Wayne Gilchrest

Mr. GILCHREST

Mr. GILCHREST. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding to me, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, my colleague, the gentleman from Baltimore, Maryland (Mr. Cummings), made some good comments about the importance of research and study. But I feel there is a point at which the study finally does come to an end, because it cannot be proven. For example, the cost-benefit analysis which justifies the Corps continuing the project must show that there is a benefit to the taxpayers of the United States. It did not show that in 1996. The cost- benefit analysis failed the Corps' own scrutiny in 1996. It failed the Corps' scrutiny in 1997. It failed again in 1998. It failed again in the spring of 1999. The Corps has spent hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars studying this issue. When do we say, there is no benefit to the taxpayers, no benefit to the Port of Baltimore, and the study comes to an end? I would say that that point of time is now.

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, who controls the time in support of the amendment?

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, who has the right to close?

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would decrease the Corps of Engineers' operations and maintenance account by $6,801,000 for the Tolchester S-turn straightening project in my district. Mr. Chairman, similar to the amendment that we debated just a few minutes ago, this particular project, this straightening of a natural channel, would cost the taxpayers $13 million. Now, as the Corps has run through its process to analyze the cost benefit to the taxpayers in this country, this particular project in the First Congressional District of Maryland dealing with the Tolchester Channel does not meet the Corps' own justification to do. The Corps of Engineers has not met the threshold to benefit the taxpayers in the United States. So my colleagues have come to Congress to get this project, I guess I would say, pushed through. This project, the Tolchester S-turn, does not meet the cost-benefit analysis to benefit the taxpayers anywhere, including Baltimore City. The project, therefore, is not necessary. Let us take a look at the environmental impact of this particular project. The channel right now is a natural channel. It is the old Susquehanna Riverbed that flows from Pennsylvania out to the Chesapeake Bay. This is a natural-flowing channel. There is a natural scouring in this particular area, so very little dredging is necessary. If we straighten the Tolchester Channel, the likelihood of an increased cost for dredging is there. Now, when the channel is straightened, it will change the direction of the flow of water. And when the direction of the flow of water is changed, great damage will be done to one of the largest oyster bars in the Chesapeake Bay. This oyster bar just off Tolchester is 300 acres, and it is a very active site. When one changes the flow of the water, one will slow the water down over the oyster bed. That means it will silt up. Now, if one straightens the channel and ships can flow faster through this channel, which they will do, one will increase the wake. When one increases the wake, one will do several things. One, it will cause more erosion on the shore. It has already caused significant damage to people's property, whether it is a garage, cars, docks, you name it. But the third thing, which is really a safety hazard, the wake will increase the danger of children playing on the beach that have already found it difficult to play on the beach. When one of the ships goes by, these young people could be washed into the Chesapeake Bay and potentially drown. Now, the question will arise that we are dredging this new channel for safety purposes that has been asked for by the Coast Guard, the Corps of Engineers. When that issue comes up, let me say this, I had a direct face-to-face conversation with the Corps of Engineers, the District Engineer in the City of Baltimore. I asked them that question: Does this rise to the threshold of a safety hazard for shipping through the Tolchester Channel. The answer, Mr. Chairman, was no, it does not rise to a safety hazard through the Tolchester Channel. The only reason we are dredging the Tolchester Channel is because we are dredging the whole northern route, the Brewerton Extension, the Tolchester Channel, the C&D Canal. We have already talked about the C&D Canal, and we know that is not necessary to dredge. So if it is not necessary to dredge the northern route, if it is not a safety hazard, which the Corps of Engineers in Baltimore said it is not a safety hazard, and the Coast Guard if you ask them direct, the Coast Guard will say that the Tolchester S-turn, since over 6,000 ships have passed through there in the last 6 years with no incident, that the Tolchester S-turn does not rise to the level of a safety hazard with their office. Now, can one make it safer? Sure. Can one dredge the Tolchester S- turn and make it a straight channel? Sure. Would it be safer if it were straight? Sure. But what damage will be done if one does that if it is not a safety hazard? The damage that will be done as a result of that S-turn is great. I ask my colleagues to support my amendment.

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. Mr. Chairman, I am not only concerned about the Chesapeake Bay; I want to get involved in doing something about the Chesapeake Bay. Just speaking words does not have an impact on the ground. And as far as that letter was concerned, once we evaluated the process after we supported it in the beginning, we saw some oversight problems. I would rather be right than be consistent. And Abraham Lincoln said, ``The foolish and the dead alone never change their mind.'' Now, we all have disagreements on this, and I respect those disagreements. But not only is my issue dredging, and not only is my issue where to dispose of it and the environmental vulnerability of the Chesapeake Bay and its estuaries, but I am also concerned about jobs; and I would do nothing that would eliminate jobs in the City of Baltimore.

