOA and PFAS as a hazardous substance under the
Superfund law. We are developing a national PFAS testing
strategy under TSCA to deepen our understanding of the impacts
of categories of PFAS, including potential hazards to both our
health, but also our environment. We have also started a
rulemaking to establish a national primary drinking water
regulation for PFOA and PFAS that would set enforceable limits.
And finally, we have finalized a rule to undertake nationwide
monitoring of PFAS in our drinking water.
I think it is important for me to also say that we
understand that the conditions on the ground differ in the
States and that we serve an important role in setting a health
baseline and a better understanding. But a majority of the
resources that EPA receives in our budget is passed through to
the States so that they can develop specific strategies on the
ground that are more protective to their communities. So I
would hate for anyone to walk away and look at these budget
requests as EPA inflating itself or growing tremendously. A
good portion of these resources go to our State partners who
know their communities better than we ever could.
Ms. Pingree. Yeah. Thank you so much for emphasizing that
because I do think that is a really critical point, and I know
our States greatly benefit and really appreciate the way the
funding is structured so that they can make the decisions for
their own States about the most critical issues. I will yield
back my time and happy to recognize the ranking member for his
questions.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Administrator
Regan, I am supportive, as I am sure you are, of advancing
domestic recycling efforts, especially for metal, given the
environmental and economic benefits. Recycling scrap metal
helps reduce pollution, limit waste, and reuse materials. Does
the EPA support scrap metal recycling, and is the Agency
supportive of advancements in metal recycling technology
applications, more specifically, metal shredder plants?
Mr. Regan. You know, we definitely embrace recycling, and
we actually have invested a lot more time and resources to
support and focus on recycling within this administration. So
we recognize that if we can create some closed-loop systems in
our economy, that we can protect against having to mine for
precious metals any more than we have to, we can also create
efficiencies in our economy. So, yes, recycling is a top-of-
mind issue for this Agency, and we are investing the resources
in it to ensure that we understand how we can tackle these
problems.
Mr. Joyce. Does the EPA understand the necessity of metal
shredding plants with respect to infrastructure, both as a
processor of obsolete infrastructure, like bridges, roads, et
cetera, and as a provider of raw materials to steel mills and
foundries?
Mr. Regan. We absolutely do, and that is why we are
covering as much material and reducing as much waste as
possible as a key part of the way we are looking at, not only
improving our economy, but also improving, as you say, and
strengthening our infrastructure.
Mr. Joyce. Well, if vehicle and appliance shredding plants,
including plants that use the latest pollution controls, are
prohibited from operating what does the EPA believe will happen
to the roughly 15 million vehicles that reach the end of their
life annually? Also, where will the steel industry source the
raw materials it needs to continue production and meet demand?
The only alternatives I am aware of are more mining or sourcing
recycled steel from foreign countries, like China. In your
opinion, are those desirable solutions?
Mr. Regan. I think the desirable solutions are for the
opportunities to let recycling facilities work to their
potential to continue to increase, again, in economic
development and jobs, and contributing to our modern
infrastructure. Obviously, any of these facilities, whether it
be recycling, or whether it be a petrochemical plant or any
plant, we believe should be properly placed in any kind of
situation where there aren't disproportionate impacts to any
communities, especially communities that are already
disproportionately impacted by other facilities and operations.
And so, yes, there is a role for recycling facilities. We
firmly support that, but those facilities have to be put in a
place where they don't exacerbate or create hazard and harm.
Mr. Joyce. So, I take it from your answer then, you are
willing to work with the metal recycling industry given their
contribution to the administration's infrastructure and
circular economy goals.
Mr. Regan. I think this Agency has done that. I think we
have worked with recycling facilities all around the country. I
think that, you know, it is our job to be sure that we balance
environmental protection, public health protection, and
economic prosperity, and we are working hard to do that as
really good partners and honest brokers in that situation.
Mr. Joyce. I recognize that environmental justice is a key
priority for the administration and your Agency. I also
recognize the importance of balancing environmental justice
with beneficial economic and environmental opportunities in
these impacted communities. For this administration, are
environmental justice concerns always going to take precedence
over established zoning policies in most major cities, which
seek to locate businesses in proximity to others of a similar
nature?
Mr. Regan. You know, our goal is to really partner with our
governors, our State secretaries of health and environment, and
our locally-elected officials. It is my goal to work as the
administrator to provide technical support and resources so
that communities, mayors, county commissioners, economic
developers, State secretaries, can make the best decisions that
they believe are appropriate for their communities. We have
done a good job of that, and I hope that we can continue to do
that. I want to be able to provide the technical assistance and
resources to locally-elected officials so that they can make
the best decisions for their constituents.
Mr. Joyce. In what cases should the longstanding industrial
nature of certain urban areas be taken into account on equal
footing with residential uses that arose later in these areas?
Mr. Regan. You know, I think it is an opportunity for us to
really take a look at how we invest in our economy and the
growth of businesses without it being at the expense of any one
community. My attitude towards this is that there are lots of
ample opportunities for job growth and economic development,
but it doesn't have to come at the expense of any one
community. So where we see disproportionate impact, predatory
behavior, we look at the sound science. We look at the facts.
We look at the impacts on humans, and then we can govern
ourselves accordingly. There are lots of ways we can situate
facilities in this country so that we can be globally
competitive, and we want to be a partner with the business
community to choose the right places to do that.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you. I appreciate your time, and, Madam
Chair, I yield back what time I have left. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you. You can always have all the time
you ever want. So, Mr. Harder, you are next for questions.
Mr. Harder. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Chair Pingree,
and thank you, Administrator Regan, for being here today. I
look forward to discussing how we can keep toxic chemicals out
of our community drinking water systems.
In my district in the California Central Valley, the City
of Manteca is dealing with an ongoing contamination of the
carcinogenic 123 trichloride propane, noticed as TCP, in its
water system. In Manteca, the TCP water contamination was
caused by the soil fumigants manufactured by Shell Oil Company
and Dow Chemical Company. California currently regulates TCP
because it causes cancer, but the EPA has failed to regulate it
on its primary drinking water contaminate list. For decades,
the EPA has declined to seriously regulate TCP. With the EPA's
budget of over $2.8 billion for clean drinking water, why has
the EPA failed to act on regulating or removing TCP from
vulnerable public water systems, like the one in Manteca?
Mr. Regan. You know, I think we are taking a very strong
look at all of the threats to our drinking water, whether they
be some of the traditional contaminants that you have raised or
some of the new emerging contaminants. It is no secret that
this Agency was underfunded during the last administration,
and, quite frankly, funding has been low for a number of years.
So we are really seeking the resources that we are asking for
for a reason, and that is so that we can do more, and so that
we can move faster.
Our scientists are ready, our programs are ready to take
aggressive action to do the proper analytics required to
protect public health. And unfortunately, we have had to rely a
lot on State leadership because, traditionally, this Agency
hasn't had the resources to do the technical analysis that we
need to move as quickly on all the rules that people have
raised to us. And so I will take this back to my team to take a
look at where this regulation fit in terms of our analysis, but
we have a lot of challenging issues before us, and that is why
we are asking for these resources, these precious resources, so
that EPA could be equal footing to protect our public.
Mr. Harder. Administrator, the March 2021 final regulatory
determinations for the fourth drinking water contaminant
candidate list said it needed more data as an excuse for why
TCP was not regulated at the Federal level. That doesn't make a
whole lot of sense to me because many States--California, New
Jersey, Hawaii--are successfully measuring and regulating TCP
today. Do you believe that TCP should be regulated by the U.S.
EPA?
Mr. Regan. You know, I think our scientists have said,
correctly so, that States can move faster in some instances
than the Federal Government. We take very serious our
regulatory role, and when we set a regulation, we are
responsible for setting a national regulation for 50 States. We
have to take those 50 or so States in account. And so this is
why we have strong partnerships with our States where in some
States where we see certain vulnerabilities, States can move
faster, and they are doing a good job of protecting their
communities. In other States, there may not be that looming
threat. And so we try to prioritize these regulatory
approaches, and that is why you are seeing us approach this
issue in the way that we are.
We want to collect all of the data needed to set a Federal
regulation that would be appropriate for the Nation, while also
complementing the regulations that many States decide to move
forward on quicker and faster than the Federal Government can.
Mr. Harder. Thank you. I think the determinant a year ago
was mistake, and I would really encourage the EPA to look at
this contaminant seriously. One more question. With EPA's
budget on civil enforcement of polluters, can you talk about
the EPA's plan to hold these large oil and chemical companies
accountable for the contamination and removal of TCP from the
water systems that they have contaminated over decades?
Mr. Regan. Well, I think you will notice in this budget
that, again, we are making a plea to get the resources we need.
We have lost tremendous resources on the enforcement side, and
I think a lot of our staff, quite frankly, are coming out of a
COVID posture. We are ramping up the enforcement mechanisms
where we believe it makes the most sense, but we are woefully
understaffed. And so in this budget, you will see that
enforcement is a strong tool that I believe should be used
where appropriate, but in order to use the tool appropriately,
we need to have the appropriate number of inspectors and folks
that can actually do the work. You are seeing a budget request
in there for 2023.
We did not get the resources that we asked for in 2022. We
are hoping to get it in 2023. But if we want to see more
enforcement of the laws that are on the books in a responsible
way, we have to have the resources to do it.
Mr. Harder. Thank you for your answers. I hope we can work
together on removing TCP and other toxins from our water
systems as well as making sure that we are holding the feet to
the fire of the folks who contributed to the situation we are
dealing with in many communities like mine. Thank you.
Mr. Regan. Absolutely. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much. Mr. Simpson, do you have
questions this morning?
Mr. Simpson. Certainly. Thank you. Thank you,
Administrator, for being here today and talking about some of
the subjects. I look forward to the day when we can actually
sit down and talk person-to-person and meet face-to-face and
discuss some of these issues.
There are a couple that I want to address. In this first
round, I will deal with one of them. It is a never-ending
debate that has been going on ever since I have been in
Congress. It probably will be for the next 20 years. I hope
not, but it is a constant concern that I hear about from my
farmers, and ranchers, and businessowners across Idaho and
really across the country. It is about the extremely broad
definition of ``waters of the United States,'' or WOTUS, under
the Clean Water Act.
Considering there is a case related to the scope of the
Clean Water Act pending before the Supreme Court, and this case
is expected to address Federal jurisdiction under WOTUS, it
seems only logical that the EPA would hold off finalizing the
rule until the Supreme Court has decided this case. However, in
front of the Senate EPW Committee just a few weeks ago, you
stated that the EPA will forge ahead with rulemaking despite a
pending case. Now, you talked about the resources that you need
and so forth and talked about the previous administration's
underfunding. I suspect that means the previous chairmen of the
Appropriations Committee, me being one of them and some others.
What we tried to do is right-size the EPA budget, not underfund
it.
But this is an example of why is the EPA wasting critical
staff time and resources rushing through a rulemaking that the
Supreme Court is going to reconsider in just a few months
anyway? This is some of the questions we have about how the EPA
spends their money, and maybe that is why some of the budgets
haven't been as robust in the past as you would like. Could you
address that for me?
Mr. Regan. Thank you for that question, and, yes, you know,
I was just in North Carolina with USDA agriculture Secretary
Tom Vilsack spending time with farmers and ranchers talking
about this very issue, and here is the reality. We proposed a
rule last year that basically takes the rule back to pre-2015
decisions prior to President Obama's WOTUS interpretation and
prior to President Trump's interpretation. What farmers and
ranchers have told me on the ground is that they need some
regulatory certainty, and despite the Trump and Obama
administrations, there are still decisions that are being made
that have farmers or ranchers in limbo.
So what we have decided to do is move very pragmatically
and say let's go back to pre-2015 before the last two rules
were put into place. Let's try to codify some decisions that
the Supreme Court has already spoken to, and let's box in some
of the exemptions and exclusions that farmers and ranchers need
right now. We know that there is a Supreme Court case pending.
That Supreme Court case will address some aspects of WOTUS, but
it won't address all. It won't provide some of the certainty
that we believe our farmers need sooner rather than later
because they are making decisions right now.
We also believe that if we move forward, and we have done a
lot of listening to our ranches and farmers. As a matter of
fact, we are now going through 10 roundtables that we are
hosting all across the country, being hosted by our farmers and
ranchers, in my home State of North Carolina, being hosted by
the Farm Bureau, because we are continuing to collect
information and data. Decisions are being made right now.
Farmers and ranchers need certainty. We believe we can put a
strong rule in place if we finalize it in a way that will
complement and be situated to move forward after we hear from
the Supreme Court.
So we have to walk and chew gum at the same time. I don't
believe that it is a waste of staff time. I believe that we
have engaged with farmers and ranchers, asked CEOs all across
this country for over a year, and we want to make good on the
promise that we have made, which is providing a durable rule
that will give them some regulatory certainty sooner rather
than later.
Mr. Simpson. Well, I appreciate that answer. I wish my
ranchers, and farmers, and others felt the same way. They feel
like they are being left out in this rulemaking process. And
you are right, it is certainty that they want. And going back
to the pre-2015 rule, that was the problem. It was the
uncertainty that was created. That is why the courts have ruled
twice you need to rewrite this rule to create some certainty in
it so that people know what they are doing. And it just seems
like writing a new rule in the midst of all this uncertainty
before the Supreme Court rules seems premature now. I mean, you
are going to spend time and money on this. I suspect whatever
the Supreme Court decides, unless you have some pre-knowledge
of what the Court is going to say, that you are going to have
to adjust the rule whatever it is that you write.
It just seems like we are out of step here in trying to do
this, but I appreciate your comments. I appreciate what you are
trying to do. It is a frustrating problem for all of us, that
we ought to be able to come up to a conclusion. I have kind of
come to the conclusion, no matter what rule we write, we are
going to get sued. There are going to be more challenges. I
don't know if this is an ever-ending process, and it is
frustrating as hell.
Mr. Regan. Well, and Congressman, I really appreciate their
perspective, and I think you are right. There is a level of
frustration that we all share. And I can tell you in all
earnestness in the conversations we are having, continuing to
move forward, whether we finalize or not before the Supreme
Court ruling, to continue to move forward, we believe that
there is a lot of good work that has been done, and we respect
the Supreme Court's jurisdiction obviously. And we believe our
rule will be in position to respond and adjust to the Supreme
Court ruling in a way that this process will be more advanced.
So as soon as the Supreme Court speaks, we will have the
process advanced enough so that will be providing those farmers
and ranchers certainty sooner than we would otherwise.
If we stopped right now, if we discontinued the
conversations, if we discontinued the roundtables, we are going
to lose a lot of ground, and we won't be poised for success
after the Supreme Court rules, so we are trying to balance that
and thread that needle. But I can assure you it is in the
effort to provide a durable rule and certainty to our farmers
and ranchers.
I come from an agricultural State of North Carolina. I have
spent a lot of time on this issue. I spent time trying to
interpret the Obama rule when I was a State secretary, and I
spent time trying to prepare for the Trump rule. And I can tell
you on the ground, neither will provided that certainty that
our farmers and ranchers are looking for, and they were very
hard to administer because of the uncertainty. So I am very
sensitive to these needs, and I am very sensitive to our
farmers and ranchers, and I hope we can continue work together
on this.
Mr. Simpson. Well, I appreciate that, and I would invite
you to come to Idaho and sit down with a roundtable of people
who have concerns about this and explain that to them and
stuff. And I would love to have you do that. Maybe we can set
something like that up. I will save my next round of inquiry
for the next round of questions, and I yield back, Chairwoman
Pingree.
Ms. Pingree. Great. Thank you. Thank you, both of you, on
that important topic.
Mr. Cartwright, you are next. Excuse me. Good morning,
Chair Cartwright.
Mr. Cartwright. Yes, I was highly offended, Chair Pingree.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Cartwright. Good morning, Chair Pingree, and all of the
intrepid members of the Interior Subcommittee of
Appropriations, and, Administrator Regan, great to have you
with us this morning. Congratulations on making Mike Simpson
smile before 10:00 in the morning. That is an accomplishment.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Cartwright. Mr. Regan, as you may know, I am from
Northeastern Pennsylvania, and my district lies within the
Chesapeake Bay watershed for the most part. Millions of people
in my district depend on that watershed. Millions of people in
Chesapeake depend on the watershed for drinking water, jobs,
seafood, recreation, lots more. But for years, as all of us
know, the Bay was too dirty to swim or fish in, and eventually
the Federal Government stepped in to limit the pollution
running off into the Bay.
Now, we Pennsylvanians are proud of our natural resources.
We care about keeping them healthy, and we want our families to
have access to clean drinking water. We want to be able to fish
and swim safely in our streams, our creeks, our rivers. We want
to leave a legacy of clean water for generations to come, but
here is the thing. Cleaning up dirty water is not easy. It
costs money to update our stormwater infrastructure and keep
pollution out of our waterways. And for too long, homeowners
and businesses in my district have been footing the bill for
this work. We are talking about all kinds of people, including
retired senior citizens on fixed incomes footing the bill for
stormwater infrastructure improvements. Now, making local
communities shoulder that burden alone to restore the watershed
is not a fair solution, and it is not sustainable.
So since joining this subcommittee, I have fought to
increase investments in stormwater programs and secure
Northeastern Pennsylvania's fair share of these Federal
dollars, and here is the question, Administrator Regan. How is
the EPA supporting communities in their efforts to address
stormwater runoff?
Mr. Regan. Well, thank you for the question, Congressman.
And, you know, I couldn't agree with you more, and I believe
that that is why the President was so focused on the $50
billion provided by the bipartisan infrastructure law because
we are seeing the stormwater issues all across the country, and
we know that towns, cities, and localities should not bear the
brunt for paying for these. We are looking for the opportunity
to apply bill dollars all across the country for stormwater--
$50 billion for stormwater, wastewater, a number of our
infrastructure needs--and we know that that is not enough
resources, right, which is why in this budget, you will see the
modest request that we are proposing so that we can help
communities just like the one you just identified.
Stormwater is so important because not only do we want to
prevent the runoff into our precious waters, like the
Chesapeake Bay, but we want to prevent these flooding and these
economic disasters that we are seeing from climate change, and
stormwater plays such a critical role. So, yes, we know that
the resources were requesting for this budget, coupled with the
bipartisan infrastructure law resources, will help communities
just like yours all across the country.
Mr. Cartwright. Thank you. You mentioned the IIJA, and in
that, we have the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, and I am
sure that is what you are referring to. As you know, Congress
recently made the single largest investment in water in our
Nation's history with the IIJA. That law provided $11.7 billion
to the clean water state revolving fund alone. Can you talk
briefly about opportunities for stormwater management projects
under this Clean Water State Revolving Fund investment?
Mr. Regan. There are absolutely tremendous opportunities
there. I will say that of the $50 billion awarded to EPA, we
all know that they are probably about $720 to $750 billion of
infrastructure needs as it relates to water infrastructure. So
we do have a good shot in the arm through our State revolving
funds. We also have a few other financial resources that we can
leverage through programs at EPA that will really come from
some of the resources we are requesting from our budget, and
that is the EPA Water Infrastructure and Resiliency Finance
Center to help us think through how we make smart investments
and leverage those resources. Green streets, green jobs, green
towns grants, there are some grant mechanisms that we believe
we can add to this mix that complement some of the solutions on
the ground we are hearing from communities like yours. And then
there are some other financing opportunities.
We are going to have to couple together all of EPA's
financing resources to solve this problem sooner rather than
later. It is about preventing runoff. It is about preventing
flooding. It is about creating jobs, and it is also about the
economic vitality of our communities. We should not continue to
rebuild our communities in the same way and only have our
businesses shut down and public health threatened, because we
can predict some of this. And stormwater runoff is a
significant contributor to that success.
Mr. Cartwright. Thank you, Mr. Regan. I look forward to
working with you on that. I yield back, Chair Pingree.
Mr. Cartwright. Thank you. Representative Lee, do you have
questions this morning?
Mrs. Lee. I do. Thank you, Chair Pingree and Ranking Member
Joyce. Also, it is great to see you, Administrator. You serve
such a pivotal role right now at this time for our country and
our planet, and EPA's budget request cites compelling and clear
evidence of the changes to our climate reflected in rising
temperatures, droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires. I come from
Nevada, and clearly we have seen this evidence firsthand with
the worst drought in 1,200 years.
Administrator, the WaterSense Labeling Program is a public/
private partnership that is designed to make or to encourage
users to save water choosing water-efficient products and
services. And we have seen the difference that this product can
make in drought-impacted communities just like mine. Just to
give you a sense of how dire the situation is, just this week,
the water levels in Lake Meade became so low that one of the
intakes responsible for supplying the entire Las Vegas Valley
with water is now visible above the lake surface, so this is
long past an emergency. So I am asking can you commit to
continuing EPA's longstanding support for the effective and
empowering Water Sense Program?
Mr. Regan. Absolutely, and I appreciate you recognizing
this program. This is a great example these resources that we
get or asking for from you. Water Sense is a public/private
partnership, and it is also one of the best programs that
highlights community solutions. So we absolutely want to
continue to partner with you. It is a great way to show how the
government, and our corporate citizens, and our communities can
work together to provide local solutions.
Mrs. Lee. Thank you. And I just want to ask, could you
speak more broadly on how the EPA is going to use the
infrastructure bill to address the unique water infrastructure
needs in the Nevada and the West?
