5

specific reference to power projects in section 4(e) of the bill which authorizes the President to permit certain power uses in specific wilderness areas in national forests "upon his determination that such use or uses * * * will better serve the interests of the United States and the people thereof than will its denial," emphasizes the need for an adequate savings clause in order to safeguard the public interest in the development of waterpower resources on lands belonging to the United States through licenses under the Federal Power Act and to eliminate any misunderstanding that may otherwise exist. For the reasons given in the preceding report on H.R. 5808, the Commission recommends that the bill be amended by adding a new subsection 4 (j) to read as follows: "Nothing in this Act shall be construed as superseding, modifying, repealing, or otherwise affecting the provisions of the Federal Power Act (16 U.S.C. 792–825r). H.R. 295, H.R. 930, and H.R. 9070 (groups 3, 4, and 5)

6

H.R. 930 and H.R. 9070 are subject to the same deficiencies as H.R. 9162; namely, failure to include a provision comparable to section 11 of H.R. 5808 preserving the Federal Power Commission's jurisdiction to issue licenses authorizing the use of lands in the wilderness system for power purposes. All three bills include special provisions comparable to section 6(c) (2), H.R. 5808, and section 4(e), H.R. 9162, authorizing the President to permit power uses in specific areas in national forests. The Commission's views on the necessity of the savings clause and the interpretation to be placed on the special provisions are fully stated in the above discussion on H.R. 5808 and H.R. 9162. In addition, H.R. 2957 and H.R. 930 are defective in that they make no provision for public notice and hearing or for obtaining the views of interested Federal agencies with respect to the inclusion of lands within the wilderness system. For these reasons the Commission does not favor the enactment of H.R. 295, H.R. 930, and H.R. 9070 as now drafted.

FEDERAL POWER COMMISSION, By JOSEPH C. SWIDLER, Chairman.

(Subsequently the committee received the following communication :)

TREASURY DEPARTMENT,

ASSISTANT SECRETARY,
Washington, April 28, 1964.

Hon. WAYNE N. ASPINALL,

Chairman, Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs,
House of Representatives, Washington, D.C.

DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: This is in response to your request for this Department's views on S. 4 (88th Cong., 1st sess.) entitled "An act to establish a National Wilderness Preservation System for the permanent good of the whole people, and for other purposes."

S. 4 would allow certain Federal lands to be set aside in a wilderness system for the use and enjoyment of the American people. Section 8 of the bill would authorize the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture to accept private contributions and gifts to be used to further the purposes of the act. The second sentence of section 8 would provide that

"Any such contributions or gifts shall, for purposes of Federal income, estate, and gift taxes, be considered a contribution or gift to or for the use of the United States for an exclusively public purpose, and may be deducted as such under the provisions of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, subject to all applicable limitations and restrictions contained therein."

Sections 170, 2055, and 2522 of the Internal Revenue Code now provide that gifts to or for the use of the United States for exclusively public purposes are allowable as deductions for Federal income, estate, and gift tax purposes. Therefore, there is no need for a specific provision in S. 4 to accomplish this result. The Department believes that tax provisions generally should not be incorporated in non-tax legislation and that the incorporation is in S. 4 of a tax provision, which is not necessary to achieve the objectives of the bill, would provide an undesirable precedent in other areas.

5 These power uses include the establishment and maintenance of reservoirs, water conservation works, power projects, transmission lines, and other facilities needed in the public interest.

6 These provisions identified by section are: H.R. 295, sec. 6(c) (2); H.R. 930, sec. 6(c) (2); H.R. 9070, sec. 4 (d) (3)-specifies "power projects."

7 Sec. 11, H.R. 295, savings clause, is identical to sec. 11, H.R. 5808.

In view of the foregoing, the Department recommends that the second sentence of section 8 be deleted from S. 4.

The Bureau of the Budget has advised the Treasury Department that there is no objection from the standpoint of the administration's program to the presentation of this report.

Sincerely yours,

STANLEY S. SURREY.

Mr. BARING. This subcommittee of the House Interior Committee held hearings in Olympia, Wash., on January 9, 1964, in Denver, Colo., on January 10 and 11, 1964; and in Las Vegas on January 13 and 14,

1964.

Our first witness this morning is our colleague from California, the Honorable George P. Miller, author of H.R. 2894.

Mr. Miller, we welcome you before the committee.

STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE P. MILLER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I want to thank you for the privilege of coming here this morning. I have long been an advocate of a wilderness bill. This dates back to the time I once served on one of the forerunners of this committee.

