Public land sale plan covering millions of acres derails in US Senate
Emily Fitzgerald
(Washington State Standard) A Republican proposal in the U.S. Senate that could have put millions of acres of public land in Washington up for sale has hit a roadblock, but the lead lawmaker behind the idea is planning to press ahead with a scaled-back version.
This piece of a sprawling GOP tax cut and spending bill would have required the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service to sell between 2.2 million and 3.3 million acres of public lands across 11 Western states within the next five years. There were 5.4 million acres in Washington that could have been included in those potential sales.
But on Monday, the nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian said this proposal did not comply with rules that would allow for it to be fast-tracked as part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
U.S. Senator Mike Lee, R-Utah, who is spearheading the land sale provisions, outlined changes he planned to make in a social media post on Monday.
These included removing all Forest Service land from the proposal and limiting the amount of Bureau of Land Management acreage to parcels within five miles of population centers. Lee also said he wanted to establish “FREEDOM ZONES to ensure these lands benefit AMERICAN FAMILIES” and “PROTECT our farmers, ranchers, and recreational users.”
Opponents still see a battle ahead.
“I don’t trust him and I don’t trust his process,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. “We will be here to the last minute, making sure that they do not succeed in putting this into a bill, and if they do, we will be there with an amendment fighting it tooth and nail on the floor.”
If Forest Service property is removed from the bill, it would dramatically downsize how much land could be affected in Washington. Of the 5.4 million acres covered in the state by the original proposal, only 344,252 acres are Bureau of Land Management parcels, according to data released by the Wilderness Society.
Lee’s proposed limit to land within five miles of a population center would likely further reduce that amount of acreage.
But even if Lee revises his proposal in the way he described, Cantwell said high-traffic recreation sites in the Columbia River Gorge and the Methow River Valley, and sagebrush hunting grounds in the Columbia Basin could be included.
Washington U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, who is also a Democrat, has spoken out against the proposed public land sell-off as well.
And Gov. Bob Ferguson said Monday that he and his team were “exploring our options if this shortsighted proposal moves forward.”
Before the GOP-backed tax policy and spending bill cleared the House, Republicans in that chamber scrapped a proposal to make 500,000 acres of public land in Nevada and Utah available for sale. They did so following bipartisan opposition from public land activists, the outdoor recreation community, and conservation groups.
“It’s no secret that some Republicans have wanted to do this,” said Conservation Northwest Senior Policy Director Paula Swedeen.
Swedeen raised concerns about how land sales could carve up wildlife habitat or lead to development in areas at risk of wildfire.
Groups that opposed the provision in the House anticipated that Republicans would revive a public land sale proposal in the Senate, said Jonathan Owen, director of the Olympic Peninsula conservation group Wild Olympics Campaign.
The now-blocked Senate version of the plan would have required the interior and agriculture secretaries to select between 0.5% and 0.75% of eligible lands to dispose of via competitive sale, auction, “or other methods designed to secure not less than fair market value.”
“Something like this has never been done before at this scale and would be a slippery slope,” Owen said.
Along with Washington, the Senate plan called for making lands eligible for sale in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming. About 250 million acres of land, including the 5.4 million acres in Washington state, would have been eligible for sale.
In Washington, this included parcels in the Olympic National Forest, the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, the Snoqualmie National Forest, the Okanogan National Forest, the Mt. Baker National Forest, the Alpine Lakes Wilderness and the Wild Sky Wilderness.
Lee has said previously that his goal was to open “underused” federal land for housing. But critics said there was no requirement that the land be used for home construction.
In Lee’s original proposal, 5% of the revenue from each land sale would be given to local governments for infrastructure to support housing development, 5% would be earmarked for land maintenance, and the rest of the money would go to the general federal coffers.
In recent congressional testimony, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum described the targeted areas as “barren land next to highways with existing billboards that have no recreational value.”
Others disagree. Lauren McClean, mayor of Boise, Idaho, said Tuesday during a press conference hosted by Cantwell that the land that was potentially up for sale includes access to trailheads and other recreational sites.
“In this proposal, the sale of public lands would potentially block access to the over 200 miles of trails that we have that lead from our city into open spaces,” McLean said.