Spending Plan Doubles Conservation Efforts

WASHINGTON —  House-Senate negotiators said Friday they had agreed on a sweeping measure that would double federal spending for land conservation next year and end an environmental dispute between Congress and the White House.

The measure would provide $1.6 billion next year to protect environmentally sensitive land, fund local parks, preserve historic sites and pay for other projects. By 2006, the amount would increase to $2.4 billion, triple this year’s funding level.

“This is the largest increase in conservation programs funding ever approved by Congress,” Rep. Norman D. Dicks (D-Wash.) said in announcing the agreement.

California is expected to receive a large share of the money, although the amount and what projects will be funded has yet to be determined.

George Frampton, chairman of the president’s Council on Environmental Quality, called the agreement “fantastic” and a “historic breakthrough.”

Environment-friendly Democrats, supported by the White House, and fiscally conservative Republicans were far apart on the funding issue just days ago but were able to compromise because of the good economy, election-year politics and the rush by lawmakers to finish their business and hit the campaign trail.

“This is one of the things you get at the end of the session: The desire to get home leads to more of a desire to compromise,” said Marshall Wittmann, a congressional analyst at the conservative Hudson Institute think tank.

The agreement also signals that, as federal budget talks enter their final stages, Republican congressional leaders are prepared to yield significant ground to Clinton rather than bicker with him.

The money agreed on Friday will be included in an $18.8-billion Interior Department funding bill that is expected to go to the full House and Senate early next week.

Still, some environmental groups and some Republican lawmakers were unhappy.

They would prefer congressional approval of a landmark conservation bill passed earlier this year by the House that would provide $3 billion a year in funding. That legislation has been blocked in the Senate by a group of Western lawmakers.

A spokesman for Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), chairman of the House Resources Committee, said Young was “disappointed that bipartisan legislation which received 315 votes on the House floor and would have received over 75 votes in the Senate was essentially killed by a handful of members.”

Many lawmakers prefer that larger bill, the so-called Conservation and Reinvestment Act, because it would automatically fund conservation programs--from offshore oil- and gas-drilling lease revenues--rather than permitting Congress to set spending levels.

Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, accused negotiators of substituting “smoke and mirrors” for the larger bill.

But Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife, said that environmentalists should be excited about the Interior bill.

“It may be a 425-foot home run instead of a 450-foot home run, but it’s a home run,” he said. “This is the most important conservation funding legislation in our lifetime.”

Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), the top Democrat on the House Resources Committee, said he would have preferred the larger bill, which would have provided “more money, with greater certainty” for conservation programs.

He said he still would like to see Congress pass that legislation, but otherwise, the spending bill appears to be “our only hope for significant resource funding this year.”

“We would certainly rather have this than nothing,” added Daniel Weiss, an aide to Miller.

Efforts to get Senate action on the larger funding measure still are underway, said Howard Gantman, a spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Nonetheless, the agreement Friday would provide “significant new funding” for projects in California, he said.

Under the accord, funds now are allocated only in broad categories: $540 million next year for land acquisition; $160 million for urban recreation, historic preservation and youth conservation corps; $300 million for wildlife conservation; and $400 million for coastal programs.

Lawmakers, in conjunction with federal agencies, will decide later what specific projects will be funded, although a different part of the Interior spending bill is expected to provide funds for such projects as restoring Lake Tahoe and buying parkland in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Among those praising the spending plan was Sen. Conrad R. Burns (R-Mont.), who said it would provide $150 million a year for maintenance of federal land.

“Our national parks are crumbling. Our national forests are unhealthy,” he said. “This proposal will give us some much-needed resources.”

The compromise ends a major sticking point in negotiations over the federal budget for the fiscal year that begins Sunday. Congress has not passed all of the required funding bills for the new year, but Clinton signed a stopgap measure Friday that will keep the government running temporarily. Congress now has until next Friday to finish its funding work.