Mr. Regan. One of the great parts about the bipartisan
infrastructure law, again, it doesn't inflate EPA in terms of
flooding us with resources. It gives us the resources to pass
through to the States. And that flexibility is so important
because, as you know, the conditions in North Carolina are very
different than the conditions in your State. And we know that
there are members of your community and there are elected
officials that have solutions that are ready to go. And so what
we want to be able to do is pass through these precious
resources so that we can hit the ground running. We should not
provide academic solutions from here in Washington, DC. We need
to get the resources into your communities' hands to solve some
of these problems. I think water reuse, water efficiency, on-
the-ground solutions that many of your stakeholders are already
putting in motion need additional resources because we don't
have a moment to lose.
Mrs. Lee. Absolutely, and I must say that our local water
authority has done an incredible job at conservation. I want to
turn to hard rock mining. The administration released the
Fundamental Principles for or Domestic Mining Reform,
highlighting 500,000 legacy mining sites in the Western U.S.
alone, and calling on Congress to formalize and fund a durable
program to remediate these sites as well as provide some legal
certainty for Good Samaritans working to remain remediate
legacy pollution. The Nevada Division of Minerals estimated
that there are some 300,000 abandoned mine features just in my
home State alone. Meanwhile, the administration has recognized
that there is not one single Federal agency with the authority
over domestic mining.
Could you discuss EPA's perspective and role in
facilitating the cleanup of legacy mines?
Mr. Regan. Absolutely. We know that these mines pose
significant risk to human health and the environment. And while
the Department of Interior is the principal land management
agency, we also recognize that we have a role to play. So to
the point you just made, it requires partnership. Through EPA's
Abandoned Mine Lands Program, we are partnered with DOI and
other Federal agencies and coordinating with the States and
tribes on the ground to provide technical expertise in research
cleanup, and the redevelopment of these legacy mines. So, you
know, we know that we have an important role. We are sort of
following the Department of Interior's lead, but we understand
the severity that this poses to human health, and we are doing
everything we can to accommodate this mission.
That can be accomplished through many of the resources we
are asking for via this budget, but we know, as you raised, it
is a significant issue. And so we are going to leverage the
bipartisan infrastructure law resources to help expedite some
of this cleanup as well through our Superfund program.
Mrs. Lee. Thank you. I am running out of time. I just sort
of want to put a plug also for EPA's support for the Good
Samaritan cleanup as well, so I would love to follow up with
you on that. Thank you, and I yield the time I don't have.
Thanks.
Ms. Pingree. You are welcome to all the time you did not
have, and thank you for your questions.
Mr. Kilmer.
Mr. Kilmer. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks, Mr.
Administrator, for being with us today. I really appreciate the
work that you and your team do, and, in particular, I just want
to praise and thank you for the work that the EPA does in
protecting and restoring Puget Sound. As you likely know, Puget
Sound is our Nation's largest estuary by volume. It is the
center of Washington State's economic engine. It is a place
where generations of Washingtonians and Native Americans have
built their lives and made their livelihoods. It is really
important to our economy through jobs in fishing, and shellfish
harvesting, and maritime industries. On top of that, there are
19 Federally-recognized tribes that have made Puget Sound their
home since time immemorial, including 17 with tribal treaty
rights, to harvest fish and shellfish. And as a consequence,
the Federal Government has a trust responsibility to support
Puget Sound recovery and uphold those treaty rights. That is,
in my view, a critical environmental justice issue.
Here is the problem. We have a really sick body of water,
and the EPA's role in this, I think, is just profoundly
important. I think now, more than ever, there is a real
opportunity for Congress and for your Agency to take action to
protect the Sound for future generations. Look, we know that
investing in restoring Puget Sound by addressing everything
from persistent flooding and stormwater runoff to improving
nearshore habitat, and removing culverts that affect water
quality and fish passage, all of that is essential for
increasing climate resilience, for restoring salmon runs, and
for creating good jobs. So first, I want to extend to you an
invitation to come out and visit the Puget Sound region and to
see firsthand the urgency and importance of protecting Puget
Sound. The weather is particularly nice in the summer, so I
would love to have you visit.
But I am also hoping you can just speak to some of the
opportunities you see to strengthen the EPA's partnership role
in Puget Sound, including funding for the Puget Sound
Geographic Program.
Mr. Regan. Well, number one, I thank you for your
leadership on the Puget Sound. I think with the resources that
you all have really fought hard for in our geographic programs,
they are making a tremendous difference, you know for all of
our national treasures, but especially for the Puget Sound. And
I appreciate you highlighting the fact that this is a perfect
example of tourism, jobs, the economy, ecosystem protection,
public health protection, the impacts of climate change. All of
these things converge together, and we want to work very
diligently with you on solutions.
I believe that our work with the Puget Sound Partnership
State agencies, and tribes, and others has supported gains in a
comprehensive regional plan to restore the Sound, leveraging
over $1 billion for recovery. We partner with 19, as you say,
federally-recognized tribes and an international collaboration
with Canada. I think taking that international approach is so
critical, but also the nation-to-nation relationship rebuilding
with those tribes really helps us to understand, you know,
exactly what approaches we take and why we take them. There are
cultural reasons that our partners want this work done. There
are health reasons. There are economic reasons. We have seen a
net increase of over 6,000 acres of shellfish beds and over
41,000 acres of habitat protected or restored by the
partnership we have already started.
So the goal for us is to keep the pedal to the metal,
continue to strengthen our partnerships, and we can do that
because of the resources you have already invested, but we need
more. As you said, this is a sick body of water. We have a lot
of work to do, but we are ready to do that work.
Mr. Kilmer. I am really pleased to hear you say that. I
think these investments do pay off, and I also appreciate your
just acknowledgement that this requires a coordinated approach
that includes strong Federal investment but also partnership
alongside State and tribal efforts. In that regard, that is
actually why I introduced a bill called the Puget SOS Act,
which certainly it is funding, but also establishing a Puget
Sound recovery national program office in the EPA and codifying
the Puget Sound Federal Leadership Task Force that was set up
under the Obama administration. That would ensure that the
Federal Government steps up to assist with the regional efforts
that are required to save our Sound and to resource salmon and
orca populations, and ensure future generations have access to
these same economic opportunities, and uphold tribal treaty
rights.
The bill did pass the House on suspension last year, and I
certainly hope I can count on your partnership and support for
hopefully getting it across the finish line this Congress.
Mr. Regan. You can absolutely count on our partnership. As
a former State regulator, listen, I really, really, really
respect cooperative federalism. I know what can be done on the
State level if you have a strong Federal partnership, and I
know that things can't be done if you don't have a strong
Federal partnership. So I take this role very serious, and I
understand what the States need, what the tribes need, and we
cannot do this alone. So, yes, you have our strong partnership
and commitment to continuing to work across the State, Federal,
and tribal boundaries.
Mr. Kilmer. Thank you, Mr. Administrator, and thank you,
Madam Chair. I yield back.
Mr. Kilmer. Thank you. Chair McCollum, do you have some
questions this morning?
Ms. McCollum. Yes. Yes, I do. First, welcome,
Administrator. Welcome to the Interior Subcommittee. And I just
want to say that because of the work and leadership of Chair
Pingree, we were able to have increases to the important work
you do in the Environmental Protection Agency, and we look
forward to funding that work into the future because you
provide human health and a healthy environment, and that is
important to the success of our national security, and it is
also important to family and personal security, too. So thank
you for your work.
I am going to ask you a question about some budgetary
needs, but first I want to touch on something that has been a
strategy that I have been working with the committee on, and it
has to do with the Mississippi River. The subcommittee directed
the EPA to develop a strategy for fiscal year 2021 in a report.
Could you please tell me where we are in this process with the
Mississippi River restoration and resilience strategy?
Mr. Regan. Absolutely. We are so eager to work with you on
a Mississippi River restoration strategy. We have actually
turned in our homework to the Office of Management and Budget.
We believe that we put forward a very, very strong strategy. We
are waiting for them to grade our homework, and once they get
it back to me, I look forward to sharing with you what that
product looks like and where we go from there.
Ms. McCollum. Well, everybody has invited you to their
districts, so I am happy to invite you to the headwaters, but I
will include the rest of the Mississippi River down to the Gulf
in Louisiana, to look at some of the work that we can do
together on that and protect this great working river, and the
habitat, and the communities that live alongside of it. Given
your background in North Carolina, you are very familiar with
what this Agency needs to do to address PFAS. The Agency's
Strategic Road Map says by the end of 2021 that the Agency was
going to issue orders to companies to require them to provide
information about the health effects of some of these
substances, information we currently do not have, and I think
all of us on the committee, but especially the chair, know we
need to have ASAP.
So we are hearing that there are some delays in getting the
Toxic Substance Control Act back on track from the previous
administration. It is a vital important gatekeeper in
preventing the next set of dangerous chemicals, like PFAS, from
getting into commerce without first taking steps to make sure
that they are saved. So what can you tell us about these
delays? What are you doing to address them? What can we do to
help you address them? And, you know, we just want to make sure
that the EPA is going to be able to do its TSCA reviews and
prioritize them in a timely fashion to protect the most
vulnerable populations, and that includes the children here in
the United States.
Mr. Regan. Absolutely, and I think that the new TSCA law is
a great example of a bipartisan approach to some of the most
dangerous chemicals in this country. Unfortunately, during the
previous administration, after TSCA reform was put into place,
the previous administration didn't ask for any resources and
didn't put a plan in place to implement the law as you all
dictated, which is why this agency has missed 9 of the first 10
chemical risk evaluation deadlines. We walked into a situation
where the Agency actually was not funded to do the work that
Congress asked us to do. And so that is why we only right now
have about 50 percent of what we think we need to review the
safety of new chemicals as quickly as possible, not only to
follow the law that Congress has asked, but that the private
sector wants to see so that we can get things moving and put
the right replacement chemicals on the market.
You see a very genuine budget request here for TSCA support
and implementation. Congress has given us the marching orders.
We don't have the resources to get the job done on time and on
budget. And so we are asking for those resources so that we can
make up for lost time and keep pace with a very strong law that
you all have asked us to perform.
Ms. McCollum. Well, I will speak for myself right now. You
can count on me to do whatever I can to help you with that. As
people are, you know, asking questions as to why you are behind
in your homework--I am a former teacher--I can tell them you
were never given the homework tools to complete the assignment.
So we are going to right that wrong, and we are going to work
with you on that. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you so much for your questioning. Chair
Kaptur, do you have some questions this morning?
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Madam Chair, very much. Thank you
for this great hearing, and I want to thank Administrator Regan
for coming to Ohio to the heart of the industrial Midwest and
for making that trip on such a cold, cold windy day. Thank you
very, very much, and I am glad to see you back in Washington. I
just want you to know that the woman whose home you visited,
Karen George, and the work of lead pipe removal has given new
hope to that neighborhood where they actually were re-energized
to work with their local organizations to try to get abandoned
buildings ripped down and community gardens established. And so
the lead pipe removal became a sign of hope for that area, Mr.
Administrator, so know that I and they thank you very, very
much, and you are always welcome here, always.
Mr. Regan. Thank you.
Ms. Kaptur. I wanted to turn to the bipartisan
infrastructure law and its relationship to EPA. And we know
that there was significant new funding in BIF for expanding
alternative fuel infrastructure and alternative fuel vehicles,
including natural gas vehicles. As part of these new programs,
a lot of the funds will go to electric vehicles, but Congress
also made sure that other low-emission and alternative fuel
vehicles qualify for many of the new programs. In fact, we just
had a situation where the labs at the Department of Energy
cleared a Class 8 truck to come to Washington and go back,
fueled completely 100 percent on ethanol.
And so one of my questions is, how does the EPA and the
administration plan to ensure that the intent to encourage a
variety of alternative fuel vehicles is honored? And because I
represent companies like Ford that makes the heavy trucks at
Avon Lake, Ohio, I represent the Ford EcoBoost engine plant at
Brook Part, Ohio, I represent the General Motors transmission
facility which has had its employment cut by half because they
make transmissions for conventional vehicles, and also the Jeep
Wrangler plant at Toledo, their largest facility on the
continent. So the automotive industry is at the heart of so
much of our job base here and this transition will be difficult
for the country and certainly for the people that I represent.
So I am interested in alternatives, new technology, what EPA's
role might be with the new infrastructure bill.
And then secondly, I just want to make you conscious, not
that you can do anything about this, but maybe you can be a
voice inside the administration indirectly. I have come to
learn that with this transition to new vehicles, I have gotten
in a lot of garages where old vehicles are being repaired--
garbage trucks for cities, police cars, fire engines, the whole
public fleet that exist, excavators, all this equipment that is
out there--and the conditions in which the people who repair
them work. And learning that, in fact, in places like Ohio--
maybe it is not true in other States--but we have a rampant
pulmonary illness and lung cancers because of breathing in
diesel emissions.
There is no real voice for this because of the manner in
which the repair work is fragmented across counties, cities,
bus companies, transit authorities. It is very interesting.
They work in these old crummy buildings, and in Ohio, I found
out from the fighters, our firefighters are not even covered by
OSHA. I couldn't believe it. I know that is not your job, but
if you go to Cleveland, if you come to Toledo, I will take you
to these garages. I have the county garages. It is very hard to
get your arms around this, but we know we are 1 million
mechanics short in our country today, and part of the reason is
because the career has not been modernized in the sense of
making sure that they work in safe facilities.
I don't know what EPA can do about that. Maybe you can find
out the best places in the country where this is occurring.
Maybe we can work with the Labor Department and Education
Department on a training program so that it is a respected
profession and not just tangential. We are talking about a lot
of people and young people that we want to attract to this
field. And so I just wanted to point out that issue to you to
how make it an environmentally clean profession. It is a
dangerous profession, and so changing to a new energy age also
means helping the people who will be doing the work, and there
is not a focus. You can hardly find the word ``mechanic'' in
the BIF, a thousand pages or whatever it is. They talk about
workforce. Well, that is not enough. We have to care about the
people and where they work, and maybe EPA could help us be a
voice there.
So thank you for listening, and my question goes back to
what can we do with the infrastructure law, and what is your
authority to ensure that we will have a variety of alternative
fuel vehicles and that they are safe and clean?
Mr. Regan. Well, thank you for that question, and I will
definitely work with Labor and HHS and identify our role as we
think about the safety of mechanics and those conditions.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you.
Mr. Regan. The president has said that we have to have a
whole-of-government approach, and anytime we hear a question,
we take it back to the team and we try to think about a
solution, even if it doesn't fit neatly into one of our
purviews. So I will take that back.
More importantly, I think on the fuels piece, I have had a
lot of conversations with Secretary Vilsack, and Secretary
Buttigieg, and Secretary Granholm about the evolution of our
technologies as we think about fuel choices. We know that
electric vehicles are the future, but they are not going to be
readily available for everyone tomorrow. We also know that our
agriculture industry plays an important role in this
transition. And so as we think about advanced technologies, we
also think about advanced biofuels and advanced fuels, and so
this transition we know will take place over time. There is a
role for agriculture in that transition, we are really focused
on making sure that that role is properly managed.
The other thing that Secretary Vilsack often says and
reminds me of this there is also a big play in our aviation
fuel space as well. And so EPA, DOT, and the Department of
Agriculture are thinking very seriously and strategically about
the role of biofuels and advanced biofuels as we advance our
transportation sector, that being both, you know, vehicles,
ground vehicles, and aviation vehicles as well.
Ms. Kaptur. Mr. Administrator, thank you so very much. I
just will say that the first biofuel plane flown by the
National Guard in our country was flown out of our district
almost 20 years ago and one of our little jets. And so the
180th Fighter Wing Ohio distinguished itself. We even got on
the cover of Buckeye Guard magazine and so forth. So it was a
Guard unit. It wasn't active duty. It was a Guard unit. So they
are out here in rural America and trying to make a difference.
So maybe we will get you up in one of those planes sometime.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Kaptur. I love your energy. I love your positive
attitude. All the best to you, and thank you so much for
answering my questions today.
Mr. Regan. Well, thank you, and I think you know, I come
from a rural State, and I know that our agricultural economy is
so vital to what this country is doing. The President pledged
that agriculture will have a seat at the table, advanced
biofuels would have a role in this low-carbon future, and we
are going to keep that commitment.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you so much, and you get that DOD
involved. We had to drag them. Drag them. Believe me, they
didn't even think about energy. It wasn't even on their mind.
It was the Marine Corps that led the way because they were
dying for it, so they understood the problem and resupply and
so forth in theater. So, believe me, there are some folks over
there that now do care.
Mr. Regan. Well, if I might add--I know we are over time--
but I can tell you the relationship that I have with Secretary
Austin I believe is historic, and I can tell you on climate
change and on PFAS, I have had no stronger partner than
Secretary Austin.
Ms. Pingree. That is great. Well, thank you both for that
exchange, and I am thrilled to know the first biofuel plane
went up 20 years ago. We got some catch-up to do here. It seems
like we should have figured that out a long time ago, but thank
you both for that.
And now we have an opportunity to ask a few more questions.
Mr. Regan, if you have time, we would be happy to welcome
questions from other members of the committee who want to take
up another topic, and I will just start with myself.
I am really pleased to see that for the first time, and it
is sort of surprising it is the first time, but EPA's strategic
plan includes a new goal focused specifically on addressing
climate change. Clearly it is long overdue that that we have
that focus, and I really look forward to supporting you and
your work towards achieving the goal. So can you just describe
a little bit how your budget request intends to achieve the
goal and your focus on climate change?
Mr. Regan. Absolutely, and this is a great way to sort of
highlight how, you know, a lot of refer to them as regulations,
but they are really technology standards. And Congress
basically gave us an assignment to phase down
hydrofluorocarbons. We proposed a rule and finalized that rule.
We are working with the industry to reduce HFCs by 85 percent
in 15 years, and do it in a way where we are transitioning our
economy and asked for resources for technical expertise, and
ability to continue to work with the private sector.
When you look at our finalized rule for light duty
vehicles, cars, and trucks, we did that in concert with the
automobile industry, the UAW, and our unions, and we looked at
what was technologically feasible to drive the economy in a way
where we were reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but we are
remaining globally competitive with our international
competition. And we are also doing it and keeping those jobs
right here at home. So our technology standards in our
regulations to reduce climate, we believe we are doing a great
job working with the industry.
Look at our oil and gas sector, our methane regulations. We
have proposed one of the most stringent regulations to reduce
and capture methane that this country has ever seen, but it was
done because API and the Chamber said we need some rules of
engagement and rules of the road in how we are going to reduce
that pollutant. I have worked very closely with the power
sector and their CEOs to understand what technologies are
available, what is cost effective. How do we capture those
emissions, but equally as important, how do we capture that
lost product because that product, that gas is valuable. So on
cars, on methane, on hydrofluorocarbons, and we are also
beginning to look at our power sector more holistically. We are
convening meetings, putting strong regulations in place, and
reducing the threat that climate change poses while continuing
to create jobs and advance our economy.
The last thing I will say is everything that we have done
as it relates to climate change and the rules that we have
proposed, has been done in a way to capture innovation,
entrepreneurship, and remain globally competitive while we
protect public health.
Ms. Pingree. Great. That is really helpful to hear that
description, and we certainly appreciate that lens that you
have on it. You know, one other part of this, and I know you
have brought it up, you know, in other questions, is just this
whole-of-government approach, and I would love to hear more
about how you are working with, you know, both the whole-of-
government at the Federal, but also tribal, State, local
agencies, you know, just to make sure that there is a lot of
coordination going on. That seems like an important role for
your Agency.
Mr. Regan. You know, just maybe a month ago, you know, our
Environmental Council of States held a meeting in my home State
of North Carolina. I met with, I believe, 45 of the 50
environmental State commissioners of secretaries to talk about
the appropriate relationship that Federal and States should
have. We are also hosting a lot of conversations with our
tribal sovereign governments as well and looking at how we do
some Nation-to-nation partnership building. It is very
important for me to stress that if we are going to achieve our
goals, we have to have strong partnerships with our States and
our tribes. We have to take advantage of the autonomy that they
possess so that there can be creative solutions on the ground.
That is extremely important.
Equally as important is for me to have a strong
relationship with Secretary Austin as we think about our
national security as it relates to climate change, or how we
think about contamination in water that has plagued our
retirees, our veterans, and our soldiers for years just like
some of our civilian communities, a strong relationship with
Secretary Vilsack. There is a consternation around pesticides,
herbicides, waters of the U.S. I cannot make these decisions in
a vacuum. I have to consult with Secretary Vilsack. Marty Walsh
on Labor. There are implications to our technology standards
and regulations on economic development and job growth.
Secretary Raimondo in Commerce, Marty Walsh in Labor, if we are
not talking, we are not meeting the moment.
So as we think about the bipartisan infrastructure law, as
we think about these investments that we hopefully get from you
all in Congress, we are leveraging all these resources to make
sure the Federal Government is speaking in one voice and
leveraging the partnership, the appropriate partnership, we
should have with our State, tribal, and local officials.
Ms. Pingree. Great. Great. Thank you for that answer, and
we really look forward to supporting you in that work.
Ranking Member Joyce, would you like to have some more
questions?
Mr. Joyce. Thank you, again, Chair Pingree. Administrator,
does the administration's goal to limit emissions from mobile
sources not dictate that recyclable materials should be
transported the shortest distance possible from their point of
origin to processing locations? And how can this goal coexist
with the way EPA has interpreted and tried to implement
environmental justice actions under this administration?
Mr. Regan. Yeah, as I think we look at the holistic
picture, yes, we want to limit emissions for climate reasons.
We also want to limit emissions in terms of public health
exposure, putting people first. I don't believe that they are
false options. I believe that these goals can coexist. You
know, one of the things that we would like to do is make sure
that these facilities have the appropriate control technologies
and measures so that they don't put their community members in
danger. We also want to be realistic, though. Some of our
communities in this country have been dumped on. Some
communities have a disproportionate number and level of
industrial processes, chemical manufacturers, coal plants, and
it is unfair for any community, because of race, because of
economic status, to have all of these polluting facilities
located in just one area. We have to spread some of these
things out. It is not that we have to go without. We just have
to think more strategically about placement to ensure that all
people are equally protected under the law.
