California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R,
says he won’t ask the federal government to uphold the Clinton-era
roadless rule in his state (HCN, 8/16/04:Feds pass
roadless headache to states). In July, the Bush administration gave
governors until January 2006 to request that the governnment keep
the rule in place in their respective states. Meanwhile, Wyoming
Gov. Dave Freudenthal, D, wrote Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth
that the administration is trying “to shift the Forest Service’s
responsibility for land use planning to the state — without
shifting any authority of funding.” Still, Freudenthal says he’s no
fan of the original roadless rule, either.
Meanwhile,
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has blasted the
Forest Service’s revised Sierra Nevada Plan, which nearly
triples the amount of logging allowed under the plan’s original
incarnation (HCN, 3/1/04: Old-growth trees to fall in the Sierra).
Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth approved the amended plan on
Nov. 18. The following day, Lockyer said his office will sue the
agency if it allows the plan to go into effect.
Arizona’s Indian tribes will be flush with
water, thanks to congressional approval of the Arizona
Water Settlements Act on Nov. 17. The act sets aside 650,000
acre-feet of Arizona’s share of the Colorado River for tribes, and
specifically assigns 102,000 acre-feet — enough for more than
400,000 people — to the Gila River Indian Community (HCN,
3/15/04: The New Water Czars). The law includes some $445 million
in federal funds, primarily for Indian water projects; it also
knocks $650 million off the amount Arizona owes to the federal
government for the Central Arizona Project, which brings water from
the Colorado River to Phoenix and Tucson.
Also on Nov.
17, Congress approved the Lincoln County Conservation,
Recreation, and Development Act, which designates 14 new
wilderness areas in eastern Nevada, turns some 90,000 acres of
federal land over to the county, and establishes a corridor across
public land for a controversial pipeline that would channel rural
groundwater to Las Vegas (HCN, 9/13/04: A water-and-wilderness bill
kicks up dust in Nevada). A last-minute addition to the bill
requires the U.S. Geological Survey to conduct a $6 million study
on eastern Nevada aquifers by May 2008.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Follow-up.
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