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, in our closing comments, when we look at each issue of dredging or straightening or deepening one at a time, it is not an environmental problem. When we take the cumulative impact of all of these projects throughout the Chesapeake Bay, it is an environmental problem. And, no, there are many people throughout the State of Maryland that oppose this particular issue. Every environmental group in the State of Maryland opposes this widening. My constituents, especially those that have property on the shoreline, oppose this widening and straightening of the Tolchester S-turn. And, believe it or not, my colleagues, the Corps of Engineers opposes this straightening with their cost benefit analysis because it does not rise to the threshold necessary to benefit taxpayers. The Environmental Impact Statement is not complete and there are many environmental hazards that we are considering. The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) mentioned the problem with the oil tanker, the Exxon Valdez. 6,700 ships have passed through here in the last 6 years without one incident. And there are no rocks here. One of the reasons the Corps of Engineers said it was not necessary and one of the reasons the Coast Guard says it is a challenge but it is not a safety hazard is because there is nothing but sand here, nothing but sand and mud. If anything runs aground, and they have not, they will slowly move into the sand bar and it is probably because the tide is down and when the tide comes up, they will move along. This is not about safety, my colleagues. This is about convenience. This is about convenience. The Corps of Engineers, in their statement, said this is about time saving. And so, we have not paid enough attention as Members of Congress, as our oversight responsibility, to some of these issues. So I urge my colleagues to vote for fiscal responsibility, to vote for an environmentally sound amendment, and to vote for the average constituent that needs a voice in the U.S. House of Representatives. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would reduce the Corps of Engineer's General Investigation Account by $100,000, the amount provided to continue the study to deepen the C&D Canal in my district. Mr. Chairman, I would like to inform the Members that this is a project that has been ongoing for most of the 1990s. And in 1996, in a meeting I had at the Corps of Engineers headquarters in Washington, with the Philadelphia Corps in my district in Chestertown, Maryland, we went over all of the numbers, the math and came to a very, very clear determination that the benefit-to-cost ration on this particular project in Maryland did not meet the threshold in order to be funded by the Federal Government because there was no benefit to the taxpayers. It is 4 years later. Every year since 1996, the Philadelphia district has come up with a benefit-to-cost ratio. Under scrutiny from the headquarters in Washington, it has always failed muster. We are not going to close the C&D Canal, there will be no decrease in commerce, but there is two things that we have seen very clearly, that to continue studying this issue that the Corps of Engineers has not been able to justify for most of the 1990s is a waste of the taxpayers dollars, so therefore we would like to cut $100,000 from any more study in this particular area. It does not reduce commerce in the C&D Canal. I want to make that very clear, that is in the Corps' own document. The Corps says if we deepen it, there will be no increase in commerce to the Port of Baltimore. The Port of Baltimore has a 50-foot deep channel right now to the Port down the Bay out into the ocean. It is not a matter of not being able to accommodate the number of ships that are necessary. In these studies, if we looked at it from an environmental perspective, deepening the canal will bring in more salty, polluted water from the Delaware River, into the sensitive spawning areas in the upper Chesapeake Bay. But even more interesting than that, the environmental study has not been concluded. Even though the Washington Corps asked it to go along with the feasibility study, the Philadelphia district did not do that. But there is something that we found out just a few months ago, which was rather astounding, in the study to determine whether there was going to be a change of water flow from the Delaware River or from the Chesapeake Bay. There is an organization in the Corps in Mississippi called the Water Environmental Studies, or WES. WES gave to the State of Delaware an environmental water flow study that showed the water flowing from Delaware to Maryland, and then WES gave a study to Maryland showing that the water, as a result of the deepening, would go from the Chesapeake Bay to the Delaware River. When we confronted them with this rather minor conflict, they said, well, we have to redo the study. Mr. Chairman, one other comment about the environmental aspect of this. The northern route, which is not necessary to increase commerce by deepening it, if it is deepened, will result in 18 million cubic yards of dredge material being dumped overboard into the Chesapeake Bay. Now, to use the Corps' own words, what does that mean as far as nutrients are concerned, and nutrients is really another word for pollution. By dumping 18 million cubic yards of dredge material directly into the Chesapeake Bay, a stone's throw north of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, it means the equivalent of adding a sewage treatment plant the size of the City of Annapolis, dumping in an uncontrolled amount of 2 million pounds of ammonia, some people call that nitrogen, they are the same thing, and 700,000 pounds of phosphorous. Now, the average farmer in my congressional district is taking great pains to reduce the amount of silt or nutrients that they let into the Chesapeake Bay or its tributaries. A homeowner, if he wants to build a driveway has to put up a silt fence. The whole State of Maryland is going to great lengths to try to figure out how they can reduce the number of nutrients going into the Chesapeake Bay. All we want to do with this amendment, Mr. Chairman, is because the Corps has not been able to, in the decade of the 1990s, financially justify to the taxpayers of the United States this project and time and time and time again, every time it came up for scrutiny, the project was not justified, we want to save the taxpayers' dollars and cut $100,000 from this study.