Mr. Joyce. When you opposed a particular scrap metal
recycling permit application in Chicago, were you aware that
the only other large metal shredding facility in the city was
an environmental justice area that is more densely populated
than the Southeast side? Were you aware that the other
operation is located closer to schools and homes? And were you
aware that this facility was operating and continues to operate
without any of the pollution controls on its shredder?
Mr. Regan. I was aware that this facility operated on the
North side of town. It was a better-financed community, a
community that had stronger representation from their elected
officials, and that that facility was relocated because of
persistent violations of the Clean Air Act and other
violations. So the record wasn't strong. So when that facility
moved from the North side of town to the Southeast side of town
where those community members have been persistently dumped on,
what EPA said was let's take a pause. I am not going to make
the decision. The decision is the mayor's decision, but EPA
will provide the mayor with the technical assistance needed to
properly evaluate the health impacts.
The city used those resources by EPA and HHS and came to
the determination that there would be a disproportionate impact
to that community. And with the track record that that company
had for violating the law, I believe that the city made the
proper determination that that was not an ideal location for
that facility.
Mr. Joyce. When you referred to the denial of such permit
as ``environmental justice at work,'' were you aware of the
fact that the overwhelming and admittedly conservative health
impact assessment yielded results that were well within the
EPA's benchmarks?
Mr. Regan. I think when you take a look at the decision
that the city made, I think the city made a decision that when
you look at the cumulative impact of the disproportionate
pollution that that community would bear, the city made the
determination that permitting one more facility could
potentially be that straw that breaks the camel's back for that
community. Again, EPA's role was to provide technical
assistance and resources to the city so that the city could
make the proper determination.
I believe that Mayor Lightfoot made the right decision
because I follow science, and I follow data, and I follow the
law. And when you look at all three of those things, I believe
the City of Chicago made the right decision, and I think it is
important to really keep our eye on the ball. The City of
Chicago made that decision. EPA provided additional resources
so that they could properly evaluate the health impacts, but
the City of Chicago made that decision.
Mr. Joyce. Well, Administrator Regan, I would be remiss if
I didn't address the Great Lakes. My dear friend and colleague,
Marcy Kaptur, I am going to beat her to this issue, but I am
sure she will expound upon it. In my backyard, Lake Erie is
especially prone to the dangerous impacts of harmful algal
blooms given it is the warmest shallowest, especially in
Marcy's end, and has the most shoreline development of the
Great Lakes. While I recognize the Agency is focusing on
delisting Areas of Concern, given the issues Governor DeWine
outlined in his January 2022 letter to the Agency, can you take
a moment to explain how EPA plans to prioritize and distribute
GLRI dollars to reduce toxin-producing harmful algal blooms and
improve water quality in the Great Lakes?
Mr. Regan. Absolutely, and I know that bill does put a
priority on the AOCs. But we also know that we need to direct
resources to really focus on these algal blooms. I believe we
have invested approximately $10 million of GLRI funds each year
in Lake Erie focusing on nutrient reduction efforts. From 2015
through 2020, I believe that number has exceeded about $60
million. So we want to ramp that up, which is why I believe you
will see in the budget there is a reflection to really focus on
important issues like these algal blooms.
I am also spending a lot of time with my good friend, USDA
Secretary Tom Vilsack, because we know that we have nutrient
runoff occurring. We also want to leverage the bipartisan
infrastructure law and the resources we are asking for for our
water program because we know stormwater is a significant
contributor here. So, Representative, I can tell you,
Congressman, I can tell you, I am looking across all of my
programs trying to, you know, leverage every dollar. I don't
want to rob Peter to pay Paul. I want to be able to leverage
all of my resources and channel and focus on these important
issues that you are raising. And I know these algal blooms are
critically important not just for public health, but the
economic vitality of that national treasure that you sit so
closely to.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you very much. You will find that on this
committee, we are bipartisan on preservation of the Great
Lakes, so I will pass it off to Marcy. She will be able to ask
you some more questions.
Mr. Regan. Thank you, sir.
Ms. Pingree. Double teaming on the Great Lakes there. Let's
see. Mr. Kilmer, do have some more questions?
Mr. Kilmer. Thanks, Madam Chair. I just have one, and
hopefully it won't exhaust too much time. I wanted to just
continue, Mr. Administrator, on the importance of investing in
Puget Sound, but in so doing, I wanted to just highlight
another program that I think is really important, and that is
the National Estuary Program, which, as you know, is an EPA
program to protect and restore water quality and ecological
integrity for estuaries of national significance. Obviously
Puget Sound is one of the big ones in that regard. I was just
hoping you could speak to how the EPA intends to strengthen the
important work done under that program.
Mr. Regan. You are speaking of the National Estuary
Program?
Mr. Kilmer. The Estuary Program, correct.
Mr. Regan. What I will do, Congressman, is get back with
you on the specifics of that correlation of those two programs.
Mr. Kilmer. Super. Thank you. We are happy to follow up
with your team. Again, it is one of those that has an impact on
a lot of our Nation's estuaries and certainly Puget Sound,
among them. So we will look forward to following up with your
team. Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back.
Mr. Regan. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you. Mr. Simpson.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Chairwoman. This is the second
series of questions. I wanted to ask you about a second
subject. It is one that I brought up. First of all, let me just
say I am happy that Mr. Cartwright recognized that I can smile
before noon. It is not often, but occasionally I can, so I am
glad somebody recognized that.
This is a subject that was brought up somewhat in different
manner with Congressman Lee, and that is about abandoned mine
sites and cleaning up abandoned mine sites. This is a subject
that I brought up with both the Secretary of Energy and the
Secretary of Interior, and anyone else who would listen. As you
know, critical minerals are critical, and unfortunately, a lot
of the critical minerals that we have in this country, we rely
on other countries that don't like us for the supply of them.
If you are going to reach your climate goals, and renewable
energy, and those types of things, you can't outstrip our
ability to deliver the critical minerals that are necessary in
batteries, in solar, in other things, and for our defense
purposes, frankly. The Defense Department is very concerned
about the supply of critical minerals.
As you probably know, Idaho is rich in what is deemed
critical minerals, and some of those in Idaho are significant
in their applications, and we shouldn't rely on foreign
countries that don't like us for those. It is important that we
get these out of the ground here in Idaho in this country in a
responsible way. So I want to tell you a story about what is
going on, and then I want to ask you a series of questions and
have your thoughts on it.
Cobalt and antimony are very critical minerals, frankly.
Antimony, Defense is very concerned about it, and it is
critical in our renewable energy goals, frankly. And so there
is a mine in Idaho that was developed during World War II. It
was used to mine antimony that was used for war purposes in
World War II. After the war, it was abandoned. It has been
sitting up there in the mountains of Idaho, and the tailings
are there. There is a runoff from those tailings that pollute
the waters and some other things. That blocks access to a few
hundred miles of potential salmon habitat, and those types of
things. There is a company that has come in that wants to clean
it up, frankly, and remove those tailings, and clean the water,
and everything else. They have got a heck of a good plan there.
It has taken them so far 6 years to get licensed, and they are
not licensed yet, but it is 6 years. The cobalt mine that is in
Idaho has taken 10 years, a decade to get licensed for this.
That is just too long, and so let me ask you these series of
questions.
Am I correct that you support, A, the President's critical
minerals agenda? Do you agree that we should focus on remining
historical mining districts as opposed to greenfield frontier
projects that would open new mining if we can do this by
remining sites? Will you support remining projects that would
have the co-benefit of improving the environmental conditions
at historical mine sites? And finally and maybe most
importantly, will the EPA demonstrate flexibility in the
permitting process to permit remining for critical minerals
that improves the condition of the environment at the site,
improves it, but not necessarily the extreme position to
meeting pre-mining conditions, conditions that existed before
there was ever a mine there? If we don't do this and this, and,
to me, the research I have done on this makes perfect sense,
but if we don't do this what you are going to leave is just a
site that still continues to pollute the river and other things
with runoffs, and not have the ability to clean this up.
So I think we can work together to solve this, but part of
it is getting the permitting process streamlined so that we can
get it done and clean up these sites. And when you are going to
the Puget Sound and flying over Idaho, there are a couple
airports that I can have you land at, and we can get on our
jeans and boots, and they would be happy to take us up there
and show us some incredible country and what is going on up
there.
So, listen, I look forward to your response on this, but
let me say before I quit that I know sometimes it sounds like I
am really critical of the EPA. I am not. I think you do a very
important job, and I look forward to working with you to make
sure that we can do this job that we all want to do in making
sure that we have a clean environment. Thank you.
Mr. Regan. Well, I appreciate the question, and I look
forward to visiting with you in your district in and doing
exactly what you just laid out because I believe we have to get
out from behind the desk in Washington, D.C., and actually see
things with our own eyes listen, and bring these things back to
Washington, D.C. So I look forward to the district visit.
I do support the President's aggresive goals as it relates
to critical mining. I am also talking with my counterparts.
This is, once again, another whole-of-government approach. It
is very important that DOI, DOD, EPA, Commerce, it is important
that we are all looking at the needs if we want to win the 21st
century in terms of this global competition to reduce climate
change but grow jobs and grow the economy at the same time. We
can't ignore that we have betrayed the trust of many people in
the past because we haven't done some of this mining right in
the past. And so what we have to do is restore public trust. We
have to have processes in place where the Federal Government
actually talks across agencies and looks for the most expedient
ways to get access to these critical minerals while protecting
public health and the environment. I believe that we can do
that.
You raised some very good points that it has taken 6, 10,
15 years. Well, there has been no administration and no
President has focused on this issue like this President. There
has been no President that has said all of these agencies must
work together if we are going to win the 21st century. So, yes,
I believe that we can put the proper processes in place to
access critical minerals in a way that supports our climate
goals and allows for us to win the 21st century and grow a lot
of jobs.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you for that, and I look forward to
working with you on it. Thank you for being here today, and
thanks for the important job you do.
Mr. Regan. Thank you so much.
Mr. Simpson. I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you. That is a really important topic,
and I feel like I learned a little bit there. So Chair Kaptur,
it is your time to discuss the Great Lakes or anything else you
choose.
Ms. Kaptur. All right. Well, I have got three little
points, and I will end with the Great Lakes, and I am so glad
that Congressman Joyce and I are able to co-chair the Great
Lakes Task Force. We really have our work cut out for us, I
will tell you.
But let me begin with this. Mr. Administrator, you
mentioned you are good friends with Secretary Austin. Well, I
have an idea, and it would take leadership by both of you, and
I know you have your hands full. But as we think about the new
world of vehicles, the Department of Defense spends an enormous
amount of money going around the country before their air
shows, like with the Thunderbirds, and they have a ground show.
They bring in big rocket trucks, and they bring in all these
vehicles, and there are hundreds of thousands of people, and
they cheer the Department of Defense and the Thunderbirds. And
I have often thought that that could be just a tremendous place
to introduce environmentally clean technologies that are either
working or in the development stages. That would educate and
inspire across our country. The Marine Corps has got some
vehicles they have worked on and so forth.
But I think in the area of cars and trucks, which somewhat
fall under you, we could do a lot more, and I also think that
there should be a national program that inspires our young
people that we want to go into the fields of technology at
places that you have never heard of, like Norwalk Dragway in
Ohio, and Milan Dragway up in Michigan just north of Toledo.
These are places where the future is being born. Nobody pays
attention to these individual young people that are trying to
get a double A fuel dragster to go faster than the guy in the
other lane, and this is where our talent comes from. We don't
see it at the Federal level. You know, they go to these big
companies and all that, but down here where we have the people
that live right next door to the automotive industry or
probably out in Derek Kilmer's State where they live right next
door to where airplanes are made. There is tremendous
opportunity that I think that we miss and that we don't
inspire.
So I think there should be a prize for, you know, the new
American car, you know, that is built by young people who are
under 25 years of age or whatever. Something creative has to be
done there to inspire them that they matter. They matter
because they are different than kids that just, you know, maybe
are advantaged their whole lives and go on to Harvard or
wherever, and these kids are down here working with raw
material every day, trying to work on electric cars in their
classrooms in high school and all, and they are really worth
paying attention to. I will send you something on that, but I
think we should build the new car starting with them. And I
think your Department and Secretary Austin could really do
something with these shows that the military puts on anyway all
across the country. So that is No. 1. I don't expect you to
respond but just be interested.
Secondly, for the Great Lakes cities that are heavily
burdened with environmental debt, we are trying to do our job,
but Detroit and Cleveland each have a municipal bonded
indebtedness of more than $2 billion, most of which is due to
environmental mandates. Toledo owes--little Toledo now--$1.6
billion. They are at the base of a watershed that rains into
it, so the poorest community has to pay for all these
environmental mandates, and the region that surrounds it walks
away without those responsibilities: Milwaukee, $1.4 billion.
So as we think about the problems of the Great Lakes, if
there is any group in your Agency that could take a look at
bonded indebtedness in the Great Lakes related to environment
and some possible solutions. Maybe Brian Deese could help us
come up with some solutions with his knowledge of finance, but
sometimes put this dead on the poorest places is absolutely
morally wrong, and I know that Congressman Joyce probably
Ashtabula and some of the smaller communities. You know,
something is wrong with this formula, and so I just wanted to
point that out and see if there isn't a way to help us think
through more a creative financing mechanism.
Finally, with the Great Lakes, again, we are in real
trouble. We are in real trouble. If there is any way you could
set up a task force across agencies, including Terry Cosby at
the Natural Resource Conservation Service at USDA, yourself,
and people you would appoint, some of the clean climate people
maybe over at the White House. I don't know, but we are losing
this battle. The invasive species that have come to the Great
Lakes, removing the natural phytoplankton, and the accelerating
growth of algal blooms, it is overwhelming. And our lake is the
shallowest. Erie is the shallowest. Ontario is in terrible
shape because she gets our water once it comes out of the Great
Lakes.
But we have no political boundary for the problem. The
problem of Lake Erie lies in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and
Western Ontario. Yeah, we have a lot of agencies and we give
them a lot of money, but there is no concerted focus for every
month what we have to do to make a difference. In the western
basin of Lake Erie, I can tell you there are no facilities
above manure lagoons that turn that effluent into power. Yeah,
the governor has a program, but it hasn't [inaudible]. And we
put millions of dollars working with the Senator Stabenow from
up in Michigan, and David Joyce, and others from using USDA
funds to try to get out into the watershed and try to contain
the phosphorus that is coming toward the lake. But half our
land is absentee owned, so there aren't farmers. There aren't
farmers there to really tend the land. It is an enormous
problem. We need some kind of strike force for Lake Erie to
save it. I am not unhopeful, but I am extremely worried at this
point. And Toledo experienced something very terrible in 2014.
You are aware of that. It is going to happen again if we don't
deal with this. It is a massive environmental challenge.
And so I am asking for consideration of a strike force
involving the agencies if you could just give that
consideration. Thank you very much.
Mr. Regan. Well, thank you for that, Congresswoman, and I
will take that idea back of the strike force to the Cabinet,
and we can see what we can do with that suggestion. I can tell
you, thank you all for your leadership in giving us the
resources to begin to try to address some of these issues. EPA
is throwing everything we have at the Great Lakes. And, you
know, on the issue of the bond and the indebtedness, I think
that what I would like to do, we do have an Environmental
Finance Board that I will take that back to see if they have
been thinking about this issue, what solutions they might have.
If they haven't been thinking about these issues, I will be
sure to let them know that you have asked for us to take a
strong look at that.
You know, I love the fact that bipartisanship is working
here between you and the Congressman from Ohio. I don't know if
I like being the recipient of the double team, but is a rare
and beautiful thing to see. [Laughter.]
Mr. Regan. The Great Lakes is a national treasure. We
understand that. We know we are playing catch-up. And so I
appreciate the way you all are asking these questions and
formulating these requests because I believe that there are
certain aspects of it that we can meet the moment of, but there
are some that are really huge mountains to climb, and we look
forward to tackling those mountains with you. I can also tell
you that I love your idea about youth engagement.
I am in the process of creating a youth council here at EPA
because as I travel the country, some of the best ideas are
coming from our youth. And what I will do is we are trying to
look at criteria for who is on that council. You have just
given us some really great criteria to add to that potential
idea. And in terms of your request with DOD, there is a
gentleman that likes to test drive electric vehicles that
happens to run the country that is leaning on Secretary Austin
more than I ever could. So I think having cleaner vehicles,
especially with our military departments, is something that is
a top priority, but I will also take that request back as well.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you so very much. Thank you for allowing
me the time to discuss this.
Mr. Regan. Absolutely.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much, Chair Kaptur. We are
always happy to hear more about the Great Lakes, and
Administrator Regan, you were not just double teamed. This is
like a force of nature here. [Laughter.]
Ms. Pingree. So keep the Great Lakes in your focus, and
since I grew up in Minnesota on Lake Superior, I am a strong
supporter of anything and all Great Lakes, even though I am
devoted to the ocean these days.
Mr. Joyce. Good thing Chair McCollum wasn't here, too. She
would have really got him.
Ms. Pingree. This committee is heavily weighted to the
Great Lakes. The real power rests there, so we just struggle to
get a little attention to the ocean on the East and West Coasts
and the South as well.
Well, we are very appreciative of your time today and your
thoughtful answers to all of our questions, and, of course, we
look forward to working with you in this budget process. And I
think I speak for myself and the ranking member. I don't know
if you want to make any other remarks, but we are just happy to
have had you here today.
Mr. Joyce. I just thank you for your time. I missed you
when you were here in northeast Ohio. As everybody on the
committee knows, I have been recuperating, but now 5 weeks
later, I have a new knee, so, there is no stopping me now. I
will follow you wherever you need to go.
Mr. Regan. Well, I tell, you know, I hate that we couldn't
time it in the way that you could participate, so that just
means I have to come back and visit you. I am committed to
visiting the districts and spending time because I believe that
that is where the solutions come from.
Mr. Joyce. Lots to show you.
Mr. Regan. Absolutely.
Ms. Pingree. Well, thank you very much. Thank you to the
committee.
If there are no other questions, this meeting stands
adjourned.
Mr. Regan. Thank you all.
Wednesday, May 18, 2022.
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
WITNESSES
CHARLES ``CHUCK'' F. SAMS III, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
JESSICA BOWRON, COMPTROLLER, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Ms. Pingree. Good afternoon. This hearing will now come to
order. As the hearing is fully virtual, we must address a few
housekeeping matters.
For today's meeting, the chair, or staff designated by the
chair, may mute participants' microphones when they are not
under recognition for the purposes of eliminating inadvertent
background noise. Members are responsible for muting and
unmuting themselves.
If you notice that you have not unmuted yourself, I will
ask you if you would like the staff to unmute you. If you
indicate your approval by nodding, the staff will unmute your
microphone.
I remind all members and witnesses that the 5-minute clock
still applies. If there is a technology issue, we will move to
the next member until the issue is resolved, and you will
retain the balance of your time. You will notice a clock on
your screen that will show how much time is remaining.
At 1 minute remaining, the clock will turn to yellow. At 30
seconds remaining, I will gently tap the gavel to remind
members that their time is almost expired. When your time is
expired, the clock will turn red, and I will begin to recognize
the next member.
In terms of speaking order, we will follow the order set
forth in House Rules, beginning with the chair and ranking
member. Then members present at the time the hearing is called
to order will be recognized in order of seniority and, finally,
members not present at the time the hearing is called to order.
Finally, House rules require me to remind you that we have
set up an email address to which members can send anything they
wish to submit in writing at any of our hearings or markups.
That email address has been provided in advance to your staff.
Okay. Now we can begin.
This afternoon, we will be hearing from the 19th National
Park Service Director, Mr. Charles F. Sams, about the fiscal
year 2023 budget request for the National Park Service. He is
accompanied by Jessica Bowron, the National Park Service
Comptroller.
Director Sams, welcome. We are so pleased to have you
before the subcommittee today. You have come to the Park
Service at a critical time for the agency, which has been
without a permanent Director for 6 years.
During that period, the Service has faced some significant
challenges, including record visitation of the parks, the
COVID-19 pandemic, and the positive, but nonetheless
challenging ramp-up of the construction program to implement
the Great American Outdoors Act. I commend the career staff for
their commitment and dedication to keep the agency on track.
Our focus for today's hearing is the President's $3.6
billion request for the National Park Service, an increase of
$346 million, or 10.6 percent above the fiscal year 2022
enacted level. Notable increases include $228 million for
tackling climate change, conserving our natural resources, and
using science to inform decision-making; $148 million to
increase staff capacity throughout the parks; and $48 million
for advancing racial equity and support for underserved
communities.
These are important investments that will better enable the
National Park Service to understand and adapt to the
significant challenges it faces in the 21st century so that it
can meet its mission for future generations.
Director Sams, I am eager to hear about your vision for the
National Park Service, to learn about what you believe are its
most critical needs, and to gain a better understanding of how
we in Congress can help support the National Park Service so
that millions of people can continue to enjoy these majestic
natural and cultural resources.
I would now like to yield to our ranking member, Mr. Joyce,
for his opening remarks.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you for yielding, Madam Chair.
I would like to welcome Director Sams and the Park
Service's Comptroller Jessica Bowron. Thank you for joining us
this afternoon, and congratulations on your historic
nomination, Director Sams.
As the first American Indian to lead the National Park
Service, I have no doubt that your heritage, experience, and
respect for our public lands will serve the country well, and
you will be a great steward of our national parks. As the son
of a World War II veteran, I also wanted to thank you and your
family for your service to our country.
