Lisa Murkowski

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. on Friday, September 11, for a pro forma session, with no business conducted; further, that when the Senate adjourns on September 11, it next convene on Tuesday, September 15 at 1 p.m.; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following leader remarks, the Senate resume consideration of H.J. Res. 61, with the time until 6 p.m. equally divided between the two leaders or their designees; finally, that notwithstanding the provisions of rule XXII, the cloture motions filed during today's session on the McConnell substitute amendment No. 2640 and H.J. Res. 61 ripen at 6 p.m., Tuesday.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 188, S. 1461.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, today I introduce legislation, already pending in the House of Representatives, where it was first introduced in 2009, 2011, and 2013 by Alaska Congressman Don Young to finally settle a long-standing injustice to the Native residents of Alexander Creek, a Native village built along the creek that runs into the Susitna River near its entrance to Cook Inlet, north of Anchorage and southwest of Wasilla, AK. The story of Alexander Creek's Alaska Natives is a sad story, in that it is a story of Natives whose village happened to be located at the site of one of the State's prime salmon fishing locations, a site that may have prompted efforts by some to deliberately prevent the village from rightfully gaining the lands it was entitled to receive under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, ANCSA, passed by this Congress in 1971. It is especially sad since the villagers succeeded in the Federal courts in winning confirmation of their status as a village under ANCSA nearly four decades ago but because of decades of mistakes and misunderstandings, still have received only about 10 percent of the land village residents are entitled to receive. The legislation I am introducing today would give the Secretary of the Interior the authority to enter into negotiations to settle aboriginal land claims with Alexander Creek, after conferring village instead of group status on the community. It gives the Secretary wide latitude to find a just, environmentally acceptable, and economically reasonable means to bring Alexander Creek to ``approximate parity'' to the other more than 210 villages that were established by the 1971 law that settled all aboriginal lands claims in Alaska. Alexander Creek, whose Native name is Tuqentnu, traditionally was a healthy Native village with abundant resources, whose residents lived off fish traps located near the mouth of the Susitna River year round. While its population suffered as a result of whooping cough, measles, and influenza epidemics in the early 1900s caused by the influx of the non-Native population into upper Cook Inlet--the village being literally decimated by the 1918 epidemic--by 1939 the village had been reoccupied by Native families. When the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act passed in December 1971, there were 37 residents of the village, 12 more than the 25 needed to be entitled to form a village corporation under the act and to be entitled to receive 69,120 acres around the core townships of the village. The Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1971 made that determination. But the village had the misfortunate of being located in a prime salmon fishing area that was sought by the State of Alaska at the time of statehood in 1959 and that was later conveyed by the State to the then new Matanuska-Susitna Borough at the time of its creation in the early 1960s. Thus there was opposition to Alexander Creek being allowed to claim its lands. The State, in fact, protested its eligibility for land under ANCSA. A hearing was held before an administrative law judge on July 11, 1974, but oddly the hearing was not widely noticed and a number of village residents were specifically not told of the hearing, so they were not in attendance. When the appeals board released its decision on November 1, 1974, the board ruled that the village only contained 22 residents--3 short of the required number for creation-- simply because 5 other families and their children had not appeared at or testified at the hearing. The board's decision was appealed to U.S. district court that reversed the appeals board's decision on November 14, 1975, ordering the reinstatement of Alexander Creek's ANCSA eligibility. While that decision was appealed by the State of Alaska, the lower court decision was upheld by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals on August 29, 1976, which ordered that the case be remanded back to the Secretary of the Interior for further proceedings. But since all of the land around Alexander Creek had already been conveyed to the State and to the Mat-Su Borough, the village was required to join other Cook Inlet region villages in selecting ``deficiency lands'' near Lake Clark to the southwest of the region. But the creation of the Lake Clark National Monument in 1978, prior to passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980, further complicated the land selection issue for the village. Alexander Creek villagers, who could not afford independent legal counsel following the 1976 district court and court of appeals rulings, did not immediately pursue their claims to full village status and apparently did not understand the complexities of the Lake Clark land conveyance decisions. Somehow, they instead were convinced to sign an agreement with Cook Inlet Region, Inc., the regional corporation for the area, and the Interior Department in December 1979, where the village dropped its claim to be a village in exchange for receiving ``group'' status under the ANCSA, and also in return for being guaranteed 7,680 acres of land, some of which was to come from the State of Alaska and or the borough. While the State did provide the village with 1,686 acres, no borough or Federal land was conveyed to complete the 7,680-acre ``group'' agreement reached in 1979 until just recently. It wasn't until the next generation of Native leaders arrived in the village that they realized that Alexander Creek never received the lands it should have received. Over the past decade residents of the village have been seeking to have the original court of appeals decision affirmed and implemented. Over the years they have been gaining support for their efforts. First, BIA Alaska Region Field Representative Charles F. Bunch concluded after ``a thorough assessment'' that the BIA's original determination was correct and that Alexander Creek ``met the requirement'' for village eligibility and that the land conveyances should have been implemented. Recently the Alexander Creek village leaders have received support from the Alaska Federation of Natives, Cook Inlet Region, Inc., CIRI, the State of Alaska and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, all agreeing that the village should receive its full lands promised under ANCSA--plus from a host of other groups. So this legislation will reinstate Alexander Creek's eligibility, overriding the 1979 ``group'' agreement, reached under section 1432(d) of ANCSA, and giving the village the right to negotiate a fair settlement with the Interior Department. Under the act the Secretary is free, at his sole discretion, to propose what assets are to be provided Alexander Creek to capitalize the corporation, not setting any predetermined amount of land, cash, surplus Federal property or other assistance. The bill does hold the regional corporation for the area, Cook Inlet Region, Inc. harmless from any impacts of the village corporation's creation. The Alexander Creek case represents a sad chapter in the story of the settlement of Native aboriginal land claims in Alaska. It is a story of Native land owners being actively discouraged from selecting their traditional lands, of being deliberatively misinformed about land selection processes so they would not qualify for their lands, of being pressured to accept inferior compromises so they would gain less land, and of then being ignored for far too long when it came time to consummate the inferior deal they were encouraged to accept. It clearly is time this Congress rewrites that chapter and allows it to have a happier ending.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, today I introduce legislation to aid an Alaska higher educational institution obtain title to property it no longer needs, and that the Federal Government clearly no longer wants. I rise to introduce legislation to clear the title to a 210-acre parcel in Glennallen, AK, so that the land can be put to more productive uses in the future. Back in 1926 the Central Alaska Mission began operations in Glennallen. In 1954 it received a Federal land grant from Congress, modified in 1959, and received 210 acres in ``downtown'' Glennallen-- the current site of the hospital and radio station and former site of the Alaska Bible College. In 1961 it actually opened the Bible College on 80 acres of the tract, the site apparently having about 64 separate buildings erected on it. The 1959 land grant, like many in first the Territory of Alaska and later the State of Alaska, had a clause that should the property no longer be used for religious/public purposes that it would revert to the federal government. The Bible College, because of a lack of students in Glennallen, moved into the Matanuska- Susitna Borough, to Palmer, AK, last decade. Now it wishes to be able to sell the property to be rid of the maintenance costs on the facilities. The problem is that there apparently are no non-profits or few businesses in Glennallen that can afford to pay the officially appraised value for the properties. The parent of the Bible College 3 years ago asked the Federal Bureau of Land Management, BLM, administratively to start a process where it would decide the value of the properties and what it would have to pay the government to buy out the value of the ``reversionary clause'' so it could obtain clear title to sell the properties for whatever amount it could get. That appraisal was conducted mutually and came back late last year that the 210-acres, minus a sewage lagoon on the property that has no sales value, is worth $210,000. The college says the college can't afford that amount to buy out the value of the reversionary clause--because regardless of the appraisal, there is no entity in Glennallen that can afford to pay anywhere near that amount for the properties given the level of economic activity at present in the upper Copper River Valley in Alaska. The college is arguing, correctly, that the Federal Government is wrong in setting the value of the reversionary clause as the full appraised value of the property for tax purposes. If willing sellers can't be found who can afford to pay the ``appraised'' value of the property, then obviously the appraisal process is faulty. Secondly, the college is arguing that it has fully met the goal of Congress in 1959 that the land be used for the public purpose of operating an educational institution. For more than 40 years the property was used by Alaska Bible College, the college only moving into a more urban part of Alaska when student levels proved insufficient to support the school. Clearly it makes no sense for the reversionary clause to remain in effect in perpetuity when land use patterns have changed. Third, the Federal Government does not need the land for any federal purpose. The land, not located in an urban setting in the small town of Glennallen, population, 491, is not suited for a park. The land is not needed for any Federal facility given its location in sparsely populated east central Alaska. Being inside the Glennallen city limits, the land can not be allowed to revert to a natural vegetative state under the town's ordinances. It simply makes good sense for the land to be sold for economic purposes so it can generate more revenues for the town's tax rolls. Given the real estate market in Glennallen, the Federal Government will lose far more money than it will make if it has to tear down the unwanted buildings in order to sell the property, or maintain them until another purpose for the structures can be found, at the current appraised tax values of the properties. In each case, reversion of the lands to the Federal Government would result in Federal ownership of tracts unneeded for Federal purposes, but lands that would produce greater conveyance and management costs to the Federal treasury than are likely to be recovered through fair market sales. There is just no public policy purpose in the 21st century not to permit these very limited Federal reversion extinguishments, especially since the land did meet the purpose of the reversionary clause for more than four decades. Passage of this act would cost the Federal Government nothing, but would aid the citizens of Glennallen by allowing the lands to be put to a better use, hopefully adding to the city's economy and perhaps increasing its future tax revenues. I hope this bill will be able to advance and become law within the 114th Congress.