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert) for yielding to me. There has been no environmental impact statement done on this particular project. I have talked to the Corps of Engineers from Baltimore City, along with the Coast Guard, along with numerous other people involved in this in Chestertown, Maryland once again, and the Corps cannot tell us how high the wake will be when it hits the shore except that it is going to be higher. The Corps cannot tell us whether or not that slow down in the current will have an impact on those oysters because they have not done the study. I would like to, if I may, just respond to some of my colleague's comments. This is not a maintenance project. We do maintain the Tolchester Channel. The Tolchester Channel is maintained on a regular basis. This amendment has no impact on normal maintenance of the Tolchester Channel. This is considered new work. Now, the Corps of Engineers has stated that this is not appropriate nor proper when considering it as a safety project. Because since 1994, there has been 6,700 ships pass through the Tolchester S-turn without an incident. There has been some groundings north of the Tolchester S- turn and there has been some groundings south of the Tolchester S-turn, but there has been no groundings in the Tolchester S-turn. Now, as far as the Coast Guard saying that this is the biggest navigation challenge in this particular Coast Guard district, well, that is correct. This is a challenge. But apparently the pilots and the captains have met that challenge, and they have not had an incident in the Tolchester S-turn. So since they have not had an incident, a safety hazard incident in the Tolchester S-turn, what are we talking about here? We are talking about straightening the channel where there has been no incidents of safety problems reported. Then we are creating a safety hazard for people on the banks that are less than 1,000 feet from these huge ships that pass by that cause major wakes and potential problems with young children on the shore. Plus the fact we are then going to increase the cost to homeowners' property. Remembering now there is no safety hazard in the S-turn, there is a challenge to the pilots, they pass through there all the time. But a safety hazard, has it risen to the legality of a safety hazard by the Coast Guard or Corps of Engineers? The answer is no in their documents. So I would urge the Members of this House to think two ways, to think fiscally, conservative, as to why we do not want to throw good money down a sink hole when a project is not necessary; and when a project is not necessary, why do we do it to create another safety hazard and another environmental hazard? So I would urge my colleagues in the House to vote for this amendment.

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GILCHREST. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. GILCHREST

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver) for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, I would urge the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg), this is not a sleight-of-hand. This is not a maneuver to allow this President to implement anything in Kyoto. This is a provision that the entire executive branch, whether it is EPA, the Department of Energy, the Department of Justice, the State Department, or the Department of Commerce, will understand that the Kyoto Protocol has not been ratified by the Senate, it is not going to be implemented with this particular amendment. It only allows what I think all of us do on this floor, what all of us want this Government to do and that is simply to exchange information, to have some sense of understanding about human activity, its impact on climate change and what we can do to share with our constituents what is coming down the road. So I would urge the Members to vote for the Olver amendment. It is good, common, intelligent sense.

