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March 27, 2009
DOP Joins LWCF Coalition in testimony to Congress
On March 26, Defense of Place joined over 50 other environmental groups in testimony to the House Appropriation's committee's subcommittee on the Interior that called for full funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. DOP will be working with this Land and Water Conservation Fund Coalition over the next months to encourage Congress and the Obama administration to take this opportunity to increase funding for expanding our conserved lands network while we can.
The LWCF Coalition urged the Subcommittee to set the course towards a goal of full funding for the LWCF by including substantial funding increases in the Fiscal Year 2010 Interior appropriations bill for these two important programs. We recommended increasing the funding of federal LWCF to $325 million, stateside LWCF to $125 million, and the allocation of $125 million for the Forest Legacy program.
Posted by dop_editor at 06:08 PM | Comments (0)
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 10:16 PM | Comments (0)
March 17, 2009
Friends of Lake Texoma Letter to the Editor 3.17.09
Dear Editor,
The Marshall County TIF review committee met in Kingston last week and heard Pointe Vista officials claim their development could bring in over $531 million in taxes over the next 25 years. But, under the terms of tax increment financing, this money doesn’t benefit the whole county – it stays within the development area to pay for their infrastructure costs. And, if they go bankrupt, it won’t bring in a dime.
The Friends of Lake Texoma State Park (FLTSP) oppose corporate welfare for Pointe Vista’s park conversion, because they haven’t received approvals by the National Park Service (NPS), or the Corps of Engineers Environmental Branch for taking away our public recreation land. (As this paper pointed out in February, NPS’ Bob Anderson said, “We do not have an approved conversion. No conversion request has been submitted to us.”)
We believe Pointe Vista’s efforts to gain public funding prove they don't have the money to build, or, they aren’t willing to risk their own money, in the event it fails. If they aren’t willing to risk it, why should Marshall County?
When asked by one reporter at TIF meeting if Pointe Vista's presentation materials would be made available to her, at first they refused. When she persisted, they agreed to provide them. However, there is a serious problem with what they provided. It's not all there. They omitted something. They left out an important map which incorrectly represented Pointe Vista project boundaries. That map included
Area A – The Chickasaw Pointe Golf Course, etc. (north of US 70), and Area B - Lake Texoma State Park (south of US 70). However, they also deceptively included Area C, the 1,000 acres of federal land which they do not own, and may never own.
We have been accused of standing in the way of progress, and delaying this project. The truth is, the state Tourism Department and Pointe Vista officials have mislead the public by failing to discuss the estimated 18 – 24 months required for the Corp of Engineers to complete their Environmental Impact Study (EIS) on Area C. It will also include a critical economic impact component which the TIF committee should review before doing anything else.
The Land Office Commissioners have the oversight authority and legal obligation to protect our state lands. They were in error when they sold the Park without assuring the state's compliance with the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act. They can void the land sale contracts with Pointe Vista, and take back the entire park, based on the developer’s inexperience and deceptiveness.
Boyd Steele, President
Friends of Lake Texoma State Park
Posted by dop_editor at 05:53 PM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2009
NY Times Editorial Supports Increased Funding for LWCF
March 14, 2009
Editorial, New York Times
Promised Land
People who care about conserving open space are allowing themselves a bit of hope that the federal government finally will deliver on promises it made to the American people more than four decades ago.
In 1965, Congress created the Land and Water Conservation Fund to provide a steady source of money for the acquisition of threatened lands, the protection of significant landmarks and the expansion of outdoor recreational opportunities. The money would come from offshore oil and gas leases, giving the program an interesting symmetry: dollars raised from depleting one natural resource would be used to protect others.
The program has rescued millions of acres from development. But it has never been allowed to live up to its potential. Since 1980, spending has been authorized at $900 million annually — split evenly between federal and state projects — but actual appropriations have been much smaller. The last decade has been especially rough, despite former President George W. Bush’s campaign promise to “fully fund” the program. For the present fiscal year, Congress appropriated only $155 million, and none of it for the states.