The fiscal year 2023 budget request is $3.6 billion for the
National Park Service, which is a 10 percent increase over the
current year level. While I wholeheartedly support the parks
and want to protect them for future generations, I worry that
it will be difficult to provide the Service's full request,
given the country's current financial situation.
With the national debt now over $30 trillion, we must take
a careful look at Federal spending and make responsible choices
where we can. It has been several years since the National Park
Service has a confirmed leader. So today provides us with a
good opportunity to hear firsthand how the fiscal year 2023
request makes investments to help the Park Service carry out
its mission.
Last year, the national parks welcomed more than 297
million visitors, up nearly 60 million visitors from 2020. As
visitation rebounds following the pandemic, it is important we
provide the necessary resources to expand access to the parks,
increase capacity and recreational opportunities, and improve
visitor experiences.
Deferred maintenance continues to be an ongoing issue for
nearly all national parks, including those in my district, like
the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and the James A. Garfield
National Historic Site. I look forward to discussing how the
request, along with the funding provided through the Great
American Outdoors Act, will address the Service's extensive
maintenance repair backlog to help us preserve the parks for
future generations.
Additionally, with the Ohio and Erie Canalway National
Heritage Area in my back yard, I remain supportive of programs
that provide technical and financial assistance to partners and
groups that operate outside of the national park boundaries.
These dollars go a long way to help local communities preserve
their history, conserve natural resources, and spur economic
growth.
Director Sams, thank you again for joining us today. When
your schedule allows, I invite you to come out and visit our
parks in northeast Ohio. It would be a great opportunity to
show you the impact that National Park Service sites have on
our region and our State.
Thank you again, Chair Pingree, for calling this important
hearing today. I look forward to the discussion, and I yield
back.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you. Thank you to the ranking member for
your statement.
And Director Sams, we would love to hear from you.
Mr. Sams. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the
committee. Thank you for having me here today.
Madam Chair and members of the subcommittee, thank you for
the opportunity to appear before you on the fiscal year 2023
budget request for the National Park Service. I would like to
summarize my testimony and submit my entire statement for the
record.
I want to begin by thanking you for your support of the NPS
for fiscal year 2022. Thanks to the additional funds you
provided, all parks are preparing for the summer season with
full fixed costs covered, and we are moving forward with
important efforts such as ensuring all of our U.S. Park Police
officers and law enforcement rangers have body-worn cameras.
I would also like to thank Chair Pingree and Ranking Member
Joyce for our recent visits. I appreciated the opportunity to
hear your priorities and was so pleased that so many of our
goals align for the future of our parks and our dedicated
employees.
I have visited parks across the country in recent months
and seen firsthand some of the challenges facing our parks,
like climate change, increased visitation, and a need to expand
the breadth of the histories we are telling. I have also heard
from our employees about challenges like housing, connectivity,
and capacity. I am pleased to share with you today how our
fiscal year 2023 budget request addresses many of these issues.
The discretionary budget request for the NPS is $3.6
billion, an increase of $345.6 million compared to fiscal year
2022 enacted funding levels. Our budget request makes bold
investments essential for the Service's continued success in
its second century by investing in our most valuable resources,
our employees.
I want to highlight a few components with you that we are
particularly proud to include in this year's budget request--
conservation, racial justice, and restoring capacity. Our
request proposes an additional $225 million in targeted
service-wide investments to protect natural resources from 21st
century threats. Fundamental to this effort is a $57 million
increase for park capacity in our natural resource programs.
We also propose additional funding to complete natural
resource projects, transitioning the National Park Service
fleet to zero emission vehicles, complete climate vulnerability
assessments, and better position the agency to respond to
natural disasters.
President Biden's Executive Order 13985, Advancing Racial
Equity and Support for Underserved Communities, directs Federal
agencies to operate in an environment that advances equity for
all. The fiscal year 2023 NPS budget proposes $36 million in
increased targeted investments to advance racial justice and
equity for underserved communities.
Fourteen million dollars would fund new and critical
responsibilities at parks, preserving the stories of
underrepresented communities. This funding will support many of
our newest units, such as the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home
National Monument, as well as existing units like Minidoka
National Historic Site.
The budget also reflects our commitment to respect and
strengthen indigenous connections and enhance our nation-to-
nation relationships. We request an additional $6 million to
support additional tribal liaisons in parks and regional
offices and an increase of $7 million in grant funding to
Tribal Historic Preservation Offices.
The fiscal year 2023 request also proposes investments in
our employees. The NPS has lost more than 15 percent of our
ONPS-funded capacity since fiscal year 2010. Over the same
period, 33 units have been added to the National Park System,
and visitation has grown by more than 40 million, or greater
than 15 percent.
We have already seen visitation levels rebound in many
parks from the pandemic decreases. To meet this demand, the
budget requests $148 million across initiatives to support more
than 1,000 additional FTEs.
The budget also proposes increases of $7 million to lease,
construct, or rehabilitate housing for NPS employees, $7
million to improve connectivity for sites with limited
bandwidth, and $600,000 to stand up an office that would
provide targeted support for employee mental health and
wellness.
Finally, I am pleased to update you on our progress to
implement the Great American Outdoors Act. To date, funding
from GAOA has provided almost $2.6 billion to the NPS for
deferred maintenance and repairs. We have obligated $730
million to date, with 26 projects underway and more starting
this summer.
From the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the NPS has
received nearly $200 million for land acquisition activities,
and we are working with willing sellers across the country to
protect lands within park boundaries.
The NPS has received $690 million for State grant programs
matched by non-Federal funds for a total impact of more than $1
billion and continues to work with State partners to support
State and local recreation priorities.
Madam Chair, this concludes my summary, and thank you for
the opportunity to testify today and for your continued support
of the National Park Service.
I would be happy to answer any questions.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you. Thank you so much for that and for
taking on this extremely important job. It is going to be
wonderful working with you.
We are going to start with our questions, and I will start
with myself. A topic that you have already mentioned, and that
is climate change.
So in our park in the State of Maine, we are already
feeling the impacts of climate change in Acadia National Park.
The Gulf of Maine, which surrounds the park, is warming more
rapidly than the oceans anywhere else in the world, and its
temperature has risen 3 degrees over the last century.
The park itself is also getting warmer, and your scientists
predict that its temperatures will rise by 5 to 13 degrees by
the end of the century. This warming will have major impacts on
the park and local economy, and it is already starting to be
felt.
It is imperative that we take immediate action to fight
climate change, and I believe that research should underpin
those efforts. So I am pleased that the budget requests $17
million for research learning centers and proposes to increase
the Inventory and Monitoring Program by $16 million.
Could you just talk a little bit more about the National
Park Service climate change research and how it has helped to
identify what resources are at risk and how it is influencing
management actions to help increase their resilience?
And also can you talk a little bit about how the Service
can communicate what you are learning about climate change to
the millions of visitors who come through the parks?
Mr. Sams. Thank you, Madam Chair.
The NPS has completed several assessments on this issue--80
park-specific reports, 100 climate change vulnerability
assessments for selected resources, and sea level rise
projections for 118 coastal park units. However, many of the
parks lack targeted climate change vulnerability and risk
information. I want to thank the committee for the $1.8 million
for the fiscal year 2022 spending bill for climate change
assessment.
We apply climate science research across our mission. A
couple good examples, of course, is from Acadia, where the park
works with the Schoodic Institute and Friends of Acadia to
understand how climate change will affect its forests,
mountaintops, and intertidal areas. The park is using this
information as it restores wetlands, ensuring the plant species
that are planted are suitable for Acadia's climate future.
As our knowledge base grows, visitors are becoming better
educated in the entire ecosystem of coastal Maine and the
fragile balance between the flora, fauna, and the rising sea
levels. And we want to continue to make sure that we do that
public education so that it goes far and wide not only to
Mainers, but of course, across the country as a good example of
how we can work on resiliency.
The fiscal year 2023 budget proposes historic investments
in addressing the effects of climate change and other
conservation issues in the National Park System with a $224.6
million increase proposed for these conservation efforts. The
NPS has completed several of these assessments as discussed,
and we are ready to move forward on more of those in fiscal
year 2023 if our budget is approved.
Ms. Pingree. Great. Thank you.
I do, of course, hope we get a chance to welcome you to
Acadia National Park and to see the great work they are doing
with the Schoodic Institute really to help us sort out how the
park is going to fare and also surrounding areas in our State.
And I am pleased that the park uses these opportunities for
what they have learned as a teaching tool.
I think climate change is so confusing and abstract to
people. Sometimes when you are visiting the park and you get a
chance to talk to a ranger about your real questions of what is
happening, or an interpretive worker, it is a really wonderful
moment in time.
I am going to yield back and turn it over to Ranking Member
Joyce.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Director Sams, now that the Land and Water Conservation
Fund is fully funded, spending the annual appropriation
efficiently and on quality projects will be key to the
program's continued success. In that context, I want to raise a
concern about the appraisal process and particularly about
appraisal delays that may be posing a threat to the success of
the LWCF projects we fund in our bill.
I understand the Department's Appraisal Office isn't under
your control, but we are hearing from your partners on
battlefields and other projects. Specifically, we are hearing
that an appraisal process that used to take a few months, as it
does in the private market, now takes a year or two or even
longer.
Granted, no one wants the Appraisal Office to cut corners
or otherwise detract from the integrity of the process. We need
good appraisals to protect public funds and honor the rights of
the landowners to just and fair compensation when they choose
to sell. But with these kind of delays, landowners and others,
including partners who bring non-Federal dollars that leverage
and stretch your conservation reach, could give up and walk
away.
Are you aware of the problem, and if so, what can you share
with us about steps being taken to fix it? For example, does it
make sense to move appraisal functions back under the Park
Service?
Mr. Sams. Well, thank you, Representative Joyce.
I am very familiar with this. Having come from the private
sector before this and working with the Trust for Public Land,
I know the challenges that are faced when trying to get
appraisals done as quickly as possible through the process. And
of course, the National Park Service is reliant because
appraisals are handled by the Department of the Interior's
Appraisal and Evaluation Service Office.
We will continue to work with DOI, ensuring its services
are completed in a timely manner. I know that it is a top
priority of our staff, and I know that this problem is being
investigated and looked at at the highest levels.
And I hope to come back and be able to report to you soon
exactly how we are going to deal with that so that we can move
these through and we don't miss the opportunities with these
willing landowners who really wish to work with us. And I am
very appreciative of their willingness to work with us.
Mr. Joyce. I am, too, sir. Thank you.
For the first time in several years, the National Park
Service released deferred maintenance estimates. The updated
estimates total $21.8 billion, nearly double the Park Service's
2019 estimate. I recognize that construction costs have gone
up, but can you take a moment to explain the spike in estimates
and how your assessment process has changed?
And what types of deferred maintenance were not previously
accounted for and how we can actually be sure that the Great
American Outdoors Act funding is making progress to tackle the
backlog?
Mr. Sams. Absolutely. Thank you.
DOI recently standardized the deferred maintenance and
repairs definition across all of our bureaus. As part of that
standardization, the Park Service added project execution costs
for planning, design, and construction management into the DM&R
calculations.
While these costs increase the total, they do better
represent the funding necessary to bring assets into acceptable
conditions. And as you pointed out, our now estimate did jump
to $21.8 billion. And yes, there are also those associated
costs, as you pointed out, with rising inflation.
But this new standardization that we use, which is much
more consistent with other Federal agencies, captures the full
cost of this deferred maintenance, which wasn't caught
previously. And we feel secure in these current estimates of
what we have moving forward as we gather more data from the
field on those deferred maintenance issues.
Mr. Joyce. So is the annual maintenance funding request for
fiscal year 2023 enough to prevent adding to the deferred
maintenance backlog? And if not, how much more is really needed
for annual maintenance?
Mr. Sams. You know, that will just depend as we continue to
evaluate each one of our sites. Maintenance will always be an
ongoing issue. Things deteriorate or break down, depending on
weather conditions, usage, and current upkeep and maintenance
practices.
And so as we are trying to build this out, of course, even
and one of our requests is bringing on additional staff that
would help with that maintenance upkeep in check. By being able
to have those staff in the field, we think we can better get a
tackle--tackle this situation and do preventive maintenance.
But of course, maintenance will always be there as long as we
construct things within the park system itself, and those costs
will continue to go as things start to deteriorate and fall
apart.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you, sir. I yield back, Madam Chair.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much. We are going to go to
Representative Lee.
Mrs. Lee. Thank you. It is good to see you, Commissioner,
and thanks for all of your hard work with the Park Service. I
personally am a big user of the National Park Service. So I
appreciate everything you do.
I wanted to talk about something that I have been
consistently talking about since I have been in Congress, which
is the drought that is engulfing the Southwest and obviously
Nevada, my home State. It is the worst drought that this region
has seen in 12 centuries, and honestly, too many children in my
district don't even--have not lived a life without it.
And so last April, the administration launched the
Interagency Drought Relief Working Group, and it was co-chaired
by the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture, to address
the needs of communities like mine who are suffering from the
drought. I wanted to ask you what role has the Park Service
specifically played in fulfilling the working group's mission?
Mr. Sams. Well, thank you, Madam Representative.
And yes, this has been a major topic among myself and my
other bureau--the other bureau heads here in the Department as
we are figuring out how best to tackle this issue. The National
Park Service is an active member of the working group and
coordinating across those Federal agencies as we work with our
partners to also include State, local, and tribal governments.
Between the Great American Outdoors Act funding and the
fiscal year 2022 disaster supplemental, the NPS has prioritized
more than $45 million for drought-related projects at Lake Mead
National Recreation Area and Glen Canyon National Recreation
Area. Projects include relocating the Callville Bay water
intake barge at Lake Mead and repairing a well at Wahweap due
to low water at Glen Canyon.
The fiscal year 2023 budget also requests an addition $7
million for emergency and unscheduled construction projects
specifically meant to rapidly respond to the impacts of climate
change, such as drought, fire, and floods.
And so, yes, we are working very closely. I know that my
fellow bureau heads and I have had a lot of discussion around
the drought issue, including looking at plans for ourselves to
go out together to start addressing more of these concerns.
Mrs. Lee. Thank you.
I want to talk a little bit more about the Lake Mead
National Recreation Area, which is in my district and provides
recreation for--not just recreation, but obviously water for 25
million people in Nevada and neighboring States.
Lake Mead is also the first and largest national recreation
area, and the declining water levels have completely reshaped
the lake's shorelines and significantly reduced recreational
opportunities. In fact, it was just announced this week that
there is only one working boat launch ramp in the lake with a
completed extension. And so, in addition, most of the launch
ramps at Glen Canyon's National Recreation Area have likewise
been closed.
So you mentioned dollar amounts, but what specific steps do
you foresee in the next year and beyond to help mitigate the
impacts of this drought, and does the Park Service plan new
access points? What specifically is in that plan?
Mr. Sams. We are. We are talking with our leadership out
West about different access points, what that is going to look
like, how that is going to affect our concessionaires and the
general public. And we are laying out mitigation proposals that
are coming in from the recreation areas to tell us exactly what
the public is saying and how we can ensure that there is still
access to this great jewel that we have out West.
So as we are laying out those plans, I look forward to
coming back and speaking with you directly about this, and I
can talk with your staff as we come to some conclusions on
that.
Mrs. Lee. Thank you. I am very much looking forward to
working with you on this issue and, obviously, the impact of
our climate change on drought and its impact on our national
parks.
With that, Madam Chair, I will yield.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you for your question.
Representative Simpson, you are next.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Chairwoman.
And Director Sams, thank you for being here today. You are
lucky in that I think there is really good bipartisan support
and has been for the National Park Service in this committee
over the years, and I am sure that will continue because we all
love our national parks. In fact, the reality is we love them
too much, and that creates the challenges that we have in the
maintenance and so forth.
But let me ask just a couple of specific questions. One is
in this budget request, you have requested--and I think you
mentioned it in your opening testimony--$7 million, an increase
of $7 million for grants for Tribal Historic Preservation
Offices. What is that $7 million on top of? What is the total
request for Historic Preservation Offices, Tribal Historic
Preservation Offices?
Mr. Sams. If you will allow me, I am going to defer to
Jessica on this for the total amount.
Ms. Bowron. The total amount requested for the Historic
Preservation Fund is $151.8 million.
Mr. Simpson. Okay. That includes the $7 million increase,
right?
Ms. Bowron. Yes.
Mr. Sams. Yes, sir.
Mr. Simpson. Okay. To me, that is a very important program,
and we need to make sure that it gets funded at an adequate
level to be able to carry out their responsibilities and stuff,
as I am sure you are well aware.
Talk to me a little bit about your personnel challenges you
are facing. Every Federal agency I talk to, whether it is the
Forest Service or the BLM or any others, are facing shortages
in personnel, which are delaying the time it takes to get
permitting and that type of stuff. With the National Park
Service, you mentioned this somewhat in your opening statement.
What is the challenges you are facing with personnel?
Mr. Sams. It really is about capacity and bringing in,
ensuring that we have enough people to do all the jobs
necessary. And so in my request, we are requesting nearly 1,100
FTEs to help us try to get back to where we were at least a
decade ago. And that is across all points of the Service,
whether that is from our science staff to the back-end finance
staff to our permitting staff.
Right now, folks are pulling double, triple duty. As I have
been able to travel across the United States over the last 4
months--in particular, I have hit almost nearly 40 national
parks--this comes up repeatedly that our workforce is highly
dedicated to the mission. I would say that most folks within
the Park Service truly bleed gray and green. That being said,
they are doing double duty on so many other things.
And so we are asking this funding so that we can make sure
that we are able to implement the programs that we are doing,
that we are ensuring that the investments that are being made
through GAOA and bill are being effective, and that we are
being responsive to the American people so that they can have
the experience that they are looking for when they are going
into the parks.
And as you know, there are so many more things that happen
on the back end. And while the rangers, who do the
interpretation, and law enforcement are always on the
forefront, they are supported by several to eight other people
in order to make sure that a person has a seamless opportunity
to enjoy the nature, the monuments, and the memorials across
this great Nation.
And so this request that I have out here is to help fill
that backlog of folks that we need to get out on the ground to
support that work.
Mr. Simpson. What about summer employment that helps the
rangers and stuff that are out working in the national parks?
People--that is their kind of summer job--especially senior
citizens sometimes come to our national parks and spend their
summer there working at various places. Is that a challenge?
Mr. Sams. It can be a challenge if we are hiring them on as
seasonal staff. As we are getting through ensuring that we have
enough human resources personnel to start processing that, we
are looking at it, and I have taken a very strong look at this
and recentralizing some of our HR practices so that we can have
a much more smoother opportunity to folks coming in through
that process to be hired.
But I do want to give notice to the 240,000-plus volunteers
that we have who are our force multiplier in the National Park
Service. Without those volunteers, we wouldn't be able to get a
lot of what we do done, and they are an important factor who
provide everything from interpretation to helping keeping up
the grounds themselves.
And so bringing in, though, a dedicated workforce either
through the summer months as seasonal employees or permanent
employees is critical for our success.
Mr. Simpson. Well, I appreciate it, and I appreciate all
you are doing. And over the next couple of weeks, we are going
to be off from Congress here, so me and my wife and my dog are
going to take a road trip and go out through--as you know, we
live in Idaho Falls. So we are going to go up through Grand
Teton and Yellowstone and see them for a while. I haven't been
there for a little bit. So, look forward to seeing them again.
And thank you for all you do.
Mr. Sams. Thank you. Safe travels.
Mr. Simpson. You bet.
Ms. Pingree. Are you yielding back, Mr. Simpson? Yes, you
are? All right. Thank you.
And sounds like a great trip. You all just have to bring us
all along. [Laughter.]
Ms. Pingree. Representative McCollum, do you have a
question or some questions?
Ms. McCollum. Yes, I do. Thank you so much, Chair Pingree.
This is like a good hearing today because we are going to
learn what we can do to help our parks, but it has also filled
a great opportunity, I think, to showcase the work that we need
to do in this committee.
I want to focus on the Park Service commitment to racial
justice and equity and how we can embrace that by expanding our
outreach to underserved communities. So that we are talking
about urban youth, disabled Americans, people of color, or
whether they are Americans who have just historically faced
barriers in accessing and enjoying our public lands.
So I have been working with this subcommittee and the
Forest Committee--Forest Service over the last few budget
cycles to expand the successful Urban Connections program,
which addresses the equity gap and accessibility by forging
relationships with urban youth leaders and organizations to
create recreation and learning opportunities in our national
forests, our wilderness areas.
So I would like to get a check-up on how the National Park
Service is doing. And I heard what you were saying about
personnel shortages, and you fully have my sympathy on that,
and I am ready to do whatever I can to help with the chair to
increase the people that we have to work on this. But right
now, I know you are still working on it and in spite of not
having the full complement of staff that you would like.
So just fill us in a little bit about what you are doing to
connect marginalized communities to the outdoors, especially in
urban parks. And I have two of them, and they are river parks,
the Saint Croix National Recreation Area in my district, and
then we have the Mississippi--excuse me, the Saint Croix is the
scenic river. The Mississippi River is the river that has the
recreation area assigned to it.
So a book that I read a while ago and I keep in my office
is ``Last Child in the Woods,'' and you could say ``Last Child
on the Prairie,'' ``Last Child on the Coast,'' whatever, and it
is about how we need to connect children to nature, and I know
the Park Service has been doing a lot on that.
So could you just tell me some things that we need to do
more to overcome barriers with that, especially for
historically marginalized communities? It is different when a
child drives on a bridge over the river versus being on a canoe
or walking along the shores of a river and the connection that
they have to it.
So public-private partnerships, what do we need to do to
help you do more?