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, today I introduce legislation to aid an Alaska higher educational institution obtain title to property it no longer needs, and that the Federal Government clearly no longer wants. I rise to introduce legislation to clear the title to a 210-acre parcel in Glennallen, AK, so that the land can be put to more productive uses in the future. Back in 1926 the Central Alaska Mission began operations in Glennallen. In 1954 it received a Federal land grant from Congress, modified in 1959, and received 210 acres in ``downtown'' Glennallen-- the current site of the hospital and radio station and former site of the Alaska Bible College. In 1961 it actually opened the Bible College on 80 acres of the tract, the site apparently having about 64 separate buildings erected on it. The 1959 land grant, like many in first the Territory of Alaska and later the State of Alaska, had a clause that should the property no longer be used for religious/public purposes that it would revert to the federal government. The Bible College, because of a lack of students in Glennallen, moved into the Matanuska- Susitna Borough, to Palmer, AK, last decade. Now it wishes to be able to sell the property to be rid of the maintenance costs on the facilities. The problem is that there apparently are no non-profits or few businesses in Glennallen that can afford to pay the officially appraised value for the properties. The parent of the Bible College 3 years ago asked the Federal Bureau of Land Management, BLM, administratively to start a process where it would decide the value of the properties and what it would have to pay the government to buy out the value of the ``reversionary clause'' so it could obtain clear title to sell the properties for whatever amount it could get. That appraisal was conducted mutually and came back late last year that the 210-acres, minus a sewage lagoon on the property that has no sales value, is worth $210,000. The college says the college can't afford that amount to buy out the value of the reversionary clause--because regardless of the appraisal, there is no entity in Glennallen that can afford to pay anywhere near that amount for the properties given the level of economic activity at present in the upper Copper River Valley in Alaska. The college is arguing, correctly, that the Federal Government is wrong in setting the value of the reversionary clause as the full appraised value of the property for tax purposes. If willing sellers can't be found who can afford to pay the ``appraised'' value of the property, then obviously the appraisal process is faulty. Secondly, the college is arguing that it has fully met the goal of Congress in 1959 that the land be used for the public purpose of operating an educational institution. For more than 40 years the property was used by Alaska Bible College, the college only moving into a more urban part of Alaska when student levels proved insufficient to support the school. Clearly it makes no sense for the reversionary clause to remain in effect in perpetuity when land use patterns have changed. Third, the Federal Government does not need the land for any federal purpose. The land, not located in an urban setting in the small town of Glennallen, population, 491, is not suited for a park. The land is not needed for any Federal facility given its location in sparsely populated east central Alaska. Being inside the Glennallen city limits, the land can not be allowed to revert to a natural vegetative state under the town's ordinances. It simply makes good sense for the land to be sold for economic purposes so it can generate more revenues for the town's tax rolls. Given the real estate market in Glennallen, the Federal Government will lose far more money than it will make if it has to tear down the unwanted buildings in order to sell the property, or maintain them until another purpose for the structures can be found, at the current appraised tax values of the properties. In each case, reversion of the lands to the Federal Government would result in Federal ownership of tracts unneeded for Federal purposes, but lands that would produce greater conveyance and management costs to the Federal treasury than are likely to be recovered through fair market sales. There is just no public policy purpose in the 21st century not to permit these very limited Federal reversion extinguishments, especially since the land did meet the purpose of the reversionary clause for more than four decades. Passage of this act would cost the Federal Government nothing, but would aid the citizens of Glennallen by allowing the lands to be put to a better use, hopefully adding to the city's economy and perhaps increasing its future tax revenues. I hope this bill will be able to advance and become law within the 114th Congress.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, today I introduce legislation, already pending in the House of Representatives, where it was first introduced in 2009, 2011, and 2013 by Alaska Congressman Don Young to finally settle a long-standing injustice to the Native residents of Alexander Creek, a Native village built along the creek that runs into the Susitna River near its entrance to Cook Inlet, north of Anchorage and southwest of Wasilla, AK. The story of Alexander Creek's Alaska Natives is a sad story, in that it is a story of Natives whose village happened to be located at the site of one of the State's prime salmon fishing locations, a site that may have prompted efforts by some to deliberately prevent the village from rightfully gaining the lands it was entitled to receive under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, ANCSA, passed by this Congress in 1971. It is especially sad since the villagers succeeded in the Federal courts in winning confirmation of their status as a village under ANCSA nearly four decades ago but because of decades of mistakes and misunderstandings, still have received only about 10 percent of the land village residents are entitled to receive. The legislation I am introducing today would give the Secretary of the Interior the authority to enter into negotiations to settle aboriginal land claims with Alexander Creek, after conferring village instead of group status on the community. It gives the Secretary wide latitude to find a just, environmentally acceptable, and economically reasonable means to bring Alexander Creek to ``approximate parity'' to the other more than 210 villages that were established by the 1971 law that settled all aboriginal lands claims in Alaska. Alexander Creek, whose Native name is Tuqentnu, traditionally was a healthy Native village with abundant resources, whose residents lived off fish traps located near the mouth of the Susitna River year round. While its population suffered as a result of whooping cough, measles, and influenza epidemics in the early 1900s caused by the influx of the non-Native population into upper Cook Inlet--the village being literally decimated by the 1918 epidemic--by 1939 the village had been reoccupied by Native families. When the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act passed in December 1971, there were 37 residents of the village, 12 more than the 25 needed to be entitled to form a village corporation under the act and to be entitled to receive 69,120 acres around the core townships of the village. The Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1971 made that determination. But the village had the misfortunate of being located in a prime salmon fishing area that was sought by the State of Alaska at the time of statehood in 1959 and that was later conveyed by the State to the then new Matanuska-Susitna Borough at the time of its creation in the early 1960s. Thus there was opposition to Alexander Creek being allowed to claim its lands. The State, in fact, protested its eligibility for land under ANCSA. A hearing was held before an administrative law judge on July 11, 1974, but oddly the hearing was not widely noticed and a number of village residents were specifically not told of the hearing, so they were not in attendance. When the appeals board released its decision on November 1, 1974, the board ruled that the village only contained 22 residents--3 short of the required number for creation-- simply because 5 other families and their children had not appeared at or testified at the hearing. The board's decision was appealed to U.S. district court that reversed the appeals board's decision on November 14, 1975, ordering the reinstatement of Alexander Creek's ANCSA eligibility. While that decision was appealed by the State of Alaska, the lower court decision was upheld by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals on August 29, 1976, which ordered that the case be remanded back to the Secretary of the Interior for further proceedings. But since all of the land around Alexander Creek had already been conveyed to the State and to the Mat-Su Borough, the village was required to join other Cook Inlet region villages in selecting ``deficiency lands'' near Lake Clark to the southwest of the region. But the creation of the Lake Clark National Monument in 1978, prior to passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980, further complicated the land selection issue for the village. Alexander Creek villagers, who could not afford independent legal counsel following the 1976 district court and court of appeals rulings, did not immediately pursue their claims to full village status and apparently did not understand the complexities of the Lake Clark land conveyance decisions. Somehow, they instead were convinced to sign an agreement with Cook Inlet Region, Inc., the regional corporation for the area, and the Interior Department in December 1979, where the village dropped its claim to be a village in exchange for receiving ``group'' status under the ANCSA, and also in return for being guaranteed 7,680 acres of land, some of which was to come from the State of Alaska and or the borough. While the State did provide the village with 1,686 acres, no borough or Federal land was conveyed to complete the 7,680-acre ``group'' agreement reached in 1979 until just recently. It wasn't until the next generation of Native leaders arrived in the village that they realized that Alexander Creek never received the lands it should have received. Over the past decade residents of the village have been seeking to have the original court of appeals decision affirmed and implemented. Over the years they have been gaining support for their efforts. First, BIA Alaska Region Field Representative Charles F. Bunch concluded after ``a thorough assessment'' that the BIA's original determination was correct and that Alexander Creek ``met the requirement'' for village eligibility and that the land conveyances should have been implemented. Recently the Alexander Creek village leaders have received support from the Alaska Federation of Natives, Cook Inlet Region, Inc., CIRI, the State of Alaska and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, all agreeing that the village should receive its full lands promised under ANCSA--plus from a host of other groups. So this legislation will reinstate Alexander Creek's eligibility, overriding the 1979 ``group'' agreement, reached under section 1432(d) of ANCSA, and giving the village the right to negotiate a fair settlement with the Interior Department. Under the act the Secretary is free, at his sole discretion, to propose what assets are to be provided Alexander Creek to capitalize the corporation, not setting any predetermined amount of land, cash, surplus Federal property or other assistance. The bill does hold the regional corporation for the area, Cook Inlet Region, Inc. harmless from any impacts of the village corporation's creation. The Alexander Creek case represents a sad chapter in the story of the settlement of Native aboriginal land claims in Alaska. It is a story of Native land owners being actively discouraged from selecting their traditional lands, of being deliberatively misinformed about land selection processes so they would not qualify for their lands, of being pressured to accept inferior compromises so they would gain less land, and of then being ignored for far too long when it came time to consummate the inferior deal they were encouraged to accept. It clearly is time this Congress rewrites that chapter and allows it to have a happier ending.