Offshore royalties spin off billions every year. But Congress routinely diverts the money to the general treasury for deficit reduction, and the White House, no matter who occupies it, rarely pushes back.
President Obama’s budget offers a better deal: $420 million for the next fiscal year and the full funding of $900 million by 2014. These numbers are heartening. Federal dollars are needed to complete long-pending acquisitions across the country, from Hawaii to Yellowstone National Park to Virginia.
States are particularly hard pressed; Gov. David Paterson of New York plans to raid the state’s only land conservation program in order to reduce the deficit.
Promises, however, are only as good as the president wants them to be. We hope that President Obama remembers his.
Posted by dop_editor at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)
March 09, 2009
Contaminated land to replace Jean Klock Park?! Protect Jean Klock Park Press Release
For Immediate Release: March 9, 2009
Contact:
Terry J. Lodge, 419-255-7552
Protect Jean Klock Park: info@protectjkp.com
Jean Klock Park Advocates Expose Contamination Documents
(Benton Harbor, Michigan) – Plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit to protect Jean Klock Park against unlawful golf course development provided new evidence to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers today--documents never shown to the public or to federal agencies responsible for permitting -- that shows that the contamination issues on the proposed replacement parklands that are being covered up by the Harbor Shores developers are so severe that the permit needs to be revoked and the project must stop.
In a letter by the plaintiffs’ legal counsel, Terry J. Lodge, of Toledo, Ohio, the group provided several documents that the Army Corps and National Park Service did not see during the permitting process. The plaintiffs called for an immediate suspension of the Clean Water Act permit granted by the Corps for the destruction of natural features in, and conversion of, Jean Klock Park.
The documents were brought to light only through Freedom of Information Act requests by the plaintiffs, months after the City of Benton Harbor held a public comment period in early 2008. New significant findings include a letter by Earth Tech from April 2007 and a report on mitigation parcels by Gannett Fleming which detail the presence of volatile organic chemicals (VOCs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), heavy metals, and a handwritten analysis by a Michigan DEQ staffer which discussing the high toxic levels on the parcels.
The federal agencies and the public were also not told that the developers plan to remove 900 dump-truck loads of sand and earth from the park’s dunes, an admission only made by Harbor Shores in testimony in federal court.
“Contrary to what was disclosed to the public for scrutiny during the pre-application phase in early 2008 by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, the Department of Environmental Quality, and the City of Benton Harbor, we now know that all but one of the seven conversion mitigation parcels swapped for JKP land are contaminated,” Lodge stated. “These are the lands which, the public was told, are supposedly equal or even superior in quality to the pristine dunes overlooking the Lake Michigan shoreline within the park… the concealment is breathtaking.”
After the National Park Service and State of Michigan approved the conversion of Jean Klock Park as part of the privately-owned golf course backed by Whirlpool Corporation and championed by Governor Jennifer Granholm, seven Benton Harbor residents filed suit in federal court last summer against the Department of Interior (Weiss et. al. v. Kempthorne ) to stop the destruction of the park. The case has yet to be heard on the merits.
To date, no Environmental Impact Statement has been done for the Harbor Shores project to assess the impacts on the entire region, Lake Michigan, the Paw Paw River and to the dunes and wetlands inside Jean Klock Park.
The National Park Service outright rejected, and later reversed itself without explanation when it rubber-stamped the proposed replacement lands to be used as parkland. In its 2007 rejection of the proposal, the Park Service cited numerous flaws in the parcels---their usefulness as parkland because they are dispersed parcels not permanently connected to each other—and also stated that if the parcels were contaminated or controlled by Harbor Shores, they would be rejected.
“The National Park Service relied on the State of Michigan for its assurance that the contamination issues were resolved without seeing some of these key documents and without insisting on a Environmental Impact Statement, which is why both the federal government and Michigan DNR are named in the lawsuit,” said LuAnne Kozma, Michigan Director of Defense of Place, a national park advocacy organization that is supporting the fight to protect Jean Klock Park.