Mr. Sams. Well, thank you, Madam Representative.
I feel very fortunate that grew up outdoors most of my
life, with a grandfather who made sure that my education began
by understanding my natural environment. That being said, one
of my top priorities is to advance equity, inclusion, and
access in carrying out the National Park Service mission.
The fiscal year 2023 request includes $36 million to
advance racial justice and equity. This includes $2.4 million
for underserved community outreach coordinators in urban
national parks to build strategic community relationships and
increase engagement with historically excluded communities.
This is critical for us to be able to understand those
local histories much better and to make sure that we are
including them in the stories we tell, whether that is at the
memorial site, a monument, or in the national park itself.
In addition, we also included $5 million to identify and
address transportation barriers that inhibit underserved
communities from accessing parks and $5 million to expand our
accessibility expertise across the country to ensure we are
meeting our physical and programmatic accessibility
requirements, and we are seeing some of that here in the
Nation's capital, especially around the FDR Memorial.
That being said, as I travel across the country, I do see
several marginalized communities who are finally feeling that
they have a seat at the table not only just within their
community, but with us as a Federal organization to be able to
tell their story in a much more broader concept.
And whether we do that, as you may see, the Chinese
American community at Yosemite or the Native community in a
number of parks where Native people have lived here for 10,000-
plus years, we are reaching out to a much more diverse group of
people and helping us tell those stories so that it is much
more inclusive. Because one of my goals is to ensure that every
American sees themselves in our park system.
It is ensuring that it builds us a much more perfect union
and an understanding of who we are as Americans and these crown
jewels that we have, that we love so much, and how they are
going to protect them not just for themselves, but also for
future generations.
Ms. McCollum. Well, we thank you for that. And I know Mr.
Simpson and I--and I have been at Acadia with the chair. Some
of our parks were designed for ADA. They weren't designed for
strollers. They weren't designed for families. And so that is
something that I know you are working on as well as personnel.
And so we have got some great partnerships out there,
nonprofits like Urban Connections and that. And anything that
we can do to grow that, I am happy to do that and, at the same
time, tell an inclusive story. And I mean that as a social
studies teacher.
Thank you so much. I yield back, Madam Chair.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you, Chair McCollum, for your questions.
Chair Kaptur, you are next. Do you have any questions?
Ms. Kaptur. All right. Thank you, Madam Chair, very much.
An interesting hearing.
And thank you so much, Director Sams. Great to have you
here with us today.
I keep thinking--as I am looking at David Joyce on the
screen, I keep thinking of two of our predecessors, Ralph
Regula and John Seiberling, who, Republican and Democrat,
together worked to allow us to have the assets we have today
along Lake Erie and, in fact, across the Nation. They were
completely dedicated to the National Park Service and to the
assets of the Department of the Interior.
So thank you for being in the Service.
My question really goes to our region first and the
Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area, which is one of the
10 most visited park systems in the country. With the funding
we provided in other bills as well as your annual budget, here
is my problem.
The Cuyahoga River was the western boundary of the United
States when we had the 13 colonies. When you try to traverse
the Northwest Territory, which started at the Cuyahoga River
and then goes west to several States in the middle part of the
country, there really isn't any common interpretive mode that
occurs.
So, for example, I represent one of the smallest national
parks in the country at the Perry's Victory Memorial, Victory
and Peace Memorial. It is 25 acres. Woo-hoo! We are really
glad. That little place gets 200,000 visitors a year, 200,000.
Okay. Nearby are something not in your control called the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And we have been working since
my very first year in office to expand the number of holdings
from about 3,000 acres, we are now close to 12,000 acres along
Lake Erie's southern rim, which is extremely fragile and serves
as a wetland filter to a very troubled lake, which we must not
let die.
And I start looking a little bit west of that, and we have
something called the Fallen Timbers Battlefield, which has a
relationship with the National Park Service and the Fort Miamis
National Historic Site and the Fort Meigs State Memorial
because one of the biggest battles, the Battle of Fallen
Timbers, occurred there in that Northwest Territory.
There is no common interpretation across this region. So
what I am asking for, is anybody in your operation there able
to work with us in our region, the former Northwest Territory,
to begin to interpret America's first frontier in a more
coherent manner? We have all these little dibs and dabs. This
goes up into Michigan to the Dunes there, over into Indiana, to
the Northwest Territory.
We so need this, and I am not quite sure how to get it. One
time, I had a former National Parks Director in my district,
great guy, one of your predecessors. I said, ``What can you
do?'' And he answered me, ``Well, in our building in
Washington, I am on the same floor as the Park Service.''
So I have never been able to get the two instrumentalities
to work together. Our Fish and Wildlife Service area probably
gets--just right now in the spring, we will get 100,000
visitors because that is where the Mississippi and Atlantic
flyways cross. We got trumpeter swans that didn't go south this
year. Man, they are magnificent.
And, but between the Victory Memorial and the British,
American, and French heritage that is all tied up there, and
the wildlife refuges, we probably get--oh, my--half a million
to a million visitors a year. I would have to total it all up.
That is the thing. We don't even know.
So how do we get this? Do I have to pass a special piece of
legislation? Do you have some authority to help us with
coherent planning? What can we do?
Mr. Sams. Madam Representative, thank you for the question.
So on my non-Indian side, we came in through New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and eventually, my eighth-great-
grandfather, Henry Sams, had fought in the Revolutionary War
and then homesteaded in the Northwest Territories and
eventually landing in Richland County. And so the story that
you are wanting to tell is also very important to me on a very
personal level.
My wife's family comes from Cuyahoga and has had one of the
in-holdings there and was just on Boston Mills Road growing up.
Ms. Kaptur. Wow.
Mr. Sams. That being said, I want to make sure that we do
remain committed to collaborating with State, county and
cities, and other Federal agencies like the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service on management and interpretive opportunities
across the Service and in the State of Ohio.
Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial
collaborates with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the
Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge, in a ranger exchange, with NPS
rangers participating in the biggest week of birding and U.S.
Fish and Wildlife rangers participating in the Perry Education
Days.
The NPS Rivers and Trails Conservation Assistance Program
has facilitated connectivity among agencies, cities and
counties, and States through 3 years of work on the Ohio River
Recreation Trail. The trail connects communities and promotes
recreation on 270 miles of the Ohio River through Ohio,
Kentucky, and Indiana.
And a summit of elected officials----
Ms. Kaptur. What was the name again?
Mr. Sams. That was the Ohio River Recreation Trail.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you.
Mr. Sams. And a summit of elected officials was held on May
12, hosted by the Mayors of Cincinnati and Louisville, to
discuss the benefits of the Ohio River Recreation Trail. The
National Park Service hosted a very similar summit last October
in 2021.
In addition, we also--NPS's Underground Railroad Network to
Freedom also connects themes across the States. Last year, it
provided $180,000 in grant funding for network sites, including
the Beecher family home, which is a State-owned asset in
Cincinnati, and the John Brown House, which is a locally owned
asset in Akron. The UGRR expects to award over $100,000 in
funding for the most recent grant round, and it just extended
its grant application to Juneteenth, or June 19, 2022.
NPS will continue to work within DOI's Great Lakes Region,
and its bureaus are park partners in the State of Ohio in
developing a good forum for discussing further ways that we can
collaborate on these important projects and to tell a much more
coherent and strong story about America's expansion in the
Northwest Territory.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. Ms. Kaptur--go ahead. I am just saying I think
you are out of time, but it sounds like your Ohio is in very
good hands with our National Park Service Director.
Ms. Kaptur. It sure does. Finally, somebody who knows where
we are.
Ms. Pingree. Okay. Representative Kilmer.
Mr. Kilmer. Thank you, Madam Chair.
And thank you for being with us today. I want to
congratulate you on your appointment and just recognize the
significance of it. It is also great to have a park Director
from the Northwest. So congratulations to you.
Rather than treading territory that has already been tread,
I just want to associate myself with Ranking Member Joyce's
questions about deferred maintenance and some of the concerns
there. But I want to ask about two topics with the time I have.
One, as you know, during World War II, thousands of
Japanese Americans across our country were forced from their
homes after Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order
authorizing the exclusion of Japanese Americans from military
areas. This was a really dark chapter in our history,
especially relevant to the Pacific Northwest and the folks I
represent.
On Bainbridge Island in my district, 227 Japanese Americans
were forced to leave, forced to board a ferry at Eagledale to
begin the journey that would put them in internment camps for
the duration of the world. There is a memorial there, managed
in part by the National Park Service, that is located at that
former ferry dock.
And it is a site that remembers and honors those that were
forced from their homes, and the memorial reminds us to learn
from the past. It is extraordinary. I invite you there. And it
is powerful, and it reminds us of a time when Japanese
Americans were denied their civil liberties and their
constitutional rights.
My question for you is how does the National Park Service
intend to strengthen its work of preserving and interpreting
sites where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World
War II, and how can the committee support that important work?
Mr. Sams. Well, thank you very much, Congressman.
The President signed Amache into our system now, and we
will be working very closely to be able to also tell that
story. But it is important we tell all the stories of those
parks that we have and those facilities that are under our
jurisdiction. And for fiscal year 2023 budgets, we propose
there is $198,000 for interpretation services at the Japanese
American exclusion memorial for Bainbridge Island because we
want to make sure we tell that story very clearly.
It is important that we do tell this particular story so
that we don't repeat our past, and understanding the pain we
caused our fellow Americans in that and also be able to tell
and celebrate the accomplishments that they made when they did
serve during the Second World War, whether that was during the
Italian campaign in European theater, or those who were
interpreters for us in the Pacific.
And so we have taken a very strong approach to this. As you
know, the Biden administration came out with a strong
proclamation, and we continue to bring in those stories. And we
are very fortunate to have some that are still alive who,
sadly, had to live that, live in those camps. But they are able
to tell their stories firsthand still.
Mr. Kilmer. I had an opportunity to meet with some of those
families and, again, would love to--they have got amazing plans
for what they would like to do in terms of interpretation and
visitor experience. And I am sure if you ever are so inclined
to come out and visit Olympic National Park and visit the
Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial, they
would love to share their plans.
Let me, with the time I have left, I wanted to ask there is
a lot of coastal tribes, including many in my district, that
are facing urgent threats from climate change--tsunami risk,
persistent flooding, coastal erosion. All of these are,
unfortunately, existential threats.
The Hoh Tribe, for example, lives in a remote and difficult
to access area near the Pacific coast, surrounded by the
Olympic National Park. The majority of the tribe's developed
land, including many homes, is located in a tsunami inundation
zone, and unfortunately, there is only one road in and out of
the reservation. It is frequently impassable during storms.
In the event of a tsunami, the only option for evacuation
is an uphill walking path that is inaccessible to tribal elders
and others with mobility issues, and it is difficult to
maintain, given wilderness restrictions on heavy equipment. The
tribe has an urgent need for an evacuation route that would
allow passage of a small vehicle to transport elders and
others, while continuing to protect the ecological value of
that land.
While conversations have started at a local level to
establish a vehicular evacuation route, how can the National
Park Service engage with the Hoh Tribe and, frankly, other at-
risk tribes to develop emergency plans in the face of potential
natural disaster?
Mr. Sams. Yes, so many of the coastal tribes will face
these issues as we see climate change and sea level rising.
That being said, I am aware that the Hoh Tribe has proposed to
construct a 2-mile long trail that would accommodate some
offroad vehicles that would come to the park. The park
continues to assess the proposal, and we are gathering more
information. And we have discussed informally with the tribe
what that may look like in preparation for such more formal
consultation.
The administration, while it hasn't taken an official
position, is going to rely on that information that we bring
back in from the tribes and so that we can assess that better
and come up with a plan. I look forward to working with you and
your staff as we come to a much more conclusion because I know
that you are very keenly aware that the Hoh Tribe wants to move
this as quickly as possible and most likely will deal with some
form of legislative action that we will need in order to
accommodate.
Mr. Kilmer. We will look forward to partnering with you.
And thank you, Madam Chair, for a few seconds of
indulgence. I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Absolutely. I know how important that topic is
in your district.
I think we have time for a couple more questions. So I will
go back to one of mine.
I am going to use Acadia National Park again as an example,
but I know the issue of employee housing is serious all over
the country and one that you really have to tackle. In Acadia,
we welcomed 4 million visitors last year, which was nearly 3
times our State's population. The competition for homes,
lodging, has created a great strain on housing in the area,
which makes it difficult to attract and retain staff.
The budget requests $2 million to support seasonal housing
for National Park Service employees around our national parks.
Can you tell me how you envision addressing housing concerns,
and how will you use that requested funding to improve housing
shortages like we have in Maine? And as just an aside, $2
million doesn't sound like a lot to deal with the crisis that
we have out there.
Mr. Sams. Affordable housing is becoming increasingly
difficult, and that is being made very clear to me by the staff
as I travel around the country. And it is difficult for them to
find in gateway communities and especially for our seasonal
employees.
Median home purchase prices continue to rise throughout the
United States in many of our gateway communities, and short-
term vacation rental markets are thriving and, therefore,
taking away from our seasonal staff who usually would be able
to find housing in our gateway communities.
The fiscal year 2023 budget proposes an increase of $4.9
million for new construction or rehabilitation of existing
employee housing, where local market data show limited
availability of affordable housing for purchase or rent. In
fiscal year 2023, these funds would largely support
construction of new units at the Grand Teton National Park.
Between Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and Yosemite, we are
really looking at best management practices, sustainable
housing, and housing that will meet the needs of staff at
multiple levels, whether those be seasonal or permanent staff,
for growing families. We are going to try to bring--we most
recently held a housing summit among the staff to bring forward
the best ideas to determine what authorities we do have or what
authorities we may be needing in the future.
I look forward to reporting out more on that and trying to
get a better understanding of what the total cost may be in the
end. But this initial funding will help us greatly to be able
to tackle these immediate issues, along with being able--an
additional--the $2 million to help us be able to get leases for
our seasonal staff so that they will have somewhere to live
during this season or in the next season.
Ms. Pingree. Well, thank you for making this a priority,
and we will look forward to following up with you, as you have
gotten a better sense with how you are going to move forward on
some of those challenges.
The ranking member, do you have questions?
Mr. Joyce. No, I will submit my questions in writing so the
Director has the opportunity to address them and defer to our
other fellow members so they can ask questions accordingly.
Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. All right. So we are now in a second round of
questions, and I am not exactly sure who wants to ask, but I
will start. Chair McCollum, do you have any questions you would
like to ask?
[No response.]
Ms. Pingree. Chair Kaptur, would you like to ask a second
question?
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I wanted to go back to the Director and ask if one wanted
to work with the Department of the Interior as a result of the
infrastructure bill, as well as your current responsibilities,
because we face the lakefront up in northern Ohio, what would
be the framework we could use to bring together stakeholders--
the metro parks, the State parks, the wildlife refuges, the
National Park Service--to look at a lakefront interpretation?
I am not going to exclude the State of Michigan, but if you
want to, that is okay with me. But I am trying to get a bigger
picture of how we work together with common interpretation. It
was interesting what you revealed about the immigration story
of our region. Frankly, I think the most magnificent place in
America, to even describe it, isn't part of the Park Service,
but it is part of Cleveland's heritage with the Cultural
Gardens.
It is just magnificent, along Martin Luther King Drive in
Cleveland. There is no--even the United Nations doesn't have
it. Nobody in the world knows about it except the people that
live in Cleveland. I keep telling them you have got a world
asset here. Showcase it a little bit more.
What experience could you offer? We have Native American
interpretation that is a part of the settlement of the
Northwest Territory. There is immigration. There is battles. I
mean, how do we put the pieces of the historical puzzle
together? What examples do you have around the country?
Mr. Sams. Well, thank you for the question.
I think, as we have done summits in the past, if we
concentrated on a summit to bring all of those multiple
stakeholders and partners together to have a more robust
discussion along shoreline issues and the history of that, I
think is extremely important.
While I was out in your territory, both in Ohio and in
Detroit, Michigan, we talked about along the Detroit River
itself and then, of course, the lakefront. What are all of
those stories that we still need to tell that have not been
heard? Whether that was from folks coming on the Underground
Railroad to first contact between Native people and non-Native
people, French traders who have used those systems between
Canada and the United States and what that meant for the
building of commerce for the United States.
I think those are all important stories that we need to be
able to tell in a much more comprehensive manner. And similar
to our previous discussion, I think we could be part of a
convening group to bring a summit together to have that
discussion.
I would need to talk to the regional director about this a
little bit more in depth, along with my operational staff, to
see how we could do that. But I would welcome that opportunity,
along with our sister bureaus, who have interest in the area
and, of course, the States and local communities and counties
in figuring out how best to hold a summit that would have this
longer discussion.
Ms. Kaptur. I would really welcome your thoughts on that,
and I have a hunch Congressman Joyce might be equally
interested.
We have Native American interpretation. I learned that--I
represent a place called Catawba Island, and I didn't know
until I went and looked at a chart at the Native American
Museum in Washington that it was a disappeared tribe. And I
traced the history of why that name ended up there, even though
the tribe was in North Carolina. I still don't understand it
all.
But you look at our names--Erie, Ottawa, Cuyahoga, Maumee--
these are all Native American names through our area. There is
nothing said about that.
So we have a lot of historical gaps here, and I think we
need to fill them. So I am just pleased with your openness, and
I will talk to Congressman Joyce. Maybe we can work together
somehow here, figure out how to do that.
I think it would be exciting, and I think we are going to
miss an opportunity if we don't do this right with the
infrastructure bill. Because we got communities along the coast
trying to interconnect, you know, and trying to get the
Cuyahoga route, Cuyahoga Valley Recreation Area, to go up to
the lake and interconnect that way.
So there are a lot of things happening, but nobody is
working all together. So your leadership could really be--with
the Fish and Wildlife Service, by the way, together. It would
really be important from, I think, a standpoint for our region.
We could use your help.
Mr. Sams. Well, thank you.
I also would invite the Department of Transportation, both
the Federal department and the States' Departments of
Transportation. The highway systems are the trails that were
originally used for commerce by tribes for thousands of years,
and so they have funding and opportunities to be able to do
additional interpretation along those roadways.
Ms. Kaptur. All right. Well, thank you so very much.
Thank you, Madam Chair and members.
Ms. Pingree. Absolutely. Representative Simpson, do you
have a second question you would like to ask?
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Chairwoman.
Not really a question, just a statement. Following up on
what the chairwoman's question was about housing in our
national parks and stuff, the money you have requested is
probably not going to go very far. The way housing prices are
going and the fact that construction prices are following that,
I am afraid we are not going to get much done for that request.
What I would like to see, and I am sure you guys have got
it somewhere, is like a 5- or a 10-year plan of what the needs
are to address this so that we could address this backlog of
housing for our employees in our national park so that we would
know as a committee, what do we need to commit year after year
after year to meet that goal to get it done?
And so if somehow you could put that together for us so
that we would have some view into the future of what this is
going to be--because this is going to be a challenge for a
long, long time until we address that need. So that is just my
suggestion.
But I appreciate you being here today, and I look forward
and this committee looks forward to working with you to try to
improve the national parks that we all love.
Thank you.
Mr. Sams. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. I don't think any other members have
questions. Let me just double check here. No.
So I just want to thank you very much for the time you have
spent with us today. Mostly, we want to take this time to just
thank you for taking on this job. There are a lot of
challenges, as we know, in the National Park System, but also
it is a very exciting time with opportunities for everything
from the Great American Outdoors Act to the real upsurge in
interest of people who want to be in their national parks and
participate. And I can tell that you are going to handle these
challenges well, and we are all here to support you.
So thank you for taking the time today, and we will look
forward to catching up with you soon in the future.
Mr. Sams. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, members of the
committee. It has been a pleasure.
Ms. Pingree. Great. This hearing is now adjourned.
[Answers to submitted questions follow:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Wednesday, June 8, 2022.
FISCAL YEAR 2023 BUDGET REQUEST FOR THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES
WITNESSES
SHELLY C. LOWE, CHAIR, NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES
MARIA ROSARIO JACKSON, CHAIR, NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS
LONNIE G. BUNCH, III, SECRETARY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
KAYWIN FELDMAN, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
Ms. Pingree. Good morning. This hearing will now come to
order.
I am so pleased to welcome our first panel of witnesses
today, Shelly C. Lowe and Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson, chairs of
the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Arts. Both
witnesses are appearing for the first time before our
subcommittee. Congratulations to both of you on your
confirmation, and thank you. Today's hearing provides us with a
chance to hear more about the great work both Endowments have
done over the last couple of years in supporting our
communities across the country economically, culturally, and
educationally.
The National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities are a
perfect example of how the Federal Government can be a positive
force in communities large and small in every single State. In
your statement following your confirmation, Dr. Jackson, you
said, ``In addition to serving an economic engine, arts and
creativity are core to what it takes to heal our Nation, our
communities, and ourselves,'' and I wholeheartedly agree.
The fiscal year 2023 budget request for the National
Endowment for the Humanities is $200.68 million, $20.68 million
over the fiscal year 2022 enacted level. The request for the
National Endowment for the Arts is $203.55 million, $23.55
million over the fiscal year 2022 enacted level. These requests
build on the vital increases in funding this committee has
provided to the Endowments in fiscal year 2022. The enacted
bill provided $180 million to each Endowment, an increase of
$12.5 million apiece above fiscal year 2021. In addition,
Congress has provided funding to both Endowments through the
CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan. These additional
investments total $210 million for each Endowment. This
supplemental funding saved jobs, saved cultural institutions
across the country, and provided an essential lifeline to
industries hit very hard by the pandemic.
