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March 25, 2009

Defense of Place testimony to House Appropriations Comm on LWCF funding and oversight

Defense of Place submitted the following written testimony to the U.S. House Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Interior and Environment as part of the March 26th 2009 Public Witness Day.

TESTIMONY BEFORE THE
HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE ON
INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT AND RELATED AGENCIES CONCERNING FISCAL YEAR 2010 APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE LAND AND WATER CONSERVATION FUND AND INCREASED OVERSIGHT OF THE STATE LWCF GRANT PROGRAM

MARCH 26, 2009

This testimony is submitted by Shannon Meyer, Executive Director of Defense of Place, a national non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the permanent protection of park lands, open spaces and wildlife refuges given into the public trust.

Chairman Dicks, Ranking Member Simpson and other members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony. We would like to thank the Subcommittee for increasing funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) in the Fiscal Year 2009 Omnibus Appropriations bill. Defense of Place and our constituents applaud the Obama Administration’s commitment to fully fund the LWCF in the next five years. As proposed in the President’s Fiscal Year 2010 budget we strongly encourage increasing the funding of federal LWCF to $325 million, stateside LWCF to $125 million, as well as allocating $125 million for the Forest Legacy program.

Increasing LWCF funding for public outdoor recreation lands is great news for communities across the nation that benefit from the recreational lands purchased or enhanced with this fund. However, lands set aside for recreational use and funded with LWCF are not necessarily safe from the threat of development as we have seen in a few cases across the country. Several cases we have unfortunately seen states or municipalities circumventing LWCF conversion requirements in order to sell LWCF funded public recreation lands for development or other private use. Defense of Place whole heartedly supports the increase of funding to the LWCF and exhorts the Obama administration to strengthen oversight of the program to make sure existing LWCF funded lands remain open to the public for recreational use.

I would like to take this opportunity to briefly outline three different cases where parklands are being sold and / or converted to private uses contrary to what we see as the best interests of the recreating public. Each park discussed below, received funding through the state grant program of the LWCF and is now targeted by developers for conversion to private use. In each of these cases, we have asked the Department of Interior through the National Park Service to intervene in order to ensure that the public’s rights to their recreational lands are preserved. I highlight these examples here as evidence of the need for more rigorous oversight of a very worthwhile program that should in no way be curtailed because of the misdeeds of a few.

Jean Klock Park Michigan: This 74-acre park on the shores of Lake Michigan was deeded to the City of Benton Harbor in 1917 to be forever “open for the use and benefit of the public”. The park received a $50,000 grant from the LWCF in 1976 for infrastructure improvements. Now the City has leased 22 acres in the heart of this popular park for the development into an upscale golf course – ending the free public recreational use of an important portion of the park. The park provides this mostly African-American low income community with its main access to the lake, yet the proposed golf course would primarily benefit the adjacent wealthy neighborhood. The unconnected, vacant industrial lands offered as replacement land are far from equal in value and recreational utility to the pristine lakefront dunes being destroyed. Documents have come to light since the NPS’ approval of the conversion that reveal that six of the seven unconnected replacement parcels are severely contaminated with volatile organic chemicals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heavy metals which are unremediated and uncontained at this time. This information, contained in a Nov. 2007 Due Care Plan, was not disclosed in the Environmental Assessment process or the NPS conversion approval process. Despite ongoing litigation in US District Court between park supporters and the NPS, bulldozers are currently in the park destroying trees and vegetation.

Battery Park, Ohio: Battery Park is located on the shores of Lake Erie in Sandusky Ohio, a working class town hit hard by the current economic downturn. Its residents enjoy the lake from this park, which received a $350,000 grant in 1980 for the construction of recreational facilities. The City Commissioners are supportive of a development proposal that would turn this 30 acre park and entertainment facility into the “Marina District”, a private development with 300 condominiums, a hotel, and commercial space. Development of the Marina District would deny the public of its recreational use and lake access at this Park. The Park Service has not yet received a conversion request, but it will soon. Due to the scarcity of available lakefront land in this area, it is likely that proposed replacement lands will be unsuitable as they were in Michigan.

Lake Texoma, Oklahoma: Over 1,500 acres of public recreational lands around Lake Texoma owned by the Oklahoma Tourism Department and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are under immediate threat of conversion into an upscale resort, conference center, and 3,000 unit housing development. Despite the fact that there has been no EIS on the impacts of the current development proposal, two parcels of state park land have already been sold to the private developer, Pointe Vista. These recreational lands have received 7 LWCF grants between 1967 and 1988 years totaling over $700,000. Although in 1999 the Oklahoma Department of Tourism and Recreation acknowledged that all of the State Park was within the LWCF Section 6(f)(3) boundary, the NPS has received no complete conversion request for this massive sell off of public recreational lands and no replacement lands have been proposed. It is incumbent upon the NPS to actively engage with the agency and demand that the conversion procedures outlined in 36 CFR 59.3 be followed.

We appreciate the opportunity to engage with the Subcommittee on this important issue. In closing, Defense of Place urges Congress to commit to increased funding for and oversight of the LWCF so that the American public can fully reap the benefits of this important and valuable conservation funding vehicle.

Posted by dop_editor at March 25, 2009 10:16 PM

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