The letter to the U.S. Army Corps and the previously undisclosed documents demonstrating contamination are posted on www.protectjkp.com.
For updates on Jean Klock Park:
www.protectjkp.com
www.savejeanklockpark.org
www.defenseofplace.org
Posted by dop_editor at 08:05 PM | Comments (0)
March 05, 2009
Obama '09 Budget Increases $$ for Land & Water Conservation Fund
The budget proposed by President Barack Obama on Thursday would sharply increase investment in public lands through the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), the federal government's primary program to protect America's irreplaceable natural, historic, recreational, and other treasured landscapes.
Since 1964, LWCF has protect millions of acres by adding them to America's national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, national trails, state and local parks, and other protected lands. In recent years, however, precipitous declines in annual funding through the program have led to an enormous backlog of priority conservation properties, and to incompatible and often devastating development within these otherwise protected public assets.
President Obama proposes a budget of $420 million for the LWCF in the fiscal year which begins Oct. 1, 2009. For the current year, Congress is now considering legislation which would provide $171 million for the LWCF program and another $57 million for the federal Forest Legacy Program, which helps protect working forests around the nation. The President's budget also proposes to provide full funding of $900 million a year by 2014 for LWCF.
LWCF has saved threatened properties and consolidated parks and open spaces from the Florida Everglades and Maine's Rachel Carson Refuge to the national forests of Wisconsin and Minnesota, to the spectacular scenery and habitat of the Yellowstone basin, to the fragile ecosystems of the Washington's Cascade Mountains and California' Sierra Nevada. It is primarily funded by the revenues the federal government receives from oil and natural leases off America's coasts.
Now it is even more important than ever to urge the National Park Service, the agency that oversees LWCA funding, to prevent the loss and conversion of parks that have been funded by this program in the past.
Posted by dop_editor at 04:10 PM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2009
Protect Jean Klock Park Looks Forward
(from Protect Jean Klock Park March 2009 Newsletter)
If the conversion of Jean Klock Park were about the law, there would
be no contest. But it is all about politics, power and greed. The
State of Michigan has lost its soul in a frenzied, muddled attempt to
replace industrial jobs with something else. And to appease globalizers who threaten to remove even more jobs if they do not get their way.
If the government and the developer lose in court, they will have to
put the park back the way it was before they started destroying it.
Significant public money has funded much of the larger development,
including $1.7 million invested in Jean Klock Park through the years.
The local press obligingly prints the developer’s press releases, one
of which claims that this particular golf course development will not
be affected much by the global financial meltdown.
Serious permit violations have not persuaded regulatory agencies to
step in, and a required barrier marking the habitat of the endangered
rose pink (sabatia angularis) is invisible, or perhaps, the developer
wasn’t in the mood to put it up. Our opinion is that readily apparent
departures from permitted activity, such as improper, incomplete wetland-fill-on-the-cheap and failure to obtain necessary permits altogether are signs of either money problems or hubris.
There is also the matter of environmental contamination throughout the
development, including on all but one of the park mitigation parcels
which the NPS improperly allowed the developer to use as trade for
wooded dunes and awesome vistas. The most prominent exchange parcel
was owned by Whirlpool Corporation, site of a shuttered manufacturing
unit facing a the back of a small motel, mountains of gravel and the
dredge disposal area. The developer says of this parcel: “A popular
pastime for residents and visitors to Michigan’s coastal areas is to
watch boats go by; both recreational and commercial vessels. This
particular parcel will provide optimum viewing for this purpose.”
We all have traveled a great distance in this Odyssey. We are very
angry and we have learned so much. There have been many
synchronistic occurrences – the right person coming along at the right
time, little (and large) insights gleaned from the beauty – the nonstop beauty – of the irreplaceable landscape – and these
continue to pop out of no where seemingly, so we still believe that we
must continue our work.
Posted by dop_editor at 10:05 PM | Comments (0)