Following the passage of the 2022 bill, Chair Lowe, you
released a statement highlighting how that funding would help
NEH to support cultural and educational institutions which were
still in the midst of recovering from the pandemic, a recovery
which still continues to this day for much of the sector.
Furthermore, as you pointed out, that funding was designed to
expand essential access to humanities resources to all
Americans in this critical time. Looking forward, there is
still more work to be done. Every dollar provided to the
Endowments has an economic footprint many times larger on the
community it is invested in. And as we will discuss today,
continuing strong funding for the Endowments' work provides
benefits to far-ranging fields from rural design and
development to civic education.
I am looking forward to both of your testimonies, and I
would like to now yield to our ranking member, Mr. Joyce, for
his opening remarks.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you for yielding, Madam Chair, and for
holding today's hearing to discuss Arts and Humanities funding
for fiscal year 2023. I would like to join you in welcoming our
first panel of witnesses, Shelly Lowe, chair of the National
Endowment for the Humanities, and Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson,
chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Congratulations on your recent confirmations. Your stewardship
of the Nation's arts and humanities is important and impacts
students and communities across the country, so we appreciate
you taking the time this morning to join us.
I look forward to learning more about the NEH and NEA's
goals for the upcoming year and how the fiscal year 2023
request will enable your Agencies to support cultural
Institutions, art organizations, and universities, and to
provide easier access for all Americans to arts, cultural, and
educational resources. Chair Pingree has always been a strong
advocate for the arts, and I look forward to working with her
and our subcommittee colleagues to continue providing NEH and
NEA with the necessary resources, within reasonable spending
limits, to meet their missions in fiscal year 2023.
Thank you, Chair Pingree. I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much, Mr. Joyce, and I would
now like to recognize Chair Lowe then followed by Chair Jackson
for their opening remarks. Thank you so much for being with us
today.
Ms. Lowe. Good morning. [Speaking native language.] Good
morning, everybody. Good morning, Madam Chair, Mr. Ranking
Member, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. My name
is Shelly Lowe, and I have the honor of serving as the 12th
chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities. I am
pleased to be here today to speak on behalf of NEH and our
budget request for the upcoming fiscal year.
NEH is the only Federal agency dedicated to funding the
humanities, to include history, philosophy, literature,
language, archaeology, jurisprudence, and comparative religion.
We fund numerous types of projects, such as advanced humanities
research, leading to book publication, curriculum initiatives,
and professional development for educators at all levels, the
documentation and preservation of languages on the brink of
loss, physical and digital infrastructure for cultural and
educational institutions, along with many more endeavors
essential to national progress and scholarship in the
humanities.
NEH has spent much of the past 2 years working to stabilize
and support colleges and universities, museums, libraries,
historic sites, public television and radio stations,
independent researchers, and documentary filmmakers struggling
to cope with the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic,
which we continue to grapple with to date. Thanks to funding
from the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan, NEH has been
able to distribute millions in economic recovery funding,
helping organizations retain staff, maintain programs,
facilities, and operations, and convert physical programs into
digital offerings to increase access even from a distance. But
there is still much to be done, and the humanities are vital to
rebuilding our communities, institutions, and regional
economies.
The NEH fiscal year 2023 budget request submitted by the
White House is $200.68 million. This funding will allow NEH to
continue to support the fundamental building blocks of American
civil society and fund projects that help us examine the human
conditions, understand our cultural heritage, foster mutual
respect for diverse beliefs and cultures, develop media and
information literacy, and promote civics education. And it will
allow us to expand some of NEH's impactful initiatives and
grant programs in fiscal year 2023. This includes providing
additional support to projects in the humanities and for awards
to NEH's partners in each of the 56 States and jurisdictions
through our Federal/State Partnership Office. These projects
reach millions of Americans in rural areas, urban neighbors,
and suburban communities. In the last year, projects supported
by the State and jurisdictional councils and their sub-
recipients reached more than 6.6 million participants. The
proposed fiscal year 2023 appropriation will also enable the
expansion of NEH's A More Perfect Union initiative, which
builds on NEH's 57-year investment in projects that catalog,
preserve, explore, and promote American history, and support
the utilization of these lessons of history to address today's
challenges.
As NEH chair, I am deeply committed to expanding the reach
of NEH's grant making and the projects and products we support
so that all Americans have opportunities to participate and
benefit from humanity-centered research, education, and public
programs. To meet this goal, we plan to create an NEH office of
data and evaluation to analyze the effectiveness of Agency
programs and policies in advancing equity and support for
underserved communities; an office of outreach to focus on
increasing NEH's engagement with underserved communities and
institutions; and a chief diversity officer position to advise
the Agency on all matters of diversity, equity, inclusion, and
access. Recognizing our changing climate, NEH is also
developing new initiatives to study and address the impact of
climate events on our cultural resources, museums, and historic
sites.
The budget request before you will allow NEH to build upon
our current work and move the Agency forward in changing our
world. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you so much. Chair Jackson, we would
love to hear from you.
Ms. Jackson. Thank you. Good morning, Chair Pingree,
Ranking Member Joyce, and distinguished members of the
subcommittee. I am grateful for your leadership and your
support for the arts, and it is an honor to serve as chair of
the National Endowment for the Arts and to discuss with you
President Biden's fiscal year 2023 budget request of $203.55
million for the NEA.
Before doing so, I would like to share a little bit about
myself. My commitment to the arts began at home. My father, who
retired from the U.S. Postal Service, and my mother, who worked
for the Los Angeles Unified School District, looked to the arts
to teach my brother and me about the richness of our cultures.
They wanted us to be proud and curious about our own stories
and the stories of others. Through the arts, they wanted us to
become aware of our similarities, our differences, and our
shared humanity, and to understand the power of creativity,
imagination, and entrepreneurship spirit. Those values have
been foundational throughout my career.
The work of the NEA is more important now than ever. The
arts, in addition to serving as an economic engine, are
essential to improving our children's education and to the
well-being and health our Nation. For these reasons, advancing
equity and access to the arts for all people is critically
important.
The NEA is small but mighty. Every congressional district
benefits annually from NEA awards, and due to tremendous need
throughout the arts sector, we must do more. This budget
increases investments in programs that have a tangible benefit
in your communities, allows for greater engagement with
organizations regardless of size or zip code, and makes
possible additional strategies that promote the health and
well-being of people. Whether in rural or urban areas, all
Americans should be able to participate in the arts; that is,
to experience art works, to be expressive and make art, to
teach and learn, to have creative outlets, and, in other words,
to lead artful lives essential to our reaching our full
potential as a Nation.
The arts serve as an economic engine. In a recent study by
the Bureau of Economic Analysis with the NEA, arts and cultural
economic activity accounted for 4.2 percent of GDP, or $876
billion, in 2020. That report also shows that arts workers were
especially hard hit. While the arts have great power to fuel
our economy, the sector requires significant support. As you
know, the NEA received CARES Act funding of $75 million and
American Rescue Plan funding of $135 million. As part of ARP,
the NEA distributed resources to the six regional arts
organizations, 56 State and jurisdictional arts agencies, and
made awards to 66 local arts agencies for sub-granting in 38
States. The Arts Endowment also approved grants to
organizations in all States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin
Islands, and the District of Columbia. The President's budget
builds upon past investments and recognizes the NEA's critical
role in supporting communities. This includes programs focused
on small- and first-time applicants and programs that
strengthen communities through arts and design.
Turning to education and well-being, NEA's arts education
funding helps to close the opportunity gap for students who
have the least access to the arts. In health, the NEA research
labs are exploring the arts' ability to treat chronic pain, to
delay cognitive decline among older adults, and to foster
social and the emotional development in early childhood.
Health-related work also includes creative forces. NEA's
Military Healing Arts Network focuses on military and veteran
populations exposed to trauma. Arts, culture, and design also
play essential roles towards more inclusive and equitable
communities by building bridges across cultures, fostering
mutual respect, helping people enter meaningful careers, and
much more.
This budget will build on successful engagement with
historically black colleges and universities and tribal
communities, and increase outreach to Hispanic-serving
Institutions. It will allow the NEA to continue a comprehensive
approach to advancing equity for all Americans, including
veterans, people with disabilities, and those in rural and
urban areas alike.
In closing, I want to again thank you, Chair Pingree,
Ranking Member Joyce, and all members of the subcommittee. I
look forward to continuing to earn the Arts Endowment's
longstanding bipartisan support, and I am happy to take your
questions. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you both so much. It is great to have a
chance to have both of you in front of our committee, and we
apologize that we had to cancel once and bring you back today.
And we may have some members coming and going. It is a busy day
for everyone on the Hill, especially when you reschedule to a
time you hadn't originally planned, but we are just thrilled to
have you here. So we will start with some questions, and I am
going to jump right in.
Rather than talking about your overall budget, I just want
to talk about a couple of the specific programs that you are
both doing, and, again, I just really appreciate the work that
you did there. And I think it is so important to recognize the
role that the NEA and NEH played in helping our cultural
institutions through such difficult times as we have
experienced during the pandemic. Many of them aren't through
with those challenges yet, but, as you mentioned, some of the
funding Congress was able to make available I know have been
critically important.
So one program I want to talk about through the NEH is the
work that Collaborative Citizens Institute on Rural Design has
been doing in improving the quality of life and economic
revitalization of rural communities across the United States. I
come from the most rural State in the Nation, and so we know
some of the challenges that communities have had to face in
going through extreme change. The Institute has worked with the
community of Millinocket, which is in my home State, to empower
the community in its economic revitalization. It has been
pivoting from a previous focus on the paper industry to looking
forward to what their future will be.
So could you talk a little bit about how the work of the
Institute promotes economic strength in communities alongside
building community cohesion?
Ms. Jackson. Absolutely. Thank you, Chair Pingree. It is
good to see you again. The Citizens Institute on Rural Design,
having a planning background myself, is one of the programs
that really calls my attention at the Arts Endowment. And the
strength of it is the network of citizens and leaders who have
the opportunity to delve into design principles, to better
understand what is possible in terms of community development
in rural areas. So this includes exchanging best practices
across the country, being able to access design resources that
wouldn't otherwise be available to them. It is helpful in
getting organizations ready to compete effectively for funding
in design and the arts, among other fields, because it
strengthens the ability to do problems solving and to think
imaginatively about what is possible.
So certainly, again, the ability to have citizens and
leaders come together, draw from other resources, and also
exercise their imagination in understanding what could be
possible in their communities is really an important feature.
Ms. Pingree. Yeah thank you for that, and I do really
appreciate your planning background to bring something
completely different to this important program. I just want to
talk a little bit about the NIH about the Infrastructure and
Capacity Building Challenge Grants. The request is for $1.7
million over enacted, and can you tell us a little bit, Chair
Lowe, about how the NEH leverages Federal dollars to catalyze
non-Federal investment in humanities projects through the use
of those Challenge Grants?
Ms. Lowe. Absolutely. Thank you for that important
question. One of the unique aspects of NEH in our grant-funding
lines are the ability for projects, institutions, organizations
to apply for Challenge Grants or Infrastructure Grants, and
these are large grants. These are large projects. And what we
do is we require a matching set of funding from outside
entities, non-Federal entities. So when an institution applies
to these grants and they are awarded through NEH, because we
have such a rigorous evaluation process, we often have entities
come to us to say, well, that gives us kind of a stamp of
approval, you know. We have gone through this very rigorous
application process. We have been deemed to have a very good
project. This amount of funding will come from NEH. Now we can
go out and we can ask for private funding and/or State funding,
philanthropic funding, individual funding to help support these
amazing projects to come to fruition. So it really does allow
us to use our Federal funding to say these are excellent
projects that are going on out there and allow those
individuals to seek private funding for those projects.
Ms. Pingree. Yeah, that is so great. I mean, given the
small amount of funding that the NEH has overall, it just seems
critically important that we help communities to leverage more
and seek other sources of funds out there. I will yield back my
time and recognize Ranking Member Joyce for his question.
Mr. Joyce. As always, thank you, Madam Chair. Chair
Jackson, welcome. I am always impressed by the work your Agency
carries out through Creative Forces: NEA's military healing
arts network to help our military and our veteran populations
exposed to trauma as well as their family and caregivers. Can
you discuss how Creative Forces has expanded over the years and
the impact it has had on military families and veterans, and,
if you could, how the fiscal year 2023 request continues to
support these efforts?
Ms. Jackson. Thank you for that question, Ranking Member
Joyce. The Creative Forces Program is an amazing initiative, as
you well know. It has grown over the last 10, 12 years to have
12 sites all over the country. It is a collaboration between
the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs. And the impact
that it has had not only on military personnel who have
experienced trauma, but, by extension, their families and
communities, has been documented in ways that are credible
scientifically. I think it is a remarkable program that has the
capacity to inspire other ways of understanding the arts in
society in general. It is one of the things that I am very
excited about is what we are learning from that work at the
intersection of arts and health through the military and its
application in those communities for sure and beyond.
One of the ways that the program is expanding is there is a
grant program now that is focused on community resources that
are available to expand the work beyond the sites that are
based in military facilities. So bringing more and more people
into the fold as we think about individual healing and
community healing, I think, is critically important, and
Creative Forces is such a source for the military community,
and, I think, also beyond.
Mr. Joyce. How did the NEA and its partners continue
providing therapy and care throughout the pandemic? What
lessons were learned that will help this program in the long
run?
Ms. Jackson. Thank you for that question. There was great
care to ensure that there would not be disruptions in
treatment. And I think innovations were made in terms of
delivery of services through technology, through the internet,
applications that didn't exist before and are now available to
us as options, because we had depended in so many ways to
rearrange our lives and the way we work. So there are a host of
teleservices, if you will, that are now options for these
programs that weren't available before.
Mr. Joyce. That is great. Thank you very much. Chair Lowe,
I understand that you grew up in a small Navajo community in
Northeast Arizona where you saw firsthand the impact that the
humanities can have on individuals and communities in rural
America. In your role as chair, how do you hope to expand NEH's
reach to more children and communities across the country and
ensure that humanity resources are more evenly distributed
throughout the country?
Ms. Lowe. Thank you for that question. This is very close
to my heart. As you said, I did grow up in a very small, very
rural community, and having been on the National Council for 6
years, I paid a lot of attention to where our NEH funding had
been going, but, more particularly, to where our NIH funding
had not been going, and not for the fault of the Agency, but
more so that applications were not coming in from rural areas
and small institutions.
So it is a big goal of mine to ensure that the work that we
do is going to be reaching smaller communities and rural
communities, and this will be done in a couple of different
manners. One, we hope to very much create an office of data and
evaluation that will look at where we have been doing our
funding, where we haven't been doing our funding, and with
that, create an office of outreach. And that office of outreach
will help us to get into those communities and share
information about the Agency with those communities we have not
yet served.
And, in particular, when it comes to serving children and
young people, which I think is extremely important when it
comes to humanities, particularly civics education, we have
done a very large grant with the Department of Education for a
civics education program, Educating for American Democracy,
which created a roadmap that schools, communities, institutions
can use to create civics education that fit their population.
So that will fit rural communities as opposed to urban
communities, that they can really make it something that is
theirs and really kind of points to the specific important
topics that they need to be addressing in their communities. I
am also very interested in supporting National History Day and
making sure that our State and jurisdictional humanities
councils are able to get into those rural communities, that
they have access to and really start to encourage National
History Day in the high schools and get students to be looking
at history projects. The third way that we do a lot of outreach
into communities, and we are hoping to make sure to make
inroads, is to support our Edsitement, our online curriculum
program, and making sure that people have access to that.
Mr. Joyce. Great. Thank you very much. I yield back with no
time I have left. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Ms. Pingree. Always have time for you. Chair McCollum, do
you have questions today?
[No response.]
Ms. Pingree. I think you are muted.
Ms. McCollum. All right. The clock is going to give me back
my 5 seconds I hope. Anyways, thank you so much for
rescheduling this meeting with the chair of the national
endowments, and, Chair Pingree, thank you very much for all the
work that you did to make sure that we had a healthy budget for
both panels that are appearing today.
So it has been really important what we have done during
the pandemic, especially with the crisis facing our Nation with
the role of the arts and the humanities in here. The Rescue
Plan, I have to give both of your organizations kudos for your
previous leadership in making sure that money was out in a
flexible way to support arts and humanities organizations, who,
as we know, suffered greatly being the type of nonprofits that
they are in local communities. So thank you for that. And I
know I have got two libraries in St. Paul that are very excited
that serve underrepresented communities and hope that if you
are ever out, you know, that you can come visit our libraries.
That would be great. And Springboard for the Arts was just such
a catalyst, and I know they will appreciate the grant that they
received from the NEA because they helped coordinate with
nonprofits, the State, in how to make sure that pandemic money
went out.
Mr. Joyce was asking about the work that you do with the
Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs. I chair the Defense
Subcommittee on Appropriations, and we are going to be reaching
out to both of you about maybe some of the work that you have
looked at or groups you have been approached on suicide
prevention. We have done a lot with traumatic brain injury, and
healing, and things like that, but also some maybe work we can
do together with money, Madam Chair, from the Defense
Department. I am going to make the dollars stretch for
everyone.
So, Chair Lowe and Chair Jackson, could you just kind of
give me a snapshot of where you think you are going to have to
go with some of the challenges that you are still facing with
some of the organizations that you work with as we go through
the recovery, as we are dealing with inflation, and as we are
dealing with, you know, rebuilding institutions? Just some of
the things that we should be aware of as a committee here to be
supportive of the work you are doing in our communities. I am a
former teacher. I am not going to call on who goes first. You
women can decide amongst yourselves.
[No response.]
Ms. McCollum. You got the Minnesota nice thing going on.
Okay. Chair Lowe, take it.
Ms. Lowe. Thanks for that wonderful question, and I think
that you are absolutely right. We are still trying to identify
the needs of our communities, the needs of our humanities
institutions, particularly as we start to come out of the
pandemic. But we are not yet out of the pandemic as we see
inflation and costs rising after all that we have been through
the past couple of years. I really want to, first, you know,
acknowledge our staff who really got down, and got to work, and
got the CARES and ARP funding out, and were very cognizant of
the needs of institutions. But we understood and what we have
found is that the need is much larger than what we have to be
able to support. So we are going to continue to see
institutions coming to us with really, really big needs and
asks for things that they have to either rebuild, reopen, or
reestablish after the pandemic.
We are being very clear to work with our Office of General
Management and also in thinking about how do we support BABA--
Buy America, Build America/Build America, Buy America--and make
sure that we can support these projects in the best way
possible, but also make sure that we are leveraging our funding
in the best way possible to support these projects that are
coming forward. I think there is going to be a challenge that
we are going to have to be really looking at and paying
attention to. And at NEH, in particular, our new office of data
and evaluation will help us to really assess those challenges
and those needs.
Ms. McCollum. Chair Jackson, anything you would like to
add?
Ms. Jackson. Just, as Chair Lowe said, to give accolades to
the staff at the NEA that did a remarkable job in getting that
money out to really deserving organizations and helped to keep
things going. In addition to that, I think one of the
challenges is to harvest the lessons of the last few years and
resist the urge to just snap back to business as usual. So I
think that is one of the challenges, and I really do hope to
advance the work of the NEA as a national partner, not only
through our grant making but through our ability to convene,
our ability to disseminate information and be a partner with
other national entities and local players in building healthy
arts ecosystems.
Ms. McCollum. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I am going
to try to come in and out for the second panel as I do have a
conflict with Natural Resources. Thank you. I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Yeah, thank you very much. Representative
Simpson, do you have some questions today?
Mr. Simpson. More comments than questions or anything, but
I always like this hearing because the Endowments are one of my
favorite organizations, both of them, that do such great work.
And, you know, sadly, it is probably underrecognized by the
American people the importance of the work that you do out
there. One of my advocacies is to make sure that we get grants
and so forth out to rural communities because, you know, I have
often said, and I don't mean it 100 percent, but, you know, New
York and Los Angeles don't need a lot from the arts. They have
got arts there, and they have got benefactors and everything
else. But you get into rural America, and I was surprised to
learn just a minute ago that Maine is the most rural State. I
always thought Idaho was one of the most rural States, but we
both grow potatoes, so that is okay.
But I do want to thank you for the work that you did in
making sure that these local organizations could survive during
this pandemic because it was critical to a lot them. And I am
hopeful that, before long, we can get back to normal where we
can actually have a hearing in person and talk to you face to
face and stuff. And I can't wait till we restart the Authors
Program that the Humanities helps fund in Idaho. And I tell
you, they are so well attended and so appreciated by the public
as they go around the State and put on these various things,
and I have talked to several art museums and local arts
council. In fact, I talk with one member of an arts council
almost every night, and my wife serves on the Idaho Falls Arts
Council, so she gets involved in that. So I have learned a
great deal about the importance of the help that you have given
these organizations in making sure that they can make it
through some very, very difficult times.
You know, I have always found it kind of interesting that
our committee, even when I was chair and even before that, we
looked at the Arts and Humanities Councils, and we give them
the same appropriation. I noticed that you have requested
different appropriations this year, one for $200 million and
one for $203 million. I don't know what is going on there, but
ultimately, I suspect that they will be the same in the long
run. But how much of the current $167.5 million in this year's
budget goes to local communities and grants to State and local
communities in both the arts and humanities?
Ms. Lowe. I can probably answer that. Thank you for that
question, Representative Simpson. Forty percent of the NEH
budget goes directly to our State and jurisdictional humanities
councils. And, you know, I want to say that they have been
great partners. They have been extremely excited about some of
the propositions that NEH has for the fiscal year 2023 budget.
They are very much looking forward to working with our new
office of data and evaluation and the office of outreach, and
we know that they do amazing work getting our name and our work
into the smaller rural community, so we are very excited to
continue that work.