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I want to thank the chairman of the Budget Committee for his leadership on the important issue of wildfire budgeting. I think we all agree that the way wildfire management has been funded is broken and that it is past time that we fix it. Earlier this year, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee that I chair reported the Interior Appropriations bill. My bill provided full funding for the average annual cost of fire fighting over the past 10 years, and included a limited cap adjustment to access disaster relief funding only if the agencies exhaust 100 percent of that 10-year average of wildfire suppression funds. This proposal would end the disruptive and unsustainable practice of borrowing from, and later repaying money to, other government programs to deal with fire emergencies, while also providing up front the resources the agencies need to fight fires in all but the most extreme years. But there is more to the issue of wildfire budgeting as my colleague, Senator Cantwell, points out. We need to ensure the dollars Congress appropriates are well spent. Senator Cantwell has some good ideas on how to do that. I stand ready to work with my colleagues to advance a solution that will finally fix this longstanding problem in a fiscally responsible manner.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, we have been discussing the value of having a multiyear transportation bill, a highway bill moving through the Senate. It is something that I, too, would like to see, but as with everything that we do around here, it is important how we do it. When you have a multiyear highway bill, it is important to ask the question, how are we paying for that? One of the considerations that is in front of this body is to pay for $9 billion of this multiyear highway bill through a selloff of crude oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve--SPR. I have come before this floor several times already during this debate to try to convince colleagues that this is exactly the wrong way to address our transportation priorities by selling off a national energy security priority; basically, an insurance policy that we have for this country, an insurance policy to ensure that at the time that we might be most vulnerable with our energy supplies, we have reserves, we have a safety net we can turn to in the event of an emergency brought about by a hurricane or natural disaster or whether it is a manmade disaster, war or something else that has caused global disruption. In short, it boggles my mind that we would be willing, so willing and almost eager, to tap into this strategic asset for such short-term and limited gain. In the absence of supply disruption that justifies releasing oil from the SPR, selling our strategic reserves only worsens an existing competitive disadvantage for our American oil producers. As you know, we have in place an outdated 40-year-old-plus ban on our ability to sell our domestic crude oil overseas. We are limited in our ability to export that. I think that is a wrong and outdated policy, and I am working with many, including the occupant of the chair, to lift this outdated policy. I have introduced legislation to do just that. We will actually have a bill before the banking committee tomorrow to, again, shed some light on the fact that it is so incredibly inconsistent from a policy perspective that we would be talking about lifting the sanctions on Iran, allowing Iran to access the broader global market so they can sell their oil reserves, so they can take advantage of the resources that will come to them to do who knows what mischief, while at the same time prohibiting, further prohibiting in this country our oil producers that opportunity to access the global market. By lifting the sanctions on Iran and keeping the oil export ban in place in this country, we are effectively sanctioning our own U.S. oil producers. That is wrong. Again, we are working to address that. We are in a situation currently in which American companies cannot sell oil to the same countries that we let Iran sell its own oil to. Now, with this proposal in front of us to sell off some 101 million barrels of oil from the SPR, we are potentially going to saturate a market that is already oversupplied. Think about what that means to those in Oklahoma where the rig count in this country right now is down by half of what it was just last year. We are at a 5-year low with that. Our market is oversaturated. This morning I introduced yet another white paper out of the energy committee. It is entitled ``A Turbulent World: In Defense of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.'' This white paper outlines some of the history behind the SPR, why I feel so strongly and why I will continue to come to this floor to oppose the sale of 101 million barrels of oil from the SPR to pay for a portion of this highway bill. Let's take a look at the history of when we have had emergency drawdowns. We have had exactly three emergency drawdowns ever. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been in place since the mid-1970s. We had a drawdown in 1991 with Desert Storm. We had a drawdown in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit and then in Libya in 2011 during their civil war. This red right here is the 101 million barrels that this legislation seeks to sell off--101 million barrels. The total amount of sales from emergency drawdowns ever combined is 58.9 million barrels. What we are talking about doing is, in one act, taking 101 million barrels and putting it out there on the market. In the 40 years that we have had access to reserves in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we have had three emergency drawdowns--one, a hurricane and, two, in the event of disruption for war, and together, all three of those totaled just shy of 60 million barrels. Yet this proposal is 101 million barrels. We have exchanged oil out of the SPR a total of 12 times. This was in Hurricanes Isaac, Katrina, Lili, Ivan, Gustav, and Ike. We have created a home heating oil reserve. We have closed some ship channels for accidents. We have imported oil from Mexico. All of those exchanges, not drawdowns, but all of those totaled only 68.9 million barrels. Again, we are talking about a 101-million-barrel sale. We have also done test sales. We have done three test sales. In 1985, in 1990, and then in 2014. We have also closed down a reserve site--Weeks Island. We have sold off some barrels for that. The total for all of that activity was 15 million barrels for all four sales. I have had people tell me: Oh, don't overreact here; don't overreact. This is no different than what we did with the two sales in 1996 for Federal deficit reduction. Let's look at that chart. In 1996, we had a deficit reduction in May, which is shown in blue, and then in October we did further reductions, and that is shown in green. Both of those sales totaled 23 million barrels. Again, back in 1996, there was a total of 23 million, and what we are looking at with this legislation is, again, a selloff of 101 million barrels. That is not even a fair comparison. Selling 101 million barrels would be the equivalent of 60 percent of all of the oil that has ever left the SPR. We have effectively taken out a total of 161 million barrels and moved that out of this SPR since it was created in 1975, about 40 years ago. We have had three emergency drawdowns, we have had the exchanges I talked about, we had test sales, and then we had the sales in 1996 with the Federal deficit reduction. If we take all of that together-- everything in the history of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that we ever sold off or exchanged--it brings us to 161 million barrels, and now we are talking about selling 101 million barrels, which is 60 percent. I think it is important to put into context because this is a big fat deal. Yet we are acting like this is just another withdrawal from your ATM. Just go down, check the balance, there is enough money in there so it must be OK. Let's talk about the strategic environment we are operating in right now. There is a nominal drawdown capacity of 4.4 million barrels per day. I mentioned this the last time I was on the floor. The drawdown capacity is subject to some discussion in terms of what we are actually able to pump out, and that is why we do test sales. It is to make sure it works as it was designed. Secretary of Energy Moniz has suggested that our distribution rate-- our ability to move this once we take it out--is significantly less than this nominal drawdown capacity of 4.4 million barrels due to congestion and changes in midstream infrastructure. This is one of the reasons I have been banging the lectern, and Senator Cantwell, the ranking member on the energy committee, has also been joining me in saying that doing this is not appropriate. We have significant maintenance issues within the SPR that we need to address. There is somewhere between $1.5 billion and $2 billion that it is going to take to address some of the shortcomings we have in the SPR, some of the maintenance and operations aspect of it. As we speak, there is a study underway to determine the right size of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. What do we need to do in terms of maintenance? If we go ahead and sell off 60 percent of what we have done historically throughout the whole lifetime of the SPR to fund a highway bill for 6 years--again, it just causes one to wonder why we are doing this because of the strategic environment and the drawdown capacity we have. We have a pretty volatile world out there, and I think we all know that. We have unplanned disruptions, unplanned production outages, if you will, in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Nigeria, Libya, and Iran. These are around 2.5 to 3 million barrels per day. These are pretty tense regions of the world, and I don't think anyone would dispute that. On the next chart what we see is our drawdown rate of 4.4 or thereabouts is greater than the daily production of Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria, Algeria or Libya. I don't think anybody would suggest that any of these countries in blue exudes stability or security. Look at the transit chokepoints. A drawdown rate of 4.4 million barrels per day is bigger, in fairness, than the capacity of some of the other areas that would be clearly noted as these chokepoints. We have the Panama Canal at the end, the Turkish or Danish Straits, and Bab el-Mandab off the coast of Yemen. If something went wrong in more than one of these critical parts of the supply chain at once, we could be overtaken by upheaval in the global oil market without much recourse and our ability to respond would be dramatically lessened. And 4.4 million barrels per day is less than the oil that transships the Suez Canal and its accompanying pipeline. It is a fraction of the oil that goes through the Strait of Malacca or Strait of Hormuz which moves 15 to 17 million barrels per day. This my central point. Our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a tremendous national security asset, and we need it because the world is just simply more turbulent. I have been told: Look at what is happening domestically. We are importing less and producing more; therefore, we don't really need all of this. We don't need this safety net. We cannot immunize ourselves from global events and just suggest that somehow or other we need it less. It is like you go to the doctor and get a clean bill of health and you go home and you say: OK. Now I don't need life insurance or health insurance because the doctor just said I am fine. You know what. The world is not fine, and we know that. At a time when spare capacity is low and the global threat environment is heightened, selling 101 million barrels of America's strategic reserve to pay for legislation that makes almost no contribution to improving our energy security, I think, is just a foolish error of historic proportions. I will restate what we would be doing if we moved forward with the pay-for as has been outlined. We would be conducting the largest sale in the history of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve since it was created in 1975. It would be greater than all of the previous emergency drawdowns combined. We are going into hurricane season. We don't know what may be coming at us in the Middle East. Yet we are proposing to pay for a short-term fix to the highway trust fund with a buyout of unprecedented proportions. Last time I was on the floor, I said this is like cashing out your homeowner's insurance to pave your driveway. It is not the right pay- for. Again, I, too, want to make sure we do right by our transportation infrastructure. It is important. It is about jobs and the strength of our economy, but we are also obligated to make sure the decisions we make in this Senate--in this Congress--are there to provide for our security as a nation. I want to know that if we need these ready resources, we haven't moved precipitously to sell them off. The last time I checked this morning, the price of oil was at about $50 a barrel. Is this really a good time to sell at $50 a barrel? I thank the Presiding Officer for his attention. I think those of us who have been following this issue with great interest are concerned and are conflicted because we want to make sure we do right by our highway systems, but I also want to make sure we do right by our national energy security, and selling off 101 million barrels of Strategic Petroleum Reserve is foolhardy. