n n eight in spite of protests from governor ritter and colorado legislators the bureau of land management went ahead with the federal auction of leases on the rhone plateau. the entire top of the plateau fifty five thousand acres was leased nearly fifteen thousand citizens sent protest letters but the bureau found the protests to be without merit and issued the leases anyway our goal is ciro incidence and zero impact on the environment and. we're not there obviously. we do have injuries we do have. but we try and prevent them and we do the best we can. as the law to cross the road anywhere i mean you know it's not oh it's not any more dangerous as natural gas we're not talking a while or the natural gas. today's hearing will examine loopholes in federal health and environmental protections that are exploited by the oil and gas industry as children we all learned of basic fairness and we know that it's not just not fair when someone gets to play by different rules than the rest of us but as we learned today there is one set of environmental rules for the oil and gas industry and a differen

land and their citizens. in june of two thousand and seven newly elected colorado governor bill ritter was faced with a critical confrontation with the bureau of land management in an agency of the interior parts they had authorized more than fifteen hundred new gas wells on the rhone plateau one of the last pristine areas in garfield county we just started with a very modest request one hundred twenty days for a new administration and we were turned down and we don't think twenty four days is enough for us to be able to really have a thoughtful improved response as there is too much that we don't know for us to be able to really respond in a very short amount of time so that's why i'm going to push very hard with secretary kempthorne and i asked him to grant the governor the request the governor has made of him. in the summer of two thousand and eight in spite of protests from governor ritter and colorado legislators the bureau of land management went ahead with the federal auction of leases on the rhone plateau. the entire top of the plateau fifty five thousand acres was leased nearly fifteen thousand citizens sent protest letters but the bureau found the p

so a recent example of this comes from the bureau of land management within the department of interior. while i could talk for hours about whether the management of federal lands is an appropriate thing for government to do, that's not what i want to bring attention to. that's another discussion for another time. what i'm concerned about is how carefully the bureau of land management works to keep its actions aligned with the authorization and power given by congress. we write laws for a reason. we say the bureaucracy can do certain things and not do certain things. and when we do that, we're limiting the bureaucracy and the bureaucracy's authority. we are not saying they can interpret the law any way they choose but generally that doesn't stop them from trying. one thing the bureau of land management is authorized to do by statute is enter into contracts and cooperative agreements to manage, protect, develop, and sell public lands. in managing public lands, title 43 authorizes the b.l.m. to among other things preserve the land's historic value. a few days ago as i was searching throug

no environmental impact studies, no complexities, no bureau of land management. get it done, as if it's war time. if we need manpower, i would rather have a wave of homeland security people in texas, arizona than to sit in washington, doing paperwork. >> every good idea that comes through washington can run into an obstacle in the event that you have a divided house and senate. i know the republicans are hoping for two republican houses and the democrats are hoping for two democratic houses. if you have a divided house and senate, do you have any ideas to make these ideas more likely to pass, to nav nateigate the horrible waters of washington? >> sure. i will give you a specific example. but before that, let me say that my past shows we can work together, in the reagan years, i worked with bob michael and others. tip o'neill was speaker. we had a in theic house. in order to pass the reagan program, which was very bold, we had to get a third of the democrats to vote with us and we did -- >> how? >> to get the bill signed by president clinton, we had to work in a bi

william henry elliot and my grandmother, ida elliot, homesteaded in 1895, and through the bureau of lands management, i was able to find the documentation of this homesteading. indeed, the legend had truth to it, although in looking at the documentation, i will tell you that i was thrilled to discover this documentation. i never knew my grandparents, and to find this documentation of their lives in their existence, to me, in a government record was so compelling, and i felt as though i was probably looking at a document that had been tucked away since 1895 that no one had ever paid attention to, and for me, it was like a discovery, a discovery of the part of my past. i will say this, that i also discovered about that document nation, the deed, itself, had a number of entries, and quite a bit of information -- i'll share some of it with you -- but nowhere in that documentation was my grandmother's name mentioned. she was not on the deed. ida crooks elliot's name did not appear on the deed. the only way that she was referred to was in an applicant question. now, it was is the applicant married? the an

acres that william henry eliot and my grandmother, homesteaded in 1895, and through the bureau of land management i was able to find the documentation of this homesteading. so indeed, the legend had truth to it. although, in looking at this documentation i will tell you, i was thrilled to discover this documentation. i never knew my grandparents, and to find this documentation of their lives and their existence, to me, in a government record, was so compelling and i felt as though i was probably looking at a document that had been tucked away since 1895, and no one had ever paid attention to. and for me, it was like discovering, a discovery of a part of my past. i will say this, but i also discovered about that documentation, the deed itself had a number of entries, quite a bit of information. i will share some of it with you, but nowhere in that documentation was my grandmother name mentioned. she was not on the deed. .. >> where he, his unnamed wife -- my grandmother -- lived with their seven children. now, it does seem a little cramped. [laughter] but, indeed, it was, i am sure, better than th

payments made to counties that have land within them this includes a national forest system, the national park system managed by the bureau of land management, effective by the corps of engineers and the water project. we use a formula allocating pilt a formula that is provided in the pilt act the annual payment to each county is computed based on the number of acres of federal entitlement land within that jurisdiction and population serves as a cap on the formula. the act also requires we consider the prior revenue payment amount from a select number of revenue sharing programs in the calculation of the payment. since the inception of the program the act was passed in 1976 the first payment was made in 1977 since 1977, and through 2011 with the last payment we made in june 2011 the department of the interior has made payments totaling $5.5 billion from 1977 through 2008 the funding for the pilt program was included in the annual discretionary appropriations. so we stopped funding for the annual budget request and it was considered as a part of the appropriations process. in 2008 the emergency economic stabilization act auth

management of c.c. cragin consistent with all the other projects and facilities in forest service land where the bureau of reclamation oversees the operation and management of the facilities and i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from utah. mr. bishop: may i inquire, first of all, how much time is remaining? the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from utah has 18 1/2 minutes. the gentleman from mariana islands has 19. mr. bishop: may i also inquire how many speakers the gentleman from the northern mariana islands has? mr. sablan: i have no further speakers. mr. bishop: allow me to once again yield myself as much time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. bishop: thank you. i appreciate that very, very much. to give you some background of this particular legislation, it's a large mining company that built what is now the cragin project in the 1960's to supply water to its mine complex. they transferred ownership of the project to the salt river project, that's known as the s.r.p., a