I still believe it is in the interest of this country and the people of this country that we preserve certain areas in as near their pristine fashion as it is possible to preserve them. We have seen the changes which have taken place with the impact of civilization; we have seen rivers that once flowed freely to the sea particularly curtailed where they no longer go to the sea; we have seen the desecration of our land. As time goes on, if this is allowed to persist, areas that we think are now worthless will be lost to us and thus we will lose forever the character of the country as it was when the wilderness area became part of the great United States.

I believe these areas are necessary for the preservation of watersheds, for the preservation of grasslands and other lands, and to pass on to our children's children as a part of our heritage.

I can well remember the first year that the Yosemite National Park was opened up to winter traffic. I was with a group that went in that year. There was just a handful of people who took the all-winter road into Yosemite Park. They had one part of the so-called inn open, and I presume the weekend I was in there, not more than a hundred people visited the park. Go into Yosemite Valley at any time now and there is the same crowded condition that you find on F Street in Washington, Broadway in New York, or Broadway in Oakland, Calif., during the Christmas holidays. And this is true of our other national parks. As our population increases, this pressure is going to become all the greater.

Now, because of my work, which is quite intensive, I have not been able to follow this bill and its developments as much as I would have liked; therefore I have no specific recommendation to make with respect to amendments. I know this will be done by very competent people. I have great confidence in this committee, as I have in other committees of the House. But I think the time has long passed when we sit back and do nothing about this important subject.

I am mindful, in some of the little research I have had to do in connection with rocketry, comparing opinions of present-day experts with the factor of reality, that in about 1847 a great Senator stood up in the Senate of the United States, debating whether the Congress should appropriate money to send an expedition across the continent to see if it would be feasible to build a railroad from coast to coast, and concluded his speech by saying:

Mr. President, what do we want with these wilds of the West? They are deserts with cactus and rattlesnakes, impenetrable mountains covered with snow to their very bases. I won't vote 1 cent to bring this west coast 1 inch closer to Boston than it is today.

And the man who said that was Daniel Webster, whose motto is over the House of Representatives, telling us to take care of our national resources. And that only a little over a hundred years ago. What does the next hundred years hold in retrospect?

So time is of the essence in getting this job done, and I hope that the committe in its wisdom passes out a bill with which we can live. I hope we can see this enacted into law this session.

I may point out that I am not entirely unfamiliar with some of the needs for preserving our wilderness because for 4 years before coming to the Congress I was the executive officer of the California Division of Fish and Game. We were in the same department with our parks and resources groups, and I know the pressures that come for the release and exploitation of unoccupied lands. I have seen these, I have felt them. But in the interests of future generations, I urge you to

act now.

I have not had a formal statement, Mr. Chairman, but I will try to elucidate on anything I have said.

Mr. BARING. The chairman of the full committee.

Mr. ASPINALL. Mr. Chairman, everybody knows the heart and the mind and the love of our good colleague from California, Mr. Miller, and how he was prompted by his love for the people and his love of great values in our out of doors.

Mr. Chairman, Daniel Webster, if he had been at Queen Isabella's court in 1491, more than likely, too, would have said the same thing to Queen Isabella as he said about the West; would be not?

Mr. MILLER. I am sure he would have. And before that, if he had been talking to Prince Henry, of Portugal, who was the man to make the breakthrough in teaching us to use caravels in exploring the coast of Africa, he would have been against that, too.

Mr. ASPINALL. I cannot quite understand your statement about Yosemite, which is one of the finest places we have in this country. I take it, if you would have known at the time, you would rather have had Yosemite as a wilderness area than as a national park. Is that right? I am not trying to needle you, George, and let me affectionately call you George, but just for the record.

Mr. MILLER. I pointed that out to show you the pressure of population on these areas, and I would not want to deny to the people of this country the beauties of Yosemite, or of Yellowstone, or of the Grand Canyon or any national park. This is why we have them. But the pressures are there as you know, the pressures are there. So we had better start thinking about preserving some of these resources for future generations.

Mr. ASPINALL. Then that leads me to my next question, of course, and that is, when you talk about pressures you say pressures on the unused land. Of course, it is pressures on the economy of the country, too, that is involved. It is pressures on the people that is involved. Although I want you to know, and those who are in sound of my voice, I am in favor of wilderness, too, just like you are. I do think we have to keep in mind, not only the pressures of the people in the metropolitan areas, which you represent so ably, but also of the rural areas which I represent. They have a right to their own economic well-being also. As we think in terms of wilderness, we just cannot think in terms of taking vast tracts of land away from areas which are economically bound to these tracts of land any more than you can think of doing what we should have done in 1685 or 1785, whichever date you want to take, it makes no difference, and say that our forefathers should have set aside great areas of the Eastern States where they need wilderness far more than they do in the West at the present time.