Mr. GILCHREST

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, I do not think the question here is whether or not we are going to implement the Kyoto Protocol, because we are not, because that has not been ratified by the Senate. In my mind, the question is do we exchange and do we have the opportunity and the ability to exchange information about these climate change research ideas with the international community? Let me just share some of the research that has come out by about 99 percent of the scientists involved in this. The atmosphere contains only a very tiny trace amount of carbon dioxide, CO2, and yet we know through drilling in ice cores around the planet, evaluating the landscape, looking at the seas, that in the last 10,000 years carbon dioxide has increased about 1 degree centigrade every 1,000 years, with the exception of the last century. It has increased by about 1 degree centigrade in the last century. If we put that in Fahrenheit degrees, just in this century, most of it since World War II, carbon dioxide has increased 4 degrees since World War II. Now, if we project that using models over the next century, you get anywhere from 5 more degrees increase to 15 degrees increase. If we look at the atmosphere, if we look at carbon dioxide, we understand that is the heat balance that protects the biological diversity, the very life on this planet, the heat balance we call now as laymen the greenhouse effect. Mr. Chairman, there is another example I want to give to you from a book on Laboratory Earth by a biologist from Stanford University, who is respected throughout the world, not as a nutty scientist, but as a reasonable, competent individual. Here is what he says: ``When we burn a lump of coal today, we are recovering the carbon dioxide and the solar heat of dinosaur times in fossil organic matter. While it took millions of years to make a coal deposit, we are releasing the CO2 and other embedded elements in tens of years.'' What took nature millions of years to lock up as far as carbon dioxide is concerned, that greenhouse gas we are releasing in a matter of decades. Will that have an effect on our climate? The answer is yes. Scientists agree that it is going to have an effect on our climate. Sure, there is a lot of dialogue, a lot of discussions about that, but that is the important thing. We need to discuss that issue. So I support the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to make a comment on the previous speaker, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner), as far as putting a neon sign on his area that was considered in a nonattainment area for business purposes. New York and Atlanta are both in nonattainment areas, and their economies are prospering. So I think that is a nonargument. And, also, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) said no highway funds would be withheld as a result of this, and that is also true. I think that people should know the quality of their air.

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. It is my understanding, and I will address this to the gentleman from Georgia, that the courts did rule or they did say that the science was reasonable. The other gentleman from Georgia, for whom I have great respect, made a comment about the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert) having crocodile tears. Well, I can tell my colleague that I have crocodile tears because of some of the ozone days that we have here in the State of Maryland. One of the counties in my district, Anne Arundel County, and I will say it for all to hear, is the 11th worst county in the United States for these kinds of ozone particulate problems. When that came out in the press, and it was substantiated, the people did not get angry that that information was there. The people were happy that they had that information so they could talk to the local county executive and figure out ways maybe they could help resolve that issue. We have, in the State of Maryland, I do not know if it is worse than anybody else, but we happen to be in the jet stream, the confluence of the westerly winds that blow from the Midwest, and they come right across the mid-Atlantic States, and they come right across my district, and they carry everything from, well, not much from California, one would assume, but the industrial area of the Midwest, and all of that dirty air that they happen to put up in the atmosphere with the high smokestacks, and I am not saying anything about the industrial area of the Midwest, it just so happens we get a lot of the particulates and ozone problems from that region as a result of the jet stream. Now, because of that, we do not want to not know that information. We want to know that information because, number one, we put up a lot of pollution ourselves. We have coal-fired power plants; we have the I-95 corridor that runs right through the State of Maryland and brings all that traffic and all those problems. So we want to know what we can do with our own situation here in the State of Maryland. Not placing the blame anyplace else, but saying we have a problem, we have the information, we want to learn about how we can solve it.

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GILCHREST

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise tonight to talk about, I guess, the issue that has plugged up the House with a great deal of rhetoric; to give my perspective on the issue of the arts and the issue of health care for Native Americans and the issue that the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter) won earlier in the day; also to say that the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Nethercutt) is one of the finest Americans and Members of Congress I have ever met. And he will always have my undying respect, as do most Members on both sides of the aisle. We all represent the finest that America has to offer. The gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter) offered an amendment earlier today in anticipation of raising, putting aside $22 million for the arts, for the humanities, for the museums, of which most of us agree with. I have voted in favor of those kinds of amendments in the past. I am fundamentally in support of that type of culture, because I think it brings to the human being the kind of thought process, creativity, sensitivity, intellectual understanding that is necessary and can only come from the arts. Now, I voted earlier today against the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter), and I did not vote against the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter) because I was against the arts. I voted against the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter) because I also truly believe in certain environmental issues, and one of those is to understand the nature of coal or how we can improve the burning of coal through clean coal technology. That is the reason I voted against the Slaughter amendment, not because I am against the arts. Now, we are in a democratic process where there are all kinds of things going on. We basically, though, fundamentally have an exchange of information on this House floor and somewhat a sense of tolerance for a different opinion by somebody else, and then we vote. And Oliver Wendell Holmes said about 100 years ago, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, that the Constitution was made for people with fundamentally differing views. And so that is what we have here. Now, when this comes up for a vote, and if it does come up for a vote, I truly believe in the arts; I bring those kids here every year with their painting. And we have a marvelous time, and they are hung in the Capitol. My daughter, and I am very proud, won the art purchase award for our home county, which is the highest award you can get. And she is going to college this year to major in art and music. And the joy she brings in our family and the other people in the county is marvelous. But I also truly believe in my heart whenever there is an opportunity out there that I grab ahold of an opportunity and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Nethercutt) wants $22 million in Indian health care that was not there before, I am going to vote for that, not because I am against the arts. The arts are beautiful. Just listen to William Blake, to see a world in the grain of sand, heaven in a wild flower, holding infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour. That was the theme for the arts caucus from the first congressional district of Maryland. And we gotten marvelous entries. But there is desperate need in Indian health care; and so I am personally voting for that, because it just happens I have an opportunity to increase that money for health care. There are many people on both sides of the aisle that are struggling with this vote, not for political advantage, but for a real heart-felt sincere understanding about what is best to do at any one given moment.