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I have come to the floor this evening to speak about our Nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, sometimes referred to as the SPR. It is a national security asset that has come into the news of late for a host of different reasons. I am here this evening because of the concerns I have that others are potentially looking to our Strategic Petroleum Reserve--our strategic energy asset--as nothing more than a piggybank to fund some of the needs we have here in this Congress. I believe it is extremely shortsighted to raid our Nation's oil stockpile as an offset for the extension of the highway trust fund, and that is what we have had some conversation about today. We had a vote earlier about whether to move forward on the highway trust fund. But as we have looked to find pathways forward for a multiyear highway trust fund reauthorization, which is something I support, it is important to know that not all pots of money are equal, that perhaps some are truly national security assets for which perhaps we need to show more considered respect. I had an opportunity a few days ago--on Friday--to tour our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. I went to the Choctaw Bayou site near Baton Rouge, LA. It was an opportunity for me to get a firsthand look at some of the challenges that currently face our four Strategic Petroleum Reserves that we have down in the Louisiana, Texas area and to have a better understanding as to their operational readiness. Quite honestly, it is a trip I wish more of our Members were willing to take because I think it would become clear to many the potential mistake we would be making in forcing the sale of billions of dollars of our emergency oil solely to pay for unrelated legislation. It is akin to selling the insurance on your house in order to pave your driveway. It just doesn't make sense. For some, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve may be a very unknown national security asset. They do not really know what it is. But the SPR is our Nation's insurance policy against global energy supply disruptions. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was established by law back in 1975 under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, and its mission is twofold: to ensure U.S. energy security by reducing the impacts of potential disruptions in U.S. petroleum supplies and secondly to carry out U.S. obligations under the international energy program. We have about 700 million barrels of oil that are tucked away in underground salt caverns down in Louisiana and in Texas. We have a couple refined product reserves in other parts of the country, but our Strategic Petroleum Reserves are there in Louisiana and Texas. So if we have a major hurricane that takes out production in the Gulf of Mexico, as we saw with Hurricane Katrina back in 2005, we can turn to the SPR to help fill the gap. We did that in 2005. That is exactly the type of reason you would have the strategic asset. But there are other times we have turned to the SPR. If there is a terrorist attack or a broader war disruption that alters the ability of other nations to send us oil, we can again turn to the reserve for help. We did this in 1991 with the Iraq war and then again in 2011 with the Libya supply disruption. So, again, when there was an emergency and we needed to ensure U.S. security, we had a ready reserve fund to turn to. In the absence of policies that will allow our Nation to produce all of the oil it consumes every day, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is really our best answer to the sudden absence of the energy we need, whether it is driving to work, whether it is powering our ships or our airplanes, moving our goods, or whatever that reason may be. With the discussion we had today in terms of how we pay for this multiyear transportation bill, we are being asked to dramatically diminish the size of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve based again on the need to pay for the extension of the highway trust fund. It is totally unrelated--totally unrelated. Those who would argue in favor of taking from the SPR, their argument is pretty simple. In fact, it is way too simple. They suggest that our international obligations require us to store enough petroleum to match 90 days of net imports. That is true. And they will say that given the growth we have seen in domestic oil production, we have enough now that we have a surplus within the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Some have even suggested that an SPR is not even necessary anymore. Well, I would be the first among us to suggest that changes need to be made to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Again, this was established back in 1975, and I think it is very fair to say the world has changed. It has changed dramatically since the 1970s. The global environment in which we are operating has changed dramatically. And the Department of Energy has said that today the impacts of an overall supply disruption of global oil markets would have the same effect on domestic petroleum product prices regardless of how U.S. oil import levels--or whether U.S. refineries import crude from disrupted countries. So there is a recognition that we have to get to modernizing the SPR. We have to ensure that we have right-sized it, that we are in alignment when it comes to moving oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at those times we have determined are appropriate. So I think it is important to know we are not just sitting still on this. The Department of Energy has begun work on a comprehensive, long- term strategic review of the SPR. We had good discussion about this when I was down in Louisiana on Friday with the Deputy Secretary of Energy, Chris Smith, talking about what this review will entail. It is looking at future SPR requirements regarding the size; regarding the composition of it; the geographic location--it has been suggested that perhaps there might be regional approaches; determining where we have chokepoints within the system in terms of distribution; how we move it; determining the impacts of what we see globally and what is happening with our own domestic production; and again being smart in how we are making sure we have right-sized the SPR and, in fairness, modernized the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We have a committee, as you know, Mr. President, that likes to roll up our sleeves and get into the weeds on making sure our policies are current and are relevant. We need a deliberative process that will provide us with the proper understanding of the stakes and our options when it comes to how we handle our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. What we do not need--what we do not need--is an arbitrary process that picks a number. Right now, for purposes of the offset of what they are coming to the energy committee for, they are picking a number of--let's sell 101 million barrels of oil to fund a portion of the highway trust fund. Again, where is the connection between ensuring that we don't erode our national energy security assets? I have said many times that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is not an ATM. It is certainly not the petty cash drawer for Congress. We have a responsibility. A decision to sell substantial volumes of oil will increase our vulnerability to future supply disruptions at a time when we are still importing oil. We are importing about 5 million barrels a day. Think about this. Think about the timing of this. It simply could not be worse. When you talk about volatility in the world, think about the news you read about today, what is happening in Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Now is the time for us to say that our national energy security assets are not that important; it is OK to nibble around the edges or worse and take significant amounts to put out on the market? Let's consider a few facts to put things into perspective. First of all, you talk about the market. It is a buyer's market out there. The International Energy Agency warns of a massively oversupplied balance sheet. The Energy Information Administration shares that assessment in its latest monthly outlook, noting that production continues to exceed consumption across the globe. Of course, now as we are seeing the outcome from the negotiations with Iran, they are going to be in a position soon to put their oil out onto the world market. Oil prices are sitting right now around $50 a barrel. Think about it. Not all of the oil that is in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was perhaps bought high, but think about it. Selling it now is the very definition of selling low. We are at $50 a barrel right now. The sales that are envisioned in this highway bill would shortchange taxpayers in terms of emergency protection because you are eroding the fund, but think about the proper stewardship of taxpayer dollars. Effectively, we bought high and we are going to sell low. Second, drawing down barrels from the SPR would put the Federal Government in a position of direct competition with domestic producers. That may be temporarily defensible during a severe interruption, but let's remember where we are right now. The midcontinent is already awash in crude. Our outdated ban on oil exports, which should be fully repealed and fully repealed soon in my view, has not been repealed yet. It is sitting there in place, and what it is doing is keeping oil that is trapped in the United States, threatening productions and jobs at the same time. What you are talking about with this proposal to sell off the oil from SPR is you are going to sell it first very low and then you are going to put it into a market that is already oversupplied. I was in the Gulf of Mexico this weekend at a place called Port Fourchon, where truly you think about the part of the country that is supporting an oil and gas industry, robust, ready to go to work, but what we saw there were supply vessels that were sidelined and drill ships that were waiting. You tell those hard-working men and women there who aren't working as hard as they would like that perhaps somehow it is a good idea that they should be taking money from our savings account--taking the oil from our savings account and dumping that into the market. Third, our Nation's energy security cannot depend on commercial stocks alone. They rise and fall based on market expectations, not on the strategic environment, and are not tethered to our Nation's energy security. Since the passage of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act in 1975, there was a bipartisan consensus that maintained that it is the Federal Government, not private