Ms. Jackson. And I would say, similarly, 40 percent goes to
State arts agencies, regional arts organizations for sub-
granting. We really appreciate the partnerships that we have
with those agencies because they are proximate to the places
where the investment should go, so they actually have a level
of information and knowledge that is more difficult for the
distance. So very grateful for their collaboration in this.
Mr. Simpson. Is the 40 percent statutory, or is that just
what we do?
Ms. Lowe. Forty percent is statutory.
Mr. Simpson. Statutory? So if you got the $200 million or
$203 million that that is being requested by the Arts, you are
looking at probably an increase of, I calculate it and I was
never a math genius, but about $13 million more that would go
out to grants and so forth for local communities and stuff.
Ms. Lowe. It would increase the amount to sustain
jurisdictional humanities councils, yes.
Mr. Simpson. Do you think the 40-percent level is the right
level between the Federal Government and the State and local
communities, or could you increase that percentage that goes
out to local agencies?
Ms. Lowe. What we find is that the projects that NEH funds
through the funding that does not go to the State and
jurisdiction humanities councils go to nationwide projects that
then support all populations across all the States. So a lot of
our funding for nationwide projects allow individuals in any
State to access materials and research freely online, or to
develop documentaries that are available to everybody online.
So at the moment, we want to ensure that we have enough funding
to have those large national projects while still supporting
our State and jurisdictional councils.
Mr. Simpson. Same with the Arts?
Ms. Jackson. Yes, it is a similar story.
Mr. Simpson. Okay. Well, listen, I appreciate what you do,
and I would love to entertain you out in Idaho. I think the
last four NEA directors have been out to Idaho, and we have had
a great time with them out there. And so anytime you can make
it, we would love to have you out there and show you around a
great State, and what they are doing in Idaho and what you are
doing in Idaho. So I appreciate it. Thanks for being here
today.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much, Mr. Simpson. Thank you
for your, you know, eloquent support for the arts in rural
States. I have no idea who rates the States as most rural, and
I won't conjecture that it is because of the quality of their
potatoes, but we will just see. I will find out how that rating
system gets done, but we all know Idaho is a very rural State,
so we both are thinking the same way about this.
So, Representative Lee, do you have questions today?
Mrs. Lee of Nevada. Yes, I do. Thank you, Chair Pingree and
Ranking Member Joyce. I also want to thank the chairs for being
here. It is great to be able to speak to both of you. I am
proud to represent Las Vegas in Southern Nevada, which is the
epicenter of our country's creative and cultural economies,
renowned for unforgettable experiences and memories that we
provide annually to tens of millions of visitors from around
the world.
Chair Lowe, I wanted to ask you, acknowledging that much of
NEH's funding is delivered not directly to projects but through
humanities councils, such as the Nevada Humanities. And in my
State, this council has been incredibly effective in getting
the humanities funding exactly where it needs to go. So could
you talk about how NEH's support for State humanities councils
allows these councils, or the Federal funding, to be leveraged
several times over at a local level, serving as seed money that
enables these councils to be able to use that to raise
additional funds to advance programming and projects beyond
those funded directly by NEH?
Ms. Lowe. Sure. Thank you so much for that question. Our
funding that goes to State and jurisdictional humanities
councils allows the councils to do a number of things. One is
to provide their own programming, which they use our funding to
do public speaker events, to do major events in certain
locations, libraries, museums. But the second thing that the
funding allows each council to do is to provide then regranting
funds to organizations, usually small, local, rural
organizations, and these funds can do one of two things. They
can provide planning grants that allow these organizations to
really develop some programs and to develop even fundraising
ideas and avenues to build these programs. The second thing
that it does is it allows programs to then start small, and to
then bring in outside funders who see the impact of these
programs within the State and within the communities, and then
bring in additional funding to support and/or even sometimes
endow of the programs that move forward.
Mrs. Lee of Nevada. Thank you. Yeah, I have been the
beneficiary of many of those programs and being able to enjoy
them in our community, so I appreciate that. Chair Jackson, my
State is not alone in facing a mental health crisis, especially
as a result of this pandemic. A recent survey released last
month found that close to 6 out of 10 Americans have
experienced concerns either about their own mental health or
that of families and friends, and this is up 9 percent since
the spring of 2020. You have said that you are especially
excited about the growing body of work that the NEA is doing in
advancing the intersection of arts and health, and I wanted to
ask you if you could please speak to how you believe the NEA is
positioned to improve Americans' mental health in particular,
especially through the intersection with the arts.
Ms. Jackson. Thank you for that question, Representative
Lee. There are several things that are happening at the NEA
that I think are relevant to your interest. One, of course, is
Creative Forces, which was discussed a bit earlier. Another is
the Sound Health Network, which is a collaboration of the NEA,
the University of California-San Francisco, the National
Institute of Health, the Kennedy Center, and Renee Fleming. And
it is a national resource center that helps with connecting
research, public awareness, and actual services on music,
health, and wellness.
This month, they are actually having a gathering of
neuroscientists, music therapists, musicians, and health
professionals to examine evidence about music and mental
health. So that is an example of, I think, powerful players
coming together to develop a national resource and hopefully
create some other ways of thinking about how to address mental
health issues, and how to frame them in ways that we can
actually make a difference. That is one of the things that I
find most powerful about the arts is the ability to reframe
issues and think of different ways of arriving at solutions,
and health is a really important area where that is possible.
Mrs. Lee of Nevada. Thank you, Chair Jackson. I couldn't
agree more. I think this is an exciting body of research and
looking forward to that. And with that, I will yield back.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you. Representative Kaptur, do you have
questions today?
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I wanted to welcome
Chair Lowe and Dr. Jackson. Thank you so very much. I also
begin with a deep thanks for sending such talented people out
to our region to have a discussion about how to better relate
across Northern Ohio, from Cleveland to Toledo, to your
instrumentalities. We can keep doing better at that in our
region.
My first question, and I have a couple, relates to Chair
Lowe on the potential to do more to collect the stories of
Americans who trace their heritage to Eastern and Central
Europe. I am wondering, especially given the war in Ukraine and
the focus of our country in the world on that, how your Agency
might use funding from the budget request to help support the
archival, a collection of stories documents and other materials
from America's cultural diasporas, who have come from that part
of the world to our country, most of the countries of the
former Soviet Union. For example, I accidentally discovered a
Slovak museum, Czech museum, in Iowa, a Lithuanian museum in
Chicago, a Ukrainian museum in Cleveland, and a Polish Piosk
museum in Hamtramck, Michigan. And as I sort of dug into it, I
found out that our Library of Congress, our major humanities
organizations, don't really relate to them in any kind of
coherent manner.
And so my first question is, you know, what might we do
better in terms of administering collaborative humanities
research and maybe a set of exchanges between American scholars
who are knowledgeable of these collections, and even extending
to some of the scholars that, you know, that may exist in that
part of the world, and how we might shape an initiative like
that.
And then, Dr. Jackson, I want to ask a question about
marketing of the arts. Between Cleveland and Toledo, we
probably have 10,000 artists. They are phenomenal. I think
artists are left brain people and marketers are right brain
people, and I think we have a little trouble getting the arts
elevated. And I am wondering any kind of direction you might be
able to give to local arts communities on how to do a better
job of marketing and also protecting their trademark or their
patents. I don't like the idea that regions like mine may be
left behind to the larger, wealthier metropolitan areas. And a
related concern is, for the 40 percent of your funding
distributed to State arts agencies and regional arts
organizations, how consciously do we direct the States to make
sure to be equitable in the way that those dollars are
distributed so that all communities have the opportunity to
participate and, you know, to be respected? I have one museum,
and the African-American community in Toledo wants to do some
work for set of collections there, or a major jazz center and
so forth, and, boy, it has been so hard to get the State of
Ohio to do anything.
So those are my questions, and I will listen for any
insights. And, again, thank you for coming out to our region
and introducing yourselves.
Ms. Lowe. Thank you much, Representative Kaptur. You know,
I want to start with saying that myself and the staff at NEH,
our hearts and our minds are with the people of Ukraine, and
with everything that has been going on. There are a number of
ways that NEH can support the preservation of oral history and
the culture of Eastern Europe. We can do that through our
Division of Preservation and Access programs through grants
that institutions, like you named, could come in and apply for.
We can do it through the State and jurisdictional humanities
councils, who may want to do the same thing, particularly with
immigrants who are coming into their communities. We can
provide grants to help do oral history projects. We can also do
interagency agreements that allow us to really specify and look
at a particular project and work with other agencies to make
sure that we can move that forward. So there are a number of
instances or things that we do.
The last thing we can do, which is a little bit more quick
than our regular grant programs, is we have Chairs Grants. And
Chairs Grants at the moment can be initiated to really address
the issues of Eastern European individuals, particularly those
coming into the United States, in trying to capture their
stories and experiences.
Ms. Kaptur. Have you ever worked with the Library of
Congress on the veterans history collection there that relates
to World War II, the World War II Veterans History collection,
and trying to connect why America fought that war, why so many
Americans gave their lives? Are you aware of any effort through
the Humanity?
Ms. Lowe. We have done many projects with the Library of
Congress. I would have to connect with the staff to have to
find out specifically on that, and we will get back to you.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Ms. Kaptur. Dr. Jackson.
Ms. Jackson. Just to comment on your question about
distribution of resources of the 40 percent, thank you for that
question, Representative Kaptur. We work closely with the
National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. That is the
professional organization that supports the 56 State and
jurisdictional agencies in our country, and they have a strong
research office, which, together with ours, tracks the NEA
grantmaking through State and regional partnerships. Mapping
that data helps us better understand distributions and
disparities. So we are very aware of your concern and eager to
continue using that tool to help us understand how to make sure
that we are working in an equitable fashion. I am very grateful
for the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies and the
capacity to be able to do that.
On your question related to artists and marketing----
Ms. Kaptur. Yes.
Ms. Jackson. Yeah, I think it is important to look to the
local and regional entities that exist as artists support
systems, in some ways. Connections to small business
associations, to other resources that one may not think of as
exclusively for artists could be beneficial. Certainly artists
have particular needs as it relates to programming and to the
marketing of their contributions. I think in many areas, there
are intermediary organizations that could be strengthened to
help artists do that kind of business development, whether they
are working in the nonprofit realm or meandering between
nonprofit and for-profit. The ability to have resources to help
them construct their careers is really important.
Ms. Kaptur. Yes, Doctor. On that marketing issue, if you
could send me examples around the country of where some places
are doing it well.
Ms. Jackson. I will get back to you. Yes, I am happy to get
back to you with that.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much, Chair Kaptur, and at this
point, I think we will thank our panel. We had time for one
round of questions, and we certainly appreciate that.
And just before I end the panel, I want to ask unanimous
consent from the members present at the hearing today to enter
into the hearing record testimony from AFL-CIO Department of
Professional Employees. This testimony highlights the
importance of funding for the Endowments, the economic benefits
that funding provides, and the importance of promoting
diversity in these industries.
Hearing no objection, the document will be entered into the
record.
Ms. Pingree. So I want to thank both witnesses for
appearing before us today. We appreciate your testimony, your
answers to our questions. And just thank you very much for the
work you are doing, and we are going to continue to look
forward to working with you as a committee as we go through our
budget process. So thank you so much for being with us today.
Mr. Simpson. Chairwoman Pingree.
Ms. Pingree. Yes.
Mr. Simpson. Could I just make a quick statement----
Ms. Pingree. Of course you can. Absolutely.
Mr. Simpson. To Chairwoman Lowe, Jim Leach, who used to be
the chairman of the Humanities for years, served in Congress
with us, when he started, he went out on a project on trying to
ensure civility in this country. If there is ever a time when
that initiative needs to be restarted or it needs to be worked
on, I would encourage you to do it now because it is now more
necessary than ever before.
Ms. Lowe. Thank you, Representative Simpson. I agree, and I
think that this is very much a priority for the Agency and for
myself as we move forward.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. A very good point to make at this moment in
time, so thank you for that. And with that, we will allow our
panel to depart and get back to their busy days, and look
forward to hearing from our second panel, who I am assuming are
with us.
Ms. Jackson. Thank you all.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you so much.
Ms. Lowe. Thank you. Have a wonderful morning.
Ms. Pingree. You, too.
Ms. Pingree. So I would like to welcome our second panel--
Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch, III, the 14th secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution, and Kaywin Feldman, the director of
National Gallery of Art--who are joining us to discuss their
fiscal year 2023 budget request and their collaborative
projects.
I want to note that this is Secretary Bunch's first time
testifying before the committee, so I am eager for the
opportunity to learn more about your vision for the
Institution. In 2021, the Smithsonian celebrated a milestone,
its 175th anniversary. We hope today's hearing will provide an
opportunity for you to discuss how you imagine the treasures,
research, data, and scholarship of the Smithsonian will be used
to achieve your mission, the increase and diffusion of
knowledge in the next 175 years. The 2023 budget request is
$1.75 billion, an increase of $112 million over the fiscal year
2022-enacted level. We look forward to discussing how this
requested increase will support the Smithsonian's digital
transformation, educational goals, robust research programs,
and make essential investments in both the facilities and the
workforce.
The fiscal year 2023 National Gallery of Art budget request
is $209 million, an increase of $28.7 million over the fiscal
year 2022-enacted level. The fiscal year 2023 budget request
represents an exciting time of change for the National Gallery
as it moves forward with both renovations to the main Gallery
buildings as well as the construction of the Pod 6 joint
storage facility in cooperation and with the Smithsonian.
Furthermore, the Gallery's budget includes strategic
investments in additional staff to support its work to advance
racial equity from the artists whose work is being displayed to
the Gallery staff and audience.
According to the Gallery's budget request, in fiscal year
2019, over 7 million people benefited from the Gallery's online
presence, and over 33 million people utilize free educational
resources from the Gallery. In addition to the broad engagement
these statistics show, the Gallery makes hundreds of art loans
available across the country to benefit Americans beyond those
that can make the trip to visit the Gallery in person. I look
forward to hearing more about your efforts to expand this
engagement and work towards your other priorities, Director
Feldman.
Secretary Bunch and Director Feldman, I appreciate the work
that you and the employees of the Smithsonian and National
Gallery do to advance the civic, educational, scientific, and
artistic life of this Nation. I look forward to your testimony
this afternoon and to hearing more about your plans for your
organizations and through the next fiscal year.
I would like to yield to our ranking member, Mr. Joyce, for
his opening remarks.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you again for yielding, Madam Chair, and
welcome, Secretary Bunch and Director Feldman. We appreciate
you joining us this morning to discuss the budget priorities
for the Smithsonian Institution and the National Gallery of Art
for fiscal year 2023. I think it is fair to say that you have
the most interesting jobs in Washington. You are entrusted with
the challenging responsibility of operating and maintaining two
of our Nation's most revered and visited institutions. Each
year, millions of visitors, both in person and online, access
your treasured collections. Through your exhibitions and
outreach programs, you have inspired children and scholars
across the globe to discover new knowledge, experience art, and
explore the world around them.
Today, I look forward to understanding how the fiscal year
2023 budget supports your Agencies' priorities for the coming
year, reasonably builds upon the investments Congress provided
in fiscal year 2022, and ensures that your facilities are
properly maintained to reduce risks to your collections,
visitors, and employees. In particular, I would like to discuss
progress on development of your shared off-site storage
facility, as well as the multiyear renovation of the
Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. Over the coming
months, I look forward to working with you and my subcommittee
colleagues to provide the Smithsonian and National Gallery with
the necessary resources to ensure that both of your invaluable
collections are protected and maintained for future
generations. I look forward to our discussion.
Thank you, Chair Pingree. I yield back.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much, Mr. Joyce. Now I would
like to yield to Secretary Bunch and then Director Feldman for
their opening remarks.
Mr. Bunch. Thank you very much. Congresswoman Pingree,
Ranking Member Joyce, and members of the subcommittee, thank
you for the opportunity to testify before you today about the
Smithsonian's fiscal year 2023 budget request. I realize it is
a sizable request, but to accomplish what you have asked of us
requires a robust budget, especially as we recover from the
fiscal challenges of the pandemic. With two new museums on the
horizon, big renovation plans, existing maintenance
requirements, and the need to expand our reach, relevance, and
impact, it is critical we can count on the full support of
Congress.
My priorities for the Smithsonian are based on my
conviction that our shared future as a Nation depends more than
ever on our ability to work together, and that the Smithsonian
can play an important role in giving people the tools to
confront our greatest challenges. As such, our strategic focus
priorities can be viewed through the lens of the impact they
will have on our shared future. We clearly want to ensure every
home and every classroom can have access to the Smithsonian's
digital content. We want to work together to build a more
nimble, more effective Smithsonian. We want to be a trusted
source that explores and grapples with what it means to be an
American, and we want to harness Smithsonian expertise to
elevate science in the global discourse. And finally, we want
to build and enrich a national culture of learning by engaging
with educational systems nationwide.
We have several Institution-wide initiatives that touch on
these priorities. Most of those were sped up as a result of the
pandemic. To outline just a few, one exploring the American
experience will form local partnerships to promote discussion
and dialogue with underreached rural audiences, and another
already underway is increasing the use of audience-driven data
to inform our decision makings. And to be a nimbler
Smithsonian, we are developing the policies and toolkits
necessary to implement flexible work practices.
Our newest museums--the National Museum of the American
Latino and the Smithsonian American Women's History Museum--
present an opportunity to put all these into practice. They can
model what a modern museum should be: truly digital,
impressively nimble, with rich educational platforms that spur
conversations and improve communities. These museums, though,
are a lifetime-shared commitment between Congress and the
Smithsonian, increasing our need for collection space,
maintenance, and staffing in perpetuity. I am confident that
your full support will allow them to be the exemplars for
decades to come.
We must also face the condition of our existing buildings
and collection storage spaces when planning. Deferred
maintenance is concerning since it threatens our collections.
Our most important facilities management issues are controlling
environmental conditions and preventing water from broaching
some of our buildings. Your ongoing support will help us
strategically apply our maintenance funds and capital projects
towards aging infrastructure. With nearly one-half of our
current backlog in the Air and Space Museum and in the
Smithsonian Castle, our planned revitalizations will address
the most pressing concerns. And given the extra space
necessitated by the new museums and by the Hirshhorn and
American History's revitalization projects, the expansion of
both the Suitland and Dulles sites are vital. One near-term
capital project is the New Museum Support Center Pod 6 that
will be a shared storage space for us and the National Gallery
of Art. The President's fiscal year 2023 budget addresses some
of these challenges, and your support and guidance gives me
confidence in our future success.
Recently, the National Science Foundation announced the
creation of an image of a supermassive black hole in the center
of the Milky Way. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
played a key role in that image, an example of the cutting-edge
collaborative work that we do at the Smithsonian. Whether it is
giving students and teachers tools to understand history,
whether it is bringing people together to discuss issues that
affect their communities, or peering across the stars for a
clearer look at our galaxy, our work benefits everyone. With
your help, we will be able to continue to increase and diffuse
knowledge for another 175 years.
Thank you for holding this hearing, for your ongoing
support, and for your commitment to working with us for a
better shared future. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you. Director Feldman.
Ms. Feldman. Chair Pingree, Ranking Member Joyce, members
of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify
today. It is my great pleasure to talk to you about the
National Gallery of Art and our fiscal year 2023 Federal budget
request. I would also like to thank you for your support of our
fiscal year 2022 budget that provided the necessary funds to
keep the National Gallery operational during this challenging
time.
Like the Nation we serve, the National Gallery has endured
2 tumultuous years marked by a global pandemic. We became adept
at pivoting to keep the museum available for our visitors, and
despite closings and re-openings, our 2021 calendar year
attendance was 1.7 million, which is the 2nd largest attendance
for an art museum in the United States, and the 5th largest
globally. I am delighted to share some of the ways we have
innovated during this time to return to and expand on our
regular operations.
Through robust engagement across our digital channels, we
increased digital attendance by over 50 percent. Our website
and social media platforms featured 360-degree virtual tours, a
new storytelling blog, a podcast that brought musicians
together with works of art, and a fresh approach to video on
YouTube. And online, we reimagined our popular educational
lesson plans to serve teachers working with remote classrooms.
These educator resources reached nearly 1 million individuals
in fiscal year 2020, which is a 200 percent increase. Onsite in
April, we opened Afro-Atlantic Histories, which takes an in-
depth look at the historical experiences and cultural
formations of black and African people through the eyes of
artists since the 17th century. I have been moved by several of
our long-serving staff who have mentioned how wonderful it is
to see their own story on our walls for the first time. I hope
you all have an opportunity to see this important presentation
before it closes on July 17.
We have seven additional exhibitions opening, including
American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams, featuring
works that show us the wonder of the American West, which I
know is a subject that this subcommittee knows very well. Later
in 2022, we will offer a wide range of presentations, including
works by Whistler, Sargent, and Carpaccio, and the exhibitions
``The Double: Identity and Difference in Art Since 1900,'' and
``Called to Create: Black Artists of the American South.'' The
National Gallery has a long history of loaning works of art to
American museums to share the Nation's fine arts collection
with as many Americans as possible. In 2021, the Gallery loaned
285 artworks to 88 museums in cities across the United States.
With immense gratitude to you, our public partners in
Congress, and the administration, we made significant progress
on the master facilities plan, and the East Building atrium
skylight has been replaced, and the iconic building will reopen
on June 30. We can literally and metaphorically see daylight
again. Visitors will now enter through a more accessible main
entrance, find a separate elevator lobby within the newly-
refurbished auditorium and access to additional restrooms. We
are also advancing our partnership with the Smithsonian for the
shared art storage facility that Secretary Bunch mentioned,
known as Pod 6. This project is our highest priority in the
fiscal year 2023 request. We will no longer rely on a third-
party provider for inadequate offsite art storage, and it will
allow us to have capacity for collections growth for the
foreseeable future while also permitting galleries currently
used for art storage to be reopened to the public.