Mr. GILCHREST

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Speaker, I would like to share with the House some interesting observations from a recent book that I just read called ``Laboratory Earth'' by Dr. Schneider from Stanford University. Our atmosphere has a very tiny trace amount of carbon dioxide, which is natural for the atmosphere, but that tiny trace amount has a substantial effect on the atmospheric heat balance of our planet, which we call the ``greenhouse effect.'' In the last 100 or so years, we have increased because of our energy needs the amount of that trace gas in the atmosphere by about 30 percent, which is fairly extraordinary when we think that minute amount that causes a balance of heat on the planet. Think about this observation, and I think it is interesting: When we burn a lump of coal today, we are recovering the carbon dioxide and solar heat of dinosaur times in fossil organic matter. While it took millions of years to make a coal deposit, we are releasing that same amount of carbon dioxide and other embedded elements in tens of years. The speed of this human accelerated process creates one of the biggest global challenges that face us today. An interesting observation.

Mr. GILCHREST

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Speaker, today we are going to vote on a bill that will, in about a decade, eliminate what we have come to know as the death tax or the estate tax. In this country, we lose about 1 million acres of agricultural land a year, 1 million acres; and it is not slowing down. In my State alone, we lose about 25,000 acres of farmland every single year. There is a lot of reasons for that. One of them is that when a farmer dies, in order to leave that farm or what we may call an estate to his children, they have to pay an enormous tax. To pay that tax, many of these young people, these young farmers that want to stay on the land, must sell a portion, if not all of that land, in order to pay the Federal Government their tax. This is wrong. We need to correct that. Mr. Speaker, we need to correct the fact that human initiative needs an opportunity to be fulfilled, and that opportunity for farmers is to stay on the land. Today, Mr. Speaker, I would hope that everyone votes for this bill.

Mr. GILCHREST

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time for a second, I would like to work on legislation to change the threshold of the requirements to designate something wilderness. The gentleman from Utah (Mr. Hansen) had an eastern wilderness bill that was percolating through legislation that would have designated certain areas east of whatever meridian it was, east of the Mississippi River, which I actually supported, which would have changed the classification for what could be designated as wilderness, because there were many areas in the east that would not meet that classification. I would like to see it change.

Mr. GILCHREST. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I support the amendment offered by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert). The Members from the other side of the aisle from the West who have described in most eloquent terms the areas of silence, the areas that truly still represent the pristine nature of the mechanics of creation under which they have evolved for so many millions of years, are correct in their assessment to protect these lands that are public lands. The gentleman from Utah (Mr. Cannon) feels, and correctly so, that if the amendment is offered and then is passed, it is likely that the bill will not pass and then the difficulty of trying to restore many of these beautiful areas, some of which are designated wilderness, many of which are not managed in that way but could be managed in that way, will not prevail. So in this interim step, we are moving in the direction, I believe, and certainly will work in that direction, for the preservation of much, if not most, if not all of this beautiful pristine area of Utah. Now, I have never been to Utah, but I lived in a designated wilderness area of northern Idaho in the Bitter Root Mountains. We lived, my family, in a little cabin on top of the mountains in a designated wilderness area the size of Massachusetts. Our nearest neighbor we could not see from the highest mountain because they were well on the other side of the horizon. So our respect for this magnificent land and restoring and keeping it in this pristine state is something that I think we all can work diligently for. Mr. Chairman, I am from the State of Maryland; and we do not have any designated wilderness study areas, except for a tiny little place called Assateague Island on the Atlantic Ocean. But every place else in Maryland, if we read the letter of the law, would not be suitable for a designated study area. Yet I think most of us know if we set aside a little land, and I have seen it happen by State law, if we set aside a little land, nature will come in and that silence will come back, only broken by the occasional migrating song bird or the yipping of a fox or a coyote or a bald eagle. So in the interim of the designation of this as designated wilderness land, I think the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert) has the bridge which we can construct, and we can cross it later on.