industry, that will ensure that our obligations are met. Clearly, not much has changed in that calculation, certainly in my mind. Fourth, threats to global security continue to abound and they seem to worsen. As Iran, ISIS, and other threats destabilize the Middle East, some 17 million barrels per day still flow through the Strait of Hormuz. The Suez Canal and its accompanying pipeline carry just under 5 million barrels per day, despite a budding insurgency that fired a rocket at an Egyptian Navy vessel earlier this month. Instability in Venezuela, which produces about 2\1/2\ million barrels per day, would also directly impact the major American refining center in the Gulf of Mexico. You have all of this volatility and instability, and this is the time again that we are going to take our insurance policy and we are going to erode it? We are going to make us less energy secure? It makes no sense. By way of comparison, the drawdown rate of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is about 4.4 million barrels a day, probably a little bit less. But, seriously, any number of disruptions could arise and make those barrels very precious. Secretary Moniz gave a speech about a month ago, and he stated that the distribution rate is probably much lower than our drawdown capacity of 4.4. The distribution rate is compromised because of some of the issues we talked about earlier, which are changes in midstream, infrastructure, and congestions in the system. When you talk about our ability to respond, we are limited. If Congress is going to sell any oil from the SPR--and I am not suggesting this is a good idea--one of the things we must do is we should agree that any proceeds would first be used to pay for upgrading the reserve itself, pay for the modernization, help to ensure it has the ability to do that which we have tasked it to do. It needs significant modifications to preserve its long-term viability and to ensure that it can truly move the oil in the event of an emergency, whether it is a natural disaster or whether it is a terrorist threat or war. But it would be a travesty if we were to dramatically reduce the size of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve while we continue to ignore its maintenance and its operational needs. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve must be modernized for the 21st century. Its size, its geographic disposition, the quality of the oil it stores--right now it is about one-third to two-thirds distribution between sweet and sour crude--the desirability and understanding is we need to move more into a refined product storage or holding instead of the crude. These are all issues that merit further attention, but we need to have a deliberative process. We need the review that the Department of Energy is conducting. We need the review that committees such as ours will advance and consider. What we do not need is a spur- of-the-moment deal that would sacrifice our energy security and perhaps much more. I know this conversation will continue about how we move a highway bill forward. Count me as one who wants to ensure that we are doing right by our highway systems. Our infrastructure is key, but we also have key energy infrastructure. Part of that key infrastructure lies with the security asset, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that we have. Let's focus on that word ``strategic'' before we move too quickly and in a manner that is shortsighted and will jeopardize our security and our inability to respond. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following individuals who are interns on my staff for this summer be given privileges of the floor: Steven Murphy, Gwen Ranniger, Christian Escalante, Alexander Wong, Cassandra Adams, Taylor Sheldon, Max Blust, Kellie Chong, Malia Walters, and Kaitlin Bowers.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. I thank my colleague from Rhode Island, and I thank him for the opportunity to speak directly to this bill this afternoon. Mr. President, I wish to speak briefly about the measure we have on the floor today, the Every Child Achieves Act, the bill where we have all been waiting for about 15 years to fix the flawed one-size-fits-all No Child Left Behind Act. I begin my comments by thanking Senator Alexander, who is the chairman, as well as Senator Murray, the ranking member, for how they have managed this legislation from the very beginning. I think we know there is a little bit of inside baseball that goes on around here that perhaps isn't interesting to many. But I think it is important to note that Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray have led this bill in a way that has fostered consensus building and, I think, very constructive negotiations. More importantly, in the process they allowed the voices of the American people--of Alaskans--to be heard. I think that was one of the reasons why we saw this legislation move unanimously through the HELP Committee in April, and I think that is one of the reasons that you are seeing us move through a series of amendments on issues that are considerable but in a very constructive manner and certainly respectful of one another. So I wish to acknowledge and recognize the masterful work they have done in guiding this bill forward. I also wish to recognize the work of my staff. Karen McCarthy on my staff has done yeoman's work in working with so many Alaskans, educators, administrators, and the like. That has been an effort that I think has yielded benefit to folks in my home State. But I also wish to recognize the work of those on both Senator Murray's staff as well as Senator Alexander's--very hard-working professional staff who are a credit to their Senators and their State. So why am I standing today before you in support of the Every Child Achieves Act? When Alaskans are visiting about the education bill that we know as No Child Left Behind, it is clear that to a number--whether you are an educator, whether it is students, parents, tribes; it didn't make any difference--nobody was happy. The one-size-fits-all mandate, poor tribal consultation, and the lack of State and local control over our children's education clearly were not working. I say that one of the first immersions into politics I had was when I was a PTA president at my son's elementary school. That, for me, was my first introduction to what the mandates meant that were coming out of No Child Left Behind when our school was deemed as a failure because we failed to meet AYP because of the 31 different ways to fail. We certainly made it by not having sufficient subgroups taking the test on the day that the test was required. Our neighborhood school was a failure. It didn't seem to me that it made sense and still does not. So I make sure to take that experience as a mom, as a PTA president, and as one for whom No Child Left Behind was not just some theoretical exercise. It was Federal law imposed in my town and in my schools, which had a negative and a direct impact on those who were part of our school. So my top priority was to make sure that any rewrite of No Child Left Behind gave more power to make decisions about Alaska's schools to Alaska and to our local communities. The failed experiment of adequate yearly progress had to go. Under the Every Child Achieves Act, that is done. The failed highly qualified teacher mandates that made little sense and also did not work had to go, and they are gone. States will again be able to decide what qualifications and skills to demand of teachers and principals, whether to have a statewide evaluation system, and, if so, whether those evaluations consider growth in student proficiency. Now, I am very aware that some across the country--in fact, I have heard from some in Alaska--are concerned that the Every Child Achieves Act does not do enough to return local control to schools, that it perpetuates, somehow, the common core standards. In fact, the Every Child Achieves Act specifically and expressly prohibits the Secretary from having any authority to ``mandate, direct, control, coerce, or exercise any direction or supervision over any of the challenging State academic standards adopted or implemented by a State.'' Now I have also heard that some are concerned that the bill maintains secretarial approval of State plans, with the implication then that the Secretary will be able to change or deny elements of State plans, whether it is State standards, assessments or accountability systems, as somehow a condition of approval. But the Every Child Achieves Act also places a number of limitations on the Secretary's authority over the State's plans. The act prohibits the Secretary from requiring a State to include or delete any element of its State standards from the State plans, use specific assessment instruments or items, set goals, timelines, weights or significance to any indicators of student proficiency, include or delete from the plan standards, measures, assessment, student growth benchmarks or goals of student achievement for school accountability, as well as any aspect of teacher or principal quality, effectiveness or evaluations systems, or require any data collection beyond current reporting requirements. There are similar prohibitions that are scattered throughout the Every Child Achieves Act. In short, I am confident that the act returns control of State standards, curriculum, instruction, assessments, educator qualifications, and school accountability to the State of Alaska, and that is where I want it to be. I also have other reasons for supporting the act that will directly impact students, parents, educators, and communities across Alaska in a positive way and with provisions that Alaskans ask for most specifically. I acknowledge the work that I was able to do with Senator Boxer. Together we worked to craft the support for the Afterschool for America's Children Act. She and I worked on this bill to update and strengthen the 21st Community Learning Centers afterschool program across the country. We worked with a number of other Members in the Senate to make sure that this important program-- the program that keeps our children safe and engaged after school and during the summer--works for all of our States. We worked with the chairman and ranking member, and after a lot of good negotiation, the Afterschool for America's Children Act, with some amendment, was included in the Every Child Achieves Act, and this was done by unanimous consent in the HELP Committee, which I appreciate. On the issue of how we ensure that our Native children are cared for and addressed in a real and meaningful way, there were several provisions that we were able to include in the act to better meet the needs of Native children. At my request, the act requires the States and school districts, where applicable, to consult and engage with the American Indian, Alaska Native or Native Hawaiian tribes and parents in creating State and local plans and in implementing Federal education programs that serve Native students in order to meet their cultural language and education needs. These are our Nation's first peoples, with whom the United States has a constitutionally mandated responsibility to interact with on a government-to-government basis. So I think it is time that our tribes and our Native organizations throughout the country were part of designing the plans and shaping the programs used to improve schools that serve our Native students. Senator Franken and I, working with Senator Tester, were able to include a new program in the Every Child Achieves Act to help our Nation's first peoples maintain and revitalize their Native languages through the schools. This is a new grant program that will support the creation, the improvement, and the expansion of Native language immersion schools in which Alaska Native, American Indian, and Native Hawaiian students learn their lessons through ancestral languages. This opportunity will help preserve the fast-vanishing Native languages of our first peoples. So what we worked to do within the program was that the Native Alaskan language immersion schools and programs will help Native language immersion schools develop curriculum and assessments, provide professional development to teachers and other staff, and carry out activities that will promote the maintenance and revitalization of these endangered languages. This is a provision where I really am quite proud of what we have been able to do, working with our colleagues to make sure that