Our fiscal year 2023 budget request for renovation also
includes funds to continue to address much-needed and overdue
stone repair work and to finish portions of the West Building
roof, and we have much more to do. We have mapped out a
strategic plan for the next 18 months that will strengthen our
mission, expanding the understanding of our audiences and our
ability to reach them.
Your commitment confirms our role is a truly national
gallery. We welcome you, your constituents, and our audiences
from around the world to explore our galleries, collections,
and programs, which connect us all to triumphs of creativity
and our shared humanity. Thank for your ongoing support of the
National Gallery of Art and for the opportunity to speak with
you today. I am happy to answer any questions you have. Thank
you.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you both so much for your testimony
before us, but also for the work that you are doing and the
amazing work you have done during the pandemic, and all the
challenges that it has brought to us.
I am going to go right to Ranking Member Joyce for the
first question.
Mr. Joyce. You are very kind, Madam Chair, as always. Thank
you very much, and, again, thank you both for being here today.
Director Feldman, last year, the National Gallery lent over
280 artworks to 88 museums in cities across the country,
including Cleveland's Museum of Art. I think that is a
wonderful partnership that allows Americans across the country
to see some of the Gallery's collection and original works
without necessarily having to travel to Washington, D.C. Can
you discuss the importance of this loan program and the
National Gallery's plans to work with additional museums this
year?
Ms. Feldman. Thank you very much, Ranking Member Joyce. I
am very proud of our policy on loans. Here at the National
Gallery, we start with the answer ``yes'' when we get a loan
request, and it is only after doing our research about the
facilities and other issues about whether or not a work of art
might already be committed that we might decline, so we are
very generous about it. The number that you mentioned of 285
works is about 60 percent of what we normally lend, so that
really represents the fact that so many museums were closed
during COVID, so we do everything in our power to get those
works out. I am also proud that we partner, of course, with
museums with our exhibition program, and over the last 5 years,
we have sent exhibitions that we have organized to 66 different
museums. So that is another way where we actually are able to
partner and get those works out around the country.
Mr. Joyce. That is fantastic. Thank you. Secretary Bunch,
you noted in your testimony that as the Smithsonian begins
developing the two new museums, the Institution must also
factor in the condition of existing buildings when planning.
Given your request includes another $23 million to continue
renovations at the National Air and Space Museum that began in
2018, can you provide a status update on those renovations? And
can you walk us through some of the cost and scheduling impacts
that you have experienced?
Mr. Bunch. Thank you very much for the question. The
National Air and Space Museum renovation is on track, but as
you know, it went over budget for a variety of reasons. The
most important reason was that as we began to actually take the
cladding off the building, there was much more damage than we
ever thought, and that led to us basically having to spend much
more money on steel and the like. Also, I think what was
important is that we have all been affected by the supply chain
and that, in essence, we had trouble getting materials, and
that allowed us to go over budget. But because of your support,
last year we were able to sort of take about $53 million of
that override, and that is why the other $23 million will allow
us to finish the work on the Air and Space Museum so that we
can open again to the public in the fall.
Mr. Joyce. Well, thank you, and I applaud the two of you
working together. Director Feldman, your fiscal year 2023
request includes $27 million for the Gallery's share of
construction and project management cost for Pod 6, the new
shared art storage facility at the Smithsonian Museum Support
Center. Can you provide us with an update on Pod 6 status and
explain how the shared storage center will help the Gallery
save on storage costs in long run, and can you discuss what has
been driving these costs increases?
Ms. Feldman. Yes. So we are really excited to be partnering
with our colleagues at the Smithsonian. This is the first time
we have done a major construction project together, and we feel
it is much more efficient and effective to work together. And
we are just about finished with the design portion of Pod 6,
and we hope to contract by the end of the calendar year, I
believe, and actually occupy the building in 2025, so we are
moving forward.
And the cost increases came from a couple of different
factors. One was our original projections were based before the
building was fully designed, so as we had more information, we
learned more about the actual costs. Our percentage of the
shared facility actually increased. We originally planned to
have 33 percent of the building for storage, and the design
dictated a certain level of split, so we now will have 42
percent of the building. And so that increases the Gallery
costs but reduces on the Smithsonian side. And then the final
area of cost increase that both the Smithsonian and the
National Gallery experienced is because of the increased cost
of materials after the global pandemic, so.
Mr. Joyce. Secretary Bunch, do you have anything to add?
Mr. Bunch. I am just telling you I am just so excited about
this because this is really an example of how, if we work
together, we save costs and we handle one of the major problems
we both face, which is storage. And I think the fact that we
were able to sort of adapt the building to make sure it worked
both for the National Gallery and for the Smithsonian, while
that led for some increased cost, what it really meant is we
now have a model going forward of how we can work together, and
this really has a major impact for the Smithsonian. It really
allows us to sort of move materials from some of the areas
where we are most concerned, like the Garber facility, so that,
therefore, we can actually make sure that some of the
collections most at risk are taken care of. And it just reminds
us that we really have to make sure that we continue to work
and point towards how we preserve our collections in the
future.
Mr. Joyce. I applaud your efforts, and it is a high
watermark on how government should be operating together and
efficiently. Thank you for your time, Madam Chair.
Ms. Pingree. Yeah, thank you for those really excellent
questions. Chair McCollum, do you have questions today?
[No response.]
Ms. Pingree. You might still be muted.
Ms. McCollum. I am pretty much sitting in this room by
myself, but I am trying to make sure I don't contribute to
background noise.
It is great to see you both. Minnesota misses you both and
in very different ways, but we are excited to be here today.
And once again, Chair Pingree, you have done a great job
working with Ranking Member Joyce in making sure that we
protect these iconic institutions here in Washington, DC, which
our constituents come to see. You both are, you know, at
transformational points in how we are reaching audiences, and
you are both reaching a high water of cooperation, and I know
that you also cooperate working with the Library of Congress,
so I couldn't be more proud of, you know, the team spirit here
in making sure that our collections are shared by all and
accessible to everyone.
So there are a lot of challenges museums and our
collections are facing right now with repatriation, and, Chair
Bunch, I know you are dealing with one right now with the Benin
Kingdom Court style pieces, returning things to Nigeria. Could
you talk about how this is fitting into the Smithsonian's role
in the future? I am right now going into a hearing in the
Natural Resources Committee, which we are working on
repatriation for Native-American treasures and try and protect
Native-American culture, which has been, you know, sold off and
abused. Could you maybe tell us a little bit what is going, Mr.
Bunch maybe first about what is going on with Nigeria, and then
anything you would like to share--I almost used your first
name--Chair Feldman.
Mr. Bunch. Well, thank you so much. It is always good to
see you. It is really important for the Smithsonian to provide
global leadership in the cultural community. And one of the
most important issues is this question of how do we make sure
that the materials we have in our collection are really taken
care of but also are effectively owned by the Institution. And
I created a kind of group to look at this whole notion of
repatriation to basically say, how do we make sure we have the
highest standards. And one of the things we have done is we
have built on the history of repatriating Native-American
materials through NAGPRA. But what I wanted to do is to have a
system that would allow us, rather than to work ad hoc, to
think strategically about how we return, how we work, and how
we share our collections.
And the best example is the one you mentioned, which is the
bronzes from Benin. These were bronzes that were stolen by the
British with a raid in 1897, and they were then sent around the
world, and the Smithsonian has 30-some of these bronzes. And
what we did is I decided to look at this as we heard from the
country of Nigeria about are these the bronzes from the raid,
so we did the research, and it turned out the 29 of the bronzes
are from the raid. And so what we are doing is moving towards
returning those bronzes in a way that satisfies the country of
Nigeria but allows the U.S. to still have access to it.
So, for example, what we are doing is, if the Board of
Regents approves at their next meeting, we are going to return
permanent ownership to the country of Nigeria, and we will
return a number of them, but others will stay on a permanent
loan so that we can continue to sort of tell the story about
these bronzes. So I think that is a really good solution, and
the response of the museum community around the world has been
very, very positive, the notion that we found a way to do
something ethical but also to make sure that the material is
still accessible to wide audiences. And I think this is
something that we will continue to look at as we move forward
in working with other nations and other cultures.
Ms. Feldman. I can actually add in there, too, that I was
surprised my first month at the Gallery to learn that we also
have a Benin bronze in our collection. It is the only work of
historic African art that we have. And so about 2\1/2\ years
ago, we reached out to Nigeria to start the process of
repatriation, and we are hoping that this summer we will
actually return the Benin bronze in our collection back to
Nigeria, because as Secretary Bunch said, we have confirmed
that it was part of that 1897 looting. So we are also
participating.
Ms. McCollum. Well, it is wonderful that you are doing the
right thing, the ethical thing, but it is also great to see the
United States take leadership on this. And thank you, Chair
Pingree, for I am going to get back into Natural Resources and
talk about boarding schools and what we need to do to get the
history right on that. And I know the Arts and the Smithsonian
Institution will have something to say about that as we go
through our healing process. Thank you very much.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you very much, Chair McCollum. That is a
really important topic, and I appreciate you bringing it up.
Chair Kaptur, do you have any questions that you would like to
ask today?
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Madam Chair, for your leadership and
that of my Ohio colleague, David Joyce. Both of you represent
magnificent institutions yourselves.
I have two questions, the first one to Director Bunch.
Would the Smithsonian be willing to explore a partnership with
the National Park Service to enhance historical interpretation
and commemorative activities at the National World War II
Memorial? And let me explain. With Russia's invasion of
Ukraine, I do believe that we have a teachable moment unlike
any other that I have seen in modern history for our own people
about the unvarnished face of tyranny and why liberty matters.
I am amazed that the younger people of this country, as that
horrible war proceeds, that they haven't seen this before.
I am the author of the bill that created the World War II
Memorial. We started in 1987. Over 85 million people have now
come to that memorial. I think it is at a place, especially at
this moment, which we have to think hard about helping to
inform the American people themselves. Only 1 percent of our
people participate in the military now with an enlistment
system as opposed to a conscripted system, and I have just been
astounded actually at some of the younger people of our country
and what they don't know even about our own history. The
National Park Service, when we first built the memorial, I was
very reluctant to agree to turn it over to the Park Service
because I said they are not experts at history on the why of
America fought, and that need still exists.
So I just wanted to checkmark that particular issue. I will
do a follow-up letter to you, but I think you have the ability
to add depth to what occurs with the multiple ceremonies across
that memorial during the year. 2024 will be the 20th
anniversary of the actual opening of the memorial, so, I mean,
millions upon millions of people have gone there. It is
something to think about.
And then secondly, I wanted to say to Director Feldman,
across our country we have Ukrainian museums and archives, such
as in Cleveland, Ohio, which is better than Harvard University.
And with this war going on, I think there might be an
opportunity to bring collections that exist, that there could
be an exhibition at the Smithsonian. I don't know if you are
allowed to do fundraisers, but keep that in the back of your
mind. We can probably get not-for-profit groups to help. But
some of the artwork, some of the political posters dating back
to the Soviet period, the artistry of the Ukrainian-Americans
themselves, and the support of nations, like Poland, and
Lithuania, and Estonia, which is astounding what Finland has
just done in this last couple days. I think there is something
there, and I think we need to think about it because the Slavic
peoples, of which I am one, we have no museum in Washington.
Nobody even sees us. My constituents don't know that the word
``slav'' comes from ``slaves.'' We were white slaves, and so
there is this big gap.
And because the Soviet Union was our ``ally'' during World
War II and American soldiers never got east of Berlin, there is
this huge gap, and I am discovering places. I was in Iowa. I
saw the Slovak museum there, the Czech museum, the Lithuanian
museum in Chicago, the Piosk Institute in Hamtramck, Michigan
of all places. And I am seeing these things, and I am saying,
you know, there is some lack of connectivity to Washington here
and our national understanding of why these people are here and
that they survived to live out their lives here.
So I just wanted to put that set of issues on the table for
you. We will follow up with a letter, but I think we could do
better. The artworks, oh my goodness. Some of what exists needs
to be seen, and we need to elevate this, especially now. So
thank you for listening, and if you have any response, that is
fine, but hopefully you will be open to exploring these
pathways forward.
Mr. Bunch. Well, I think you have raised such an important
set of issues. We feel very strongly that part of our job at
the Smithsonian is to make sure America understands its full
history, its complicated history, its interesting history.
Ms. Kaptur. Yes.
Mr. Bunch. And so part of that is the collaborations we
already do. We have hundreds of affiliate museums that we help
tell the stories they want, and some of those are museums to
deal with Lithuanian culture, Ukrainian culture. So I think we
would be very interested in working with you to think about how
do we sort of tell these stories. How do we make sure that the
struggle and the achievement of our military experience through
World War II is never forgotten and is celebrated both as
something to look back to when it is something to build on, and
I think that is something the Smithsonian really wants to do.
And tied to this is, I made a major commitment by creating
a kind of Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative. And we have
spent time around the world helping nations that have either
suffered catastrophes, like an earthquake in Haiti or the
destruction in Mosul, and we are now working with looking at
Ukraine. We are working with our partners, and we have created
a satellite opportunity to review damage on historic sites so
that when the war is over, we will know where to go, how to
help. We are also providing training for Ukrainian experts to
basically be able to conserve the materials when the war is
over, but what we are also doing is we are working with
partners now to actually provide fellowships for Ukrainian
scholars and museum professionals to come to Washington so that
as they are displaced, they have a chance to do their
scholarship and engage with other colleagues.
So this is really important for us, and it is part of my
commitment of saying that the Smithsonian has been given so
much, and now we have to make sure we give back.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you for that response. Just so you know,
the Ukrainian Caucus in the House, we founded it back in the
90s, and we have 90 members. So there's a Polish Caucus, there
is a Hungarian Caucus, but these are largely ignored cultural
groupings in our country, and, frankly, many of their
collections are deteriorating. They are viewed as unimportant,
and I just wanted to sensitize you to that, and I appreciate
your openness.
Ms. Feldman, did you want to say something?
Ms. Feldman. I saw just wanted to also add my gratitude for
bringing the topic up. It is something that we feel is very
important. And like Secretary Bunch, my colleagues and I are on
part of many different conversations and calls with global arts
leaders about what we might be able to do and particularly
think about artistic diplomacy and cultural diplomacy. Our
conservation team has done a lot of work and research that we
want to share with our colleagues. So we are ready to help and
also look forward to exploring the idea of doing some kind of a
loan partnership so that we can raise awareness.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. I
just will say one insight I have had, because American soldiers
never made it east of Berlin during World War II, and
unfortunately, we were allied with Stalin. There is this great
gap, and what shocked me with this war in Ukraine is to look at
these young people as I go out to the schools. They don't even
know there was a 20th century, right? So they have no context
in which to understand what is happening, and they are just
awestruck. They were stuck to the TV and to their devices and
everything. I thought, oh my goodness, they don't even know how
many Americans lie in graves across Europe. And so there is a
huge, huge gap here, and it is a generational gap. So I
appreciate you listening, and I thank the chair and the ranking
member. Thank you.
Ms. Pingree. Yeah, thank you so much for your questions and
to both of you for your answers to such important topics.
Well, we have brought up a lot of important issues, and I
am just going to finish the questioning with going back to some
of the more pedestrian parts of what you do. But could you both
talk a little bit about the work you have been doing and what
you are working on in the future on the whole digitizing of
your collections, making it more available to the public? I
know you have made great leaps, as both of you mentioned,
during the pandemic to make things more accessible digitally,
and also have big goals, I know at the Smithsonian, to have
everything digitized. But tell us a little bit more about the
educational opportunities there, you know, just how that is
going, how the funding is being used, and if you both could
just respond a little bit about that. I know you have plenty to
say about what your work is.
Mr. Bunch. Kaywin, I will let you go first.
Ms. Feldman. Thank you, Secretary Bunch. Yes, like
everybody else, with the pandemic, we launched into digital in
a much more substantial way than we had done before and, as I
mentioned, saw our subscribers and views increase
substantially. And that has also led us to realize that we need
to redesign our website because our website was really designed
20 years ago for a different type of digital use. And so we are
in the process of starting the redesign, focus much more on how
people use websites today, and that means, you know, better and
shorter videos. The views of hour-long lectures are decreasing.
It breaks my heart, but decreasing today, so we are looking at
quicker videos as well as some of the hour-long, doing blogs
and podcasts, just sort of different ways to engage people. We
know the work that we do here is profoundly interesting, and
every day I hear of some new research tidbit that is exciting.
And so what we are trying to do is get better at actually
telling our stories, so lots of initiatives there.
We recently launched something we are calling Artle, which
is modeled on Wordle, and people can go on our website every
day and they get four attempts at identifying an artist, and
that has been wildly successful and has increased participation
on the website. And then I will just finish by saying that, of
course, we are also thinking about how we work with teachers
and students, and we saw such an increase in the needs for our
programs during the pandemic. I learned just yesterday as I was
leaving the building from one of our educators that we are
still seeing a huge demand for digital learning with schools
and classrooms even though we have returned to in-person school
tours. And so now we are doing both in-person and doing a
better job even of reaching the rest of the country now as we
return to more in-person work. So I am really excited about
those educational initiatives, too.
Mr. Bunch. And we learned during the pandemic that, though
I closed the buildings, we made sure the Smithsonian wasn't
closed by pivoting digitally, and that, in essence, what we
have learned, much like Kaywin has learned, is that, basically,
this is now the new normal, that there were great opportunities
to watch teachers utilize both in-person and digital as part of
their training and part of their teaching, and I am really
pleased.
I think that we have reached over 10 million more people
through our educational programs in 2021, and so that has
really been very exciting because what has happened is that
teachers have reached out to us from the very beginning of the
pandemic to say help us. Help us educate. Help parents who
became teachers. How do they educate? So we did several things.
We actually worked with teachers around the country and curated
a series of long-distance learning modules that worked for
teachers, that really gave them the information they wanted and
that allowed us to make sure that it wasn't something we
created and we hope they use it. It was something that was
really directly shaped by the teachers.
And one of the things that has really moved me has been our
Learning Lab, and what we have done is we have taken tens of
thousands of our artifacts and made them available to teachers.
But what happens is that teachers go into the Learning Lab,
and, oh, they type in ``Abraham Lincoln'' and find everything
we have on Lincoln, but also as they use those, whether it is
for lesson plans or teacher activities, they then share that
back to the Smithsonian so thousands of other teachers benefit
from their work. So, in essence, our Learning Lab is kind of
like a rock in a stream, that it is a ripple effect that other
people are amplifying. And so it allows us to recognize that
our greatest strength is also figuring out how we are an
effective collaborator.
And so in a way, our educational programs, our use of
social media has really allowed us to learn more about what the
audiences need, shape our programs to do that. It has allowed
us to recognize, and I believe strongly that we have to be in
every classroom, and so we are really thinking what are the
ways we do that. And also, quite candidly, we are also thinking
about how do we make sure we have low technology or no
technology opportunities because there are people, as you know,
that the digital divide is tough, and not everybody learns the
same way. So we have created collaborations with things like
the USA Today to actually get out tens of thousands of study
guides and learning activities that go to schools.
So we are really committed to saying that education is at
the heart of what the Smithsonian is. And as a result of that,
I actually committed for the first time, created an
undersecretary for education that the Smithsonian has really
never had at that level. And so this is really part of our
commitment to think how do we recognize that the wonders of the
Smithsonian are too important just to be in Washington, and
that the wonders of the Smithsonian are part of the way people
now learn. I was trained, you learn. It is history. It is art.
It is math. But now today, it is all integrated. Where better
than the Smithsonian to bring our science, our history, our
culture together?
So in some ways, I want to make sure that the Smithsonian
is really at the leading edge of how we help what has been the
biggest challenge this country has faced, how we make sure we
provide equal educational opportunities for all of our
students.
Ms. Pingree. Great. Well, thank you so much, really both of
you. I can tell we are moving, you know, by leaps and bounds
here, and it is just so critically important. We never really
can address anything as a silver lining of the pandemic, but I
think the way our Institutions have reacted to the pandemic,
and you two are both great examples of understanding, you know,
something we should have been doing for a long time, and that
is make these resources available to everybody, and, you know,
integrate the ability for educators to do that. So that is just
wonderful.
We greatly appreciate that. I think we have completed our
questions for the day, and we thank you so much for the work
you are doing, for taking time out of your busy days to be with
our committee. We look forward to continuing to work with you
as the budget process moves forward, and just thank you again.
So with that, I will consider this hearing adjourned. Thank
you very much.
[Answers to submitted question follow:]
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W I T N E S S E S
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Page
Bunch, Lonnie G., III............................................ 261
Dropik, Jason.................................................... 9
Feldman, Kaywin.................................................. 262
Francis, Kirk.................................................... 41
Frazier, Harold C................................................ 61
Garcia, Hon. Sylvia R............................................ 93
Griffith, Hon. H. Morgan......................................... 83
Haaland, Hon. Deb................................................ 154
Jackson, Maria Rosario........................................... 247
Kitka, Julie..................................................... 48
Lowe, Shelly C................................................... 246
Moore, Randy..................................................... 105
Radewagen, Hon. Aumua Amata...................................... 96
Regan, Michael S................................................. 181
Sams, Charles F., III............................................ 217
Schrier, Hon. Kim................................................ 87
Sharp, Fawn...................................................... 3
Sheldon, Melvin, Jr.............................................. 67
Smith, William................................................... 14
Smokie, Serrell.................................................. 55
Tetnowski, Sonya................................................. 20
[all]
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