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Chairman, I cannot argue with you because you are so much more knowledgeable than I am in this field, but I would say this is one of the tragedies that some of these areas were not set aside.

Just the other day I was talking to very high ranking Army officer who is going to retire, and he wants to buy some land in one of the places not too far distant from here. But he said that the land he was looking at had about 3 miles frontage on the headwaters of the Rapidan River. It is in private ownership and it can be sold. I thought here, then, begins the encroachment in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I also thought it would be a fine investment to go out and buy some of these lands that you can get for a few hundred dollars an acre today because in the future it will be worth a lot more if you are interested in making that type of profit.

Mr. ASPINALL. I will quit with one more thing. I understand that you are for the land and water conservation fund bill for that very purpose?

Mr. MILLER. Yes.

Mr. ASPINALL. We are all agreed.

Mr. MILLER. You and I are together. All we have to do is think a little bit about the future.

You know I know something about the uses of these lands, too. If you go back to World War I, up in Mr. Duncan's country, or a little north of it—he is near to the Olympic Peninsula, I think, nearer than any of you sitting up there we had to get spruce out of the forests for airplane propellers, and the Olympic Peninsula had always been closed. In order to get the spruce you do not know how much pine we had to take out that went into the profits of people, and you and I know that in the forests today there is one group that will tell you, "Let us go in and market or crop these mature trees because these mature trees fall and they breed worms and disease." Out in the forests from the time beyond the memory of man, beyond the memory of any man, how did the primeval forest exist when they were not cropped off? So we can always find good reasons why we should do this.

But you and I, in your part of the country and mine, and Mr. Johnson's district, have seen overgrazing in our forests and the pressures which brought that on-overgrazing in our grasslands and sometimes

in our forests. I am certain we are familiar with some of the things that have taken place because we have penned the wildlife in and confined it too closely where it could not get out. We have a hard time controlling it.

Let's keep some of the land resource for the future.

Mr. ASPINALL. But, a great deal of it comes from the fact that the people from the cities have come out into the wild forests of the West and have used the areas without too much supervision. Most of the uses of the people who live in the area are not of the same type as that of the city folk who come to visit.

Mr. MILLER. I agree with you there, but you see the people who live in the cities, the people who live in Denver, are very happy to have you who live in the outlands come into Denver to do your shopping. Maybe if the people in the outlands did not come into the cities, the people in the cities would not be so interested in going to the outlands.

Mr. ASPINALL. That is all.

Mr. BARING. The gentleman from Maryland?

Mr. MORTON. I certainly want to add to the chairman of the full committee's comment, Mr. Miller, as to your love for the land and the great park system and the wilderness system in this country. I think you are to be commended, and I think the Department from which you came in the State of California is to be commended. I have had the opportunity of visiting most of the State parks in California as well as the national parks in California, and I think that State is far ahead of many of the others in this development.

But the thing I would like to ask you, sir, is this: I think the areas of disagreement in connection with the discussions I have had on this wilderness bill apply to the management of the land after it gets into the wilderness system. How do you feel about this? What use do you think should be made of land in the wilderness system, if any?

Mr. MILLER. I think that the land can be put to profitable use. I think this committee is capable of working out the rules and regulations under which this can be done so that we can use it to the maximum without destroying it.

I am conscious now of the Vienna Woods, in poetry and song, that surround the city of Vienna. You find vineyards in them, you find cropping of sheep. Part of the dairy supply for Vienna comes from these lands, but the land is not allowed to change, and it is very closely regulated to make sure that it is not overgrazed or overrun. This was set up 400 years ago. These forests still offer the great green belt around the city of Vienna that is a model for the rest of the cities in the world. We would be much better if we had a green belt around Washington, but it is disappearing rapidly, and I think you as a Marylander realize it.

Mr. MORTON. It certainly is.

I take it, then, you are not a purist in this sense: You are not saying that these lands should be put in a state of preservation without any management whatsoever or without any use whatsoever simply to preserve them for the future?

Mr. MILLER. No.

Mr. MORTON. Rather you believe that a concept should be developed for the utilization, preservation, and conservation of these areas.

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