we do not lose that focus in this important act. We also eliminate some technical redtape that makes it nearly impossible for Alaska's rural school districts to claim impact aid dollars to which they are entitled just because NCLB and the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act didn't play well together. While it is more complicated to explain, I just leave it by saying that many rural Alaskan school districts are no longer going to have to bang their heads against a brick wall of illogical and contradictory Federal rules after this provision is enacted. And that is always a good thing. I would point out that fixing this problem started because a handful of schools, business officials, and superintendents took the time to reach out to me to let me know: We have a problem here. This is really one of those examples where working together we are all building legislation. I am also quite proud to have helped move strong improvements to the Alaska Native Education Equity Program. We call it ANEP in this legislation. For some years now, Alaska Native leaders have asked: Why do schools get all of the title VII Indian education money and most of the ANEP funding. They explained that they are more than ready to take on responsibility to help their children achieve in school. Alaska Native leaders have a valuable and, indeed, indispensable role to play in designing and implementing programs to help our children succeed. These are sound arguments. While Alaska receives no funding from the Bureau of Indian Education, and our schools receive the title VII, part A funding, the government- to-government relationship between the Federal Government and Alaska tribes and Native organizations has not been fully honored under ANEP. Under the amendments we include in the act, ANEP funds will either go directly to tribes and Native organizations that have expertise running education programs or the funds will go to tribes and Native organizations without such experience that partner with school districts. In addition, tribes and tribal organizations may partner with the university and other Non-Native entities if they so choose. This will not only honor our constitutional relationship to Alaska Natives but ensure that they can take on more responsibility for helping their children succeed, which, again, is the right thing to do. In closing, I wish to say that the Every Child Achieves Act is a good piece of legislation, and it is getting better with each day as we consider additional amendments. It is far better than what we ever had with No Child Left Behind. While I am positive that each of us will have more thoughts about how this could be a better bill, be a more perfect piece of legislation if only one or two more changes were made, on the whole this is a sound improvement over the current, failed law. I certainly intend to be supportive as we move through the end of this process. With that, I appreciate the courtesy of my colleague from Rhode Island in deferring, and know that when I have a similar opportunity to yield to the Senator, I shall do so. With that, I yield the floor.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, it was my understanding that I was next in the queue. If I am incorrect, I would be happy to get this squared away. I, too, have about 15 minutes.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following interns in my office be granted the privilege of the floor for the remainder of the day: Jenna Dreydoppel, Tasha Boyer, Denae Benson, Claire Landis, Holly O'Brien, Kelsey Colligan, Jasper MacNaughton, Justin Dahlgren, Grant Ackerman, Anthony Lekanof, Anna Dietderich, and Tavish Logan.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. I also wish to speak to how the rule impacts the development of hydropower in the State of Alaska. We are looking to find energy solutions, clean energy solutions. Hydropower is huge for us. Alaska has nearly 300 prime locations for hydrodevelopment, nearly 200 in Southeast Alaska alone, but many of them require the construction of powerhouses or transmission lines that may rest on wetlands or cross wetlands as defined by the new rule--and that is a big problem. A good example of this is Crater Lake, a fishing community of Cordova, down in Prince William Sound. Crater Lake is at an elevation of 1,600 feet, straight up from the ocean. Cordova has been looking at this small hydro opportunity to advance their energy solutions. It is clean. It is renewable. It is carbon free. There are no fish issues. So this is perfect for them. Prior to WOTUS, it was anticipated that it would be about a 12- to 18-month process to permit this small hydroproject. What the Federal nexus WOTUS brings, this project is now likely to end up in the FERC process, and what was expected to be about $150,000 to $200,000 in permitting costs is now looking to be closer to $1 million and take potentially 3 to 5 years. Think about it. For a small community like Cordova that is trying to find small energy solutions for this fishing community, these additional costs are likely going to kill this small project. And what happens? The community continues providing their power by diesel, when we have a clean opportunity, but that opportunity is going to be suffocated by this rule. Most of coastal Alaska, with its rugged mountains filled with rivulets and waters, will be subject to these case-by-case determinations. Simply performing the science and providing justification to the EPA for these adjacent water determinations will add cost to projects and likely delay any development as the determinations are litigated. If any projects do make it to the finish line, their higher costs under this rule will mean their electricity is ultimately less affordable for Alaskans. The costs we face when developing in Alaska are already steep enough. They will be magnified and worsened by the final WOTUS rule. I am grateful to our colleagues on the EPW Committee, who recently reported out bipartisan legislation, which I cosponsored, which requires the agencies to develop a better rule. These two bills will help provide relief to local governments. The Infrastructure Rehabilitation Act will allow the Secretary of the Army to waive the notice and comment period required by the Clean Water Act when a natural disaster has damaged critical infrastructure and a local government needs to rebuild. We also have the Mitigation Facilitation Act, which will allow the Secretary to provide loans to local governments in order to ease the burden created by 404 permits and the overreaching scope of the new WOTUS rule. If the Federal Government is going to require hugely burdensome and expensive mitigation projects, effectively an unfunded mandate, the government should assist municipalities by providing loans and loan guarantees to small local entities. So I have introduced these two bills and am looking forward to having them move forward, in addition to what the EPW Committee has done. Alaska will be the State most heavily impacted just because of the nature of our wetlands. An analyst done by EPA and the Corps suggests that at the high end, the mitigation costs to Alaska could be $55,000 per acre--$55,000 an acre. With 43 percent of our land requiring mitigation for any sort of development, these costs will halt many development projects. And when combined with the cost of even getting a permit, which averages about $270,000, economic development will be seemingly impossible in many parts of the State. But it goes further than that because EPA can also issue civil penalties for violations of a permit or for failing to have a permit when it thinks you should have one. These penalties can be assessed at a rate of up to $37,500 per day and doubled if the person being fined has been issued an administrative compliance order and EPA decides there has been a violation of that order. The threat of these penalties is another cost that people have to take into account when they are developing property. There are so many places in Alaska that are more than 4,000 feet away from some kind of water. We are close to water. We are close to water everywhere. We have too many rivers, too many lakes, too many wetlands. We love them all. But we are the only State that has permafrost, and we have no idea at this point in time whether or not, and under what circumstances, these areas might be regulated. We have incredible uncertainty working against. The bottom line is that the new WOTUS rule will have results that in many cases will just be absurd in Alaska and add significant, significant costs. For us, this rule is the equivalent of the Roadless Rule that killed off logging in the Tongass National Forest, ending hundreds of jobs. I know this is an issue that many of us in this body care about, many of us in this country care about. It speaks to what we see when we have agencies that go beyond their jurisdictional authority, that go beyond the scope of the laws that were passed with good intentions. I want us to get back to that place of laws that allow us to have clean air, clean water. But when we see interpretations like we have with this, it is time to stop them. Madam President, I thank my colleague for the indulgence of some additional time. I yield the floor.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to continue for an additional 4 minutes.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I came to the floor today to speak about an issue--a regulation that has raised a level of concern and controversy in my State of Alaska like no other we have seen in a long time, and this is in regard to the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers and their release of a final version of a rule that significantly increases the ability of these agencies to regulate more of our land and our water. I am speaking specifically to the rule that expands the definition of ``waters of the United States'' under the Clean Water Act. Coming from the State of Nebraska, an agriculture State, I am sure the Presiding Officer has heard concerns from constituents and farmers about the expansion of this definition and what it may mean to our economies. The EPA claims this rule--and we lovingly refer to it as WOTUS--is a clarification to provide certainty and predictability as to where clean air permits are required. But the view of so many Alaskans--and really the view around the country--is that this rule is far beyond a simple clarification because it substantially increases EPA's regulatory reach. It will subject countless new projects to permitting requirements that will be difficult to satisfy, increasing cost and certainly increasing project delays. The application of the WOTUS in Alaska is expansive and it is negative. It is something I have described as a showstopper in the past, and none of the changes in the final rule alter that description. If anything, they just serve to reinforce it. The rule really was a showstopper when it was drafted, and it remains at least as bad and damaging today. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there are more than 174 million acres in Alaska that are wetlands. There are 174 million acres in the State that are considered wetlands, so compare this: The entire State of Texas is 172 million acres. Everyone in the lower 48 thinks Texas is a pretty big State. My friend John Cornyn was here earlier. Texas has 172 million acres. In Alaska, we have 174 million acres of wetlands. So take the whole State of Texas and turn it into wetlands, and that is what we are looking at in Alaska. Look at this map for a little bit of context. Under the old rule, 43.3 percent of Alaska's surface is considered wetlands compared to about 5.2 percent of the surface area in the lower 48. This map is pulled from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's wetlands finder Web site. It may be difficult to see, but these areas in the brighter green are all the wetlands. The area of southeastern Alaska, where I was born and raised, is entirely wetlands. The entire southeastern part of the State is wetlands--in Fairbanks, in the interior area, Southcentral, all around Prince William Sound, all the southwest. But I think it is important to note that this Web site which Fish and Wildlife has is lacking data for a significant part of Alaska, and so the map is effectively incomplete. The last study conducted by the Service on the status of wetlands in the State was done back in 1994, which really puts it out of date. It doesn't take into account the recent Supreme Court decisions of Rapanos and SWANCC. So we have another map here that I think is instructive to look at as well. This map is pulled from a study by the University of Michigan and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. In this map, they use L-band radar satellite imagery. It probably produces a more complete and accurate view of the wetlands in the State. Again, we see all of these areas that are considered wetlands, but, in effect, more parts of the State are considered wetlands or viewed as wetlands than not. So what we have between these two maps--between what Fish and Wildlife has done and what the University of Michigan and the California Institute of Technology has done--are some discrepancies, but it illustrates the problem. The problem is that nobody really knows what will be considered wetlands by the EPA and by the Corps, and if the new rule takes effect, that problem will only be compounded because it declares that any water or wetland within 4,000 feet of a ``categorically jurisdictional water'' will now be subject to this ``significant nexus'' analysis. That analysis will include the entire water at issue even if only a tiny part of that lies within the 4,000- foot boundary. If you are like most Americans, you probably and understandably have no idea how to define a categorically jurisdictional water. You probably don't have any interest in learning how to define it. But what you may soon find is that it is going to impact you because it will include all waters used or susceptible to use in interstate commerce, all interstate waters, the territorial seas, all tributaries to those bodies of waters, and all waters adjacent to all those other enumerated waters. That is a lot of water. Again, you probably and understandably aren't familiar with this significant nexus analysis, either. I mean, really, what does that mean? Here is a way to help put it into context. If you have a 500-acre plot of land and within that 500 acres you have 10 square feet that are within 4,000 feet of any jurisdictional water, your entire parcel--the whole 500-acre plot--will now be evaluated as a whole. Even though the area we are talking about where there are wetlands is like 10 square feet out of 500 acres, the whole thing is considered as a whole. The significant nexus analysis must include all similarly situated waters. So, again, you will have a situation where EPA and the Corps are going to interpret broadly. What does all this mean in terms of application? It is interesting, looking at maps and having this discussion about categorically jurisdictional waters and significant nexus, but let's take a specific example. Take the community of Fairbanks, where I spent a lot of time growing up. Fairbanks is in a valley, it is in the Tanana Valley surrounded by a pretty large watershed. The Tanana River, Chena River, we have a situation in this area in Fairbanks where all of the wetlands in the basin have been declared similarly situated. What that means is that a landowner will be forced to prove that none of the wetlands in the basin, as a whole, have a significant physical, chemical or biological connection to either the Tanana or the Chena Rivers. That is practically an impossible hurdle. There are thousands of acres of wetlands in that basin that are now all effectively subject to jurisdiction under this new rule. Every single person who wants to do any sort of development in Alaska's second-largest city will now be required to get some form of a permit. This includes the guy who wants to build a cabin up on Chena Ridge or the small dredge operator out in the Goldstream Valley or the developer out in North Pole who wants to put in a new subdivision. To all of them: Go out and get your permit. The bureaucratic mess that is the 404 permitting process has already held back crucial development within the State, and this new rule is only going to make things worse. Now, I wish to go further to the Fairbanks example and to tell the story of Richard Schok. He has a company called Flowline. He has been engaged in an ongoing battle with the Corps since May 21, 2008. That was the day Richard submitted a permit application to the Corps. It was a reapplication for a permit which had been granted back in 2003. We might think, OK, this is just a reapplication. This is a permit which has been in place now for 5 years. It should have been an easy matter. Instead, Richard is still fighting the Corps--this many years after, still fighting the Corps for a new permit. Since 2008, the Corps has connected the piece of property at issue to the Tanana River, the Chena River, and something known as Channel B, which is a manmade waterway used for flood control purposes. The Agency's first attempt to establish jurisdiction over his private land, which consists of 455 acres outside of Fairbanks, was through the Tanana River. They looked at it, and after administrative review, it was held there was no connection between the subject land and the Tanana. So we would have thought we were done with it. But, no, rather than just allow Mr. Schok to develop his private land, the Corps then switched theories on him and said: No, we think the land is connected to the Chena River instead. But then they went further than that. They settled on a third theory, and that was that the wetlands had a direct connection to Channel B. Channel B is over 2 miles away from Mr. Schok's property via a small 20- to 50-foot-wide wetland arm, since Channel B drains into the Chena River. So when you are talking about a significant nexus, how remote could you possibly be. So there are a couple problems with this analysis. First, the strip of land they labeled as wetlands wasn't wetlands at all. People drive four-wheelers on it. You can walk on it in tennis shoes. Basically, this is the land they are describing as wetlands. The guy has taken a core sample here. It is muddy underneath, but effectively this is what is being considered the wetlands. Second, Channel B contributes less than 1 percent of the total flow to the Chena River. We would think that should not suffice for a finding of a significant nexus, but the Corps thinks it does. So to date, this permitting battle has cost Mr. Schok over $200,000, and that doesn't count the 1,000 man-hours he and his staff have put into the project. All he is trying to do is move his business from its current location, which is limited in size, to this new piece of land--his private property--and open a new powder coating plant. The move would allow him to expand his operations, employ more people, and contribute to the growth of Alaska. But since 2008, he can't make it happen.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I want to mention very quickly what is on the front page of my newspapers in the State of Alaska this week and has been for a couple of weeks now. Our fire season started very early and with an intensity that has really attracted concern not only within the State but outside the State. Currently, we have about 545 fires that have begun within the State, both in the interior, where we traditionally see them, but also down in Southcentral, fires that have taken homes and properties. In the first part of the fire season, there was a great deal of attention on the community of Willow, an area that hosts the homes of many of our famous and our infamous dog mushers, mushers who mush along the Iditarod Trail and other parts. The articles have been about the dislocation of not only the mushers who have lost their homes but also trying to find places for up to 600 sled dogs for temporary relocation. So there has been a great deal of concern about the fire status in Alaska. As I mentioned, 545 fires have burned, 427,881 acres as of yesterday evening. That is a significant total. It is a very significant total, but it is pretty small in comparison to where we were in 2004 when we saw almost 5 million acres burn. In 2004, 4.7 million acres burned, and in 2005, we had 2.2 million acres. We are hopeful that the weather is going to change and that we will get on top of this. But when I was home in Fairbanks in the interior on Saturday, on Saturday alone we saw 6,500 lightning strikes at a time and a place where it is very dry in the interior and has been for some time. So fire danger is very real. My point this morning is not to give the weather report but to acknowledge publicly the efforts of the men and women who have been engaged so bravely and so heroically in fighting these wildland fires, fighting these fires all over the State in extreme conditions, in difficult conditions where wind can come in at the last minute and change the direction of the fires and not only threaten the property but the safety of our firefighters. Right now, we have about 3,300 fire personnel in the State of Alaska. About 2,200 of them are fighting fires on the ground. Over 1,000 of these are men and women from Alaska. Many of them are hotshots and are firefighters from the villages who have a great deal of expertise, but we also rely on many who come from the lower 48 to assist us during this time of our wildfires. We thank them and we pray for their safety and for those who have been left homeless, whose property has been damaged, whose lives have been upended by these very difficult fires. Know that our hearts go out to you, and whatever efforts we are able to provide for assistance, we stand ready to do so. And a very heartfelt thank-you to those who are fighting these fires.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I wish to say a couple of things before I speak to the issue that brought me to the floor today. I have been listening to our leader from Texas talk about so many of the advances we have seen in the Senate this session. I think it is important to acknowledge and note that we are making progress. Often we get labeled in the media for being that ``do-nothing Congress,'' that entity which is just engaged in loggerheads and deadlock. But I think the truth is and the facts on the ground are that we are seeing substantive legislation passed, just as the Senator from Texas has noted. I was pleased to lead off the Senate with the first bill on the floor in this Congress--the Keystone XL Pipeline. It was good to be back at work in a body that was entertaining amendments from both sides and offered by my colleagues without any direction or dictation from the majority side--an opportunity for the give-and-take that comes with not only good debate but not knowing whether your amendment is going to pass or fail. That is how the legislative process works. The occupant of the Chair is a former member of a State body, as am I. We know that is how you build legislation, the good, constructive back-and-forth. We saw that with the Keystone XL debate. We moved that through both bodies. The President chose to veto it. I think it is a mistake on his part. I would like to see us resolve that eventually. But I do think it reflects the way that we as a Chamber can work and the way a constructive majority can work. So I applaud the leadership of the majority in getting us to this point and through some very difficult issues. We are going to have some good things coming up, and I look forward to further engaging in debate on those.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Very touching story. This year, once again, we reflect on the service of Trooper James A. Moen to our State. At the same time we recognize the continuing contributions of his daughter, Megan, without whom we would not know as much about the triumphs, the risks and the sacrifices made by the troopers who keep Alaskans safe.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, on Thursday, the Alaska State Troopers will pause to recognize the 14th anniversary of the loss of Trooper James A. Moen. Trooper Moen, assigned to fish and wildlife protection duties, was killed in an aircraft accident while on law enforcement patrol near Lake Iliamna, AK. Trooper Moen was piloting the single-engine Piper Cub float plane when it crashed for unknown reasons. His remains were recovered by troopers who hiked in to the scene. Trooper Moen had served with the Alaska State Troopers--fish and wildlife protection for over 18 years and had over 4,000 hours of flight time as both a military and civilian pilot. He was survived by his wife and four children. One of Trooper Moen's children is Megan Peters, a spokesperson for the Alaska State Troopers. Megan's name is perhaps better known among Alaskans than her father's was. But one thing that Alaskans may not know is that Megan plays a leading role in organizing the Alaska police memorial ceremony each May. While all Alaska's law enforcement officers who gave their lives in the line of duty are recognized in this ceremony, the emphasis is on honoring those who passed in the preceding year. There is a certain irony to Megan's involvement in all this. During Police Week, Megan devotes her energy to comforting the families of other fallen officers. But who is there to recognize and comfort Megan, herself a survivor of a law enforcement tragedy? That irony was not lost on Mallory Peebles, a reporter from KTUU Television in Anchorage. During the 2013 ceremony, Mallory devoted a segment of Channel 2 News to telling Megan's story--then and now. So this year, through this message in the Congressional Record, it is my intention to honor both father and daughter. The legacy of Trooper James A. Moen very much lives on in the work of his daughter Megan. I didn't know Trooper Moen, but I have to believe that he would be very proud of Megan's work. My staff and I rely on Megan throughout the year for information on public safety issues in Alaska. She is the go-to person and gets us the answers we need on short deadline. We appreciate her knowledge and diligence, but rarely do we think to take a moment to say thank you. I ask unanimous consent that Mallory Peebles report on the work of Megan Peters be printed in the Record.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation needed to provide additional options for how Ketchikan and parts of Southeast Alaska can receive additional clean, renewable electricity in the future. Today I am introducing legislation being requested by Cape Fox Native Corp. of Ketchikan, Alaska Power & Telephone Co., and the City of Saxman to extend a 2002 stay on the hydroelectric construction license for the Mahoney Lake project. This bill will effectively require the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to grant another 10- year extension of the construction license for the project proposed northeast of downtown Ketchikan, in hopes that greater clarity will be obtained within the next decade on how to supply power to the region in the future. Mahoney Lake was first proposed as a 9.6-megawatt, MW, lake-tap hydroelectric project in the early 1990s. By 2002 the sponsors had not received a power purchase agreement, PPA, and had exhausted the then allowed FERC extensions of their construction license. In June 2002 they asked former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens to win legislative approval of a stay so they wouldn't lose the license. Effectively, they wanted the license expiration to be stayed until after completion of the then proposed Swan-Tyee electrical transmission intertie--in hopes that such completion would clarify future electrical needs in the community. That project has since been finished, triggering the potential end of the 2002 license stay. The entities backing Mahoney Lake's construction have spent more than $4 million on engineering and environmental studies--money in jeopardy of being wasted, if the stay and a continuation of the construction license is not approved by Congress. For that and a host of other reasons, I am introducing this legislation to extend the construction license and normal additional license periods under FERC rules for this project. Ketchikan, which recently received more clean, renewable energy with the completion of the Whitman Lake hydroelectricity project, likely will need additional power within the next decade. Currently the Southeast Alaska Power Authority, SEAPA, is conducting a review of all potential power sources. As part of that study the authority is studying the merits of a host of projects, including construction of Mahoney Lake. The authority, for example, is considering whether to raise the height of the existing spillway of the Swan Lake project to hold more water and generate more power. The authority is considering whether to purchase power from two potential Metlakatla hydro projects: the 4MW Triangle Lake or the 4.6 MW Lower Todd Lake projects on Annette Island. And the authority is also checking the potential economics and costs, including transmission lines, of new projects throughout the area. By this legislation I am simply trying to keep Mahoney Lake, which may be able to produce 41.6 gigawatts of additional power annually for the Ketchikan area, viable as a potential renewable energy project until that comprehensive review is finished in 2016 or perhaps in 2017. The three entities that currently hold the license for Mahoney Lake have certainly spent more than enough on construction to meet FERC requirements that licensees show they are serious about progressing a project and aren't simply ``stockpiling'' hydroelectric permits/licenses. Cape Fox Native Corporation, especially, is deserving of an extension given its unique position under terms of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, ANCSA, Cape Fox was ``distinctly disadvantaged'' in its land selections under ANCSA because of Ketchikan land protections, the location of the Annette Island Indian reservation, and the then long-term timber contracts in the area owned at the time by the Ketchikan Pulp Corporation. All three issues prevented Cape Fox from selecting most of its lands inside its core selection areas. Arguably the Mahoney Lake hydro project site is the only valuable land that the corporation was allowed to select inside its core selection area, under the bill that settled aboriginal land claims in Alaska. This legislation will not advantage Mahoney Lake over any other project that may be considered to provide low-cost hydroelectric power to the region. But its timely passage will level the playing field so that Mahoney Lake can be considered on the same economic grounds as all other future power projects in southern Southeast Alaska. I hope for the bill's swift passage in this Congress.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that will speed the next phase of a renewable energy project in my home State of Alaska, that Congress effectively authorized 35 years ago. Back in 1980, Congress in Section 1325 of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, noted that the Kodiak Electric Association Inc., KEA, then wished to build a lake-tap hydroelectric project by taking water from Terror Lake, a high alpine lake, whiph was placed just inside the boundary line of Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge by the act. At the time KEA had wanted to build a 20 megawatt hydroelectric project inside the refuge to power the namesake community on Kodiak Island. Under the law, the Secretary of the Interior was to approve the project and its expansion on a ``case-by-case'' basis--the law simply saying that nothing in the 1980 Act ``shall be construed as necessarily prohibiting or mandating the construction'' of the project. The Secretary the next year approved the power project, which started generation in the mid 1980's. A third 10-megawatt turbine since was added to the project in 2012-13. Kodiak Electric Association, a rural electric cooperative, is a leader in Alaska in promoting renewable energy. In 2014, 99.7 percent of its total electricity came from hydroelectric generation and from a Pillar Mountain wind turbine farm--the first community in Alaska to be nearly 100 percent supplied by renewable energy sources. But that designation will disappear if the next phase of the originally planned Terror Lake project is not constructed, since the utility will need to resume burning more diesel fuel to produce power if additional hydroelectric generation from the lake is not permitted. That will result in the burning of 2 million gallons of diesel fuel--in a typical year given current electricity load forecasts--that will emit 26,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually. The new expansion involves diverting five small streams located on Alaska State lands in the adjacent Upper Hidden Basin--streams branching off the East and West Upper Hidden Creeks--and allowing the water to flow into Terror Lake through an underground tunnel that will be drilled through the ridge line marking the boundary between State and refuge lands. The project, which will impact about 13 acres of refuge lands, 3 acres being made up by the tunnel itself, will have a single visible impact, some grading for a construction laydown area on the rocky slopes above the upper end of the lake, and the ``natural'' waterfall that will result from water entering the lake from the tunnel. The entire extent of the project involves drilling a 1.22 mile- long tunnel, about 2,150 feet by current estimates being on refuge lands, plus the diversion structure on the State's creeks, a water pipeline to carry water from the East Creek over to the main diversion structure located on the West Creek, and a related access road. The project should have no impact on the environment or wildlife, since the amount of water being diverted from the 4 square mile basin is so slight as to have no impact on fisheries at the mouth of the Kizhuyak River on the east side of Kodiak Island at Ugak Bay, into which the Hidden Basin Creeks flow. The project should not affect the wildlife along the shore of the steep, rocky lake. The project will not involve adding turbines or equipment to the existing Terror Lake powerhouse, as the project will not increase the maximum amount of megawatt production, but simply increase the annual total production of electricity from the power project. Terror Lake in 2014, a normal water year, produced 134 gigawatt-hours of electricity. By the addition it should produce about 30 additional gigawatt-hours annually, about a 25 percent increase. The project, besides allowing KEA to utilize clean, renewable energy, should also enhance the utility's innovative wind-hydro integration system and further its micro-grid energy storage technology. While this project should be able to proceed by seeking administrative approvals either because of its ANILCA inclusion or because of Title 11 of ANILCA, which governs future rights-of-way requests, I am introducing legislation seeking Congressional approval to speed up the start of construction on the power project. Without Congressional approval, the utility will need to fund two environmental impact statements, EIS's, instead of one, covering the exact same issues, delaying the start of construction by years. With congressional approval, the project will still face the delay of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission conducting a single EIS as part of its hydro licensing amendment process. The project still will be subject to any conditions to protect fisheries or wildlife placed on the project by the USF&WS under Section 4(e) of the Federal Power Act. But it will have to clear only one such EIS process, sparing rate payers on Kodiak Island a doubling of the permitting expense. This authorization will simply allow another phase of the Terror Lake project to be constructed, as it was envisioned nearly 40 years ago. In the 1978 feasibility plan, two years before passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the Hidden Basin Creek diversion was clearly outlined. ``This scheme is the most economical means of increasing the output of the development . . . and it can be built whenever the growth in power demand in Kodiak justifies it. Therefore, the scheme is included in the present report as a recommended future development,'' said the Terror Lake hydro report in December 1978. The project will permit additional clean, renewable energy to be generated for the inhabitants of Kodiak Island, but without any environmental or negative fishery or wildlife consequences. This bill, if approved by Congress this year, will produce that power more quickly and at less cost than will be involved should a lengthy, multiple administrative review take place. It is unfortunate, but in the past 35 years since passage of the Alaska lands act, no entity has ever completed the lengthy process and received a right-of-way permit under the bureaucratic process set up by Title 11 of ANILCA. I hope that this project will not have to attempt to be the first to actually navigate the Title 11 right-of-way process in order to proceed. I hope Congress will quickly approve this authorization so that more renewable electricity can flow to the citizens of Kodiak in the near future.