TU supports the Public Land Renewable Energy Development Act

Repost from National Trout Unlimited

by Kate Miller
July 18, 2019
Original Blog post here.

Bill would help to advance renewable energy projects on public lands in a manner that protects fish and wildlife habitat, and strengthens local economies and communities

Upcoming

TU CEO Chris Wood to testify in support of PLREDA before a House Committee on July 25th at 10 am eastern. Read Chris’ written statement or visit the hearing page to find witness testimony and to watch the hearing live or on replay.

What is PLREDA?

On July 17, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA) introduced the bipartisan Public Land Renewable Energy Development Act (PLREDA). 

• Congressman Gosar’s press release on the bill is available, here.

• Congressman Levin’s press release is here.

The Public Land Renewable Energy Act would create a new system for efficient, responsible renewable energy development on public lands. By identifying priority areas for wind, solar and geothermal development, PLREDA encourages smart siting and efficient permitting of projects in places with high potential for energy and low impact on wildlife and habitat. 

Critically, the act would also strategically direct the royalty revenue from development to invest in local communities, fish and wildlife resources and more efficient permitting for renewable energy projects. 

Why PLREDA?

The nation’s public lands system provides Americans with the some of the world’s richest opportunities for outdoor recreation. In some cases, federal holdings also represent a reasonable setting for well-planned and properly mitigated renewable energy development projects. These energy projects could stimulate job growth, reduce carbon pollution, and contribute to the protection and restoration of fish and wildlife habitat on public lands.

Utility-scale wind and solar projects are a growing presence on our public lands. These projects will help us move toward a clean energy future, but can take up large chunks of land for long periods of time, and may cause some unavoidable impacts on fish, wildlife and water resources and recreational access. The Public Lands Renewable Energy Development Act provides the conservation counterbalance to unavoidable impacts on our public lands.

PLREDA offers a way to offset issues created by development on public lands by designating a conservation fund derived from royalties and other revenues generated by wind and solar energy projects operating on federal land. The bill also directs a portion of the royalty and lease revenues from public land wind and solar projects to compensate for states and counties impacted by development. Read more about the bill details in our factsheet.

Why this Matters for Trout Unlimited

Public lands contain some of the most valuable trout and salmon habitat in the nation. In most western states, public lands comprise more than 70 percent of the available habitat for native trout, representing the vast majority of remaining strongholds for coldwater species. PLREDA offers a way to advance development of renewable energy on public lands in a responsible and innovative fashion, while also ensuring funds flow back into Trout Unlimited’s critical on-the-ground conservation work that benefits anglers and downstream communities.

• Click here to see the TU PLREDA Factsheet and learn more about the bill.

How you can help

We need your help to build even more support for PLREDA. Urge your member of Congress to sign on as co-sponsor of the Public Land Renewable Energy Development Act. 

TU letters / statements:

Upcoming: Chris Wood to testify in support of PLREDA before a House Committee on July 25th at 10am eastern. Read Chris’ written statement or visit the hearing page to find witness testimony and to watch the hearing live or on replay.

• TU Letter to House Natural Resources Subcommittee on expanding renewable energy development on Public Land (April, 2019)

• TU PLREDA Fact Sheet

• Sportsmens groups joint press release re: PLREDA (coming soon!)

That’s all for this one! Please contact Kate Miller, Rob Catalanotto or Steve Moyer with any questions.

SOLD: To the highest bidder

Recently Chris Wood, President and CEO of Trout Unlimited, gave a passionate call to reclaim conservation as a true conservative value.  Read the full op-ed below, which has been reposted from the Denver Post.

Wanted: A conservative conservation agenda

Making public lands available for sale to the highest bidder is not conservative, Chris Wood writes

"A month ago, a fishing buddy in Utah called me in a lather. His senator, Republican Mike Lee, had just used the existence of public lands to compare present-day Utahns to the mistreated subjects of England’s Medieval royal forests. “Their houses were razed and their historic rights trampled!” Lee proclaimed. He promised to introduce legislation to sell, transfer, or otherwise divest of our public lands — our national forests, our national monuments, even, perhaps, our national parks.

My friend couldn’t understand it.

“What is going on with Senator Lee?” he asked. “I have been a Republican my whole life, and there is nothing conservative about transferring public lands from public ownership.”

My friend’s views are by no means uncommon. They aren’t just shared by the overwhelming majority of anglers in my organization, Trout Unlimited, where Republicans and Independents outnumber Democrats by a 2-to-1 margin. They are also shared by a whopping 97 percent of sportsmen and women–including 73 percent of those who voted for President Trump in 2016, according to a recent survey.

The words conservation and conservative share the same Latin root: “conservare,” meaning to keep or hold in a safe state.

Making public lands available for sale to the highest bidder is not conservative. It’s reckless.

It was conservative politicians who largely created the rich fabric of public lands that make America the envy of the world, and that Sen. Lee’s proposals would diminish.

Pictured: President Theodore Roosevelt. Wikipedia Commons.

In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant named 2 million acres of land in the northwest corner of the Wyoming territory, Yellowstone, the world’s first national park. President Theodore Roosevelt protected 230 million acres of public land and created the U.S. Forest Service to promote the “wise use” of national forests. President Nixon signed into law the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act. President H. W. Bush strengthened the Clean Air Act and helped solve the scourge of acid rain.

All these men were, of course, Republican presidents.

What our nation needs today from true conservatives is reaffirmation of a conservative conservation agenda, a set of commonsense policies (such as protection of public lands and clean water) that all Americans can rally behind. This agenda would be guided by a few key principles that should strike a chord with right-leaning Americans:

Where taxpayer dollars are spent, they should be leveraged and spent efficiently. Spending that encourages private philanthropy and state funding should be a priority. For example, in Pennsylvania over the past decade, my organization received approximately $1 million in Chesapeake Bay Program funding and used that to leverage an additional $4 million in investment from private philanthropists and state programs.

The most durable efforts are local. Government is more effective at a local level. So, too, with conservation. Witness then-Gov. Jim Risch — another Republican, by the way — leading a collaborative process in 2006 to protect nearly 9 million acres of public land in his state of Idaho.

Address issues before they become festering problems. Anticipating opportunities is more effective than cleaning up messes. For example, Congress should act on a bill to treat renewable energy development on public lands as a leasable mineral, just like oil and gas, thereby creating a revenue stream for states and counties, and to support restoration work. Demand for renewable energy on public lands is low today, but it will not be in 20 years.

Public efforts should be in the service of critical social needs. Reconnecting rivers to their floodplains, getting rid of obsolete dams, and repairing culverts is great for the fish we anglers love to catch, but it also protects communities and infrastructure from flooding while providing thousands of family-wage jobs. Proactively addressing these risks is fiscally conservative: Every $1 invested in disaster preparedness saves $6 in disaster recovery costs.

Progress is possible. A prime example: Without a single dissenting vote, the House of Representatives last year passed a bill that would make it easier for local communities, mining companies, and nonprofits to clean up abandoned coal mines. The Senate should follow the leadership of nearly the entire Colorado delegation, and support a bill that extends that idea to apply to the clean-up of the tens of thousands of abandoned gold and silver mines in the West that are polluting many of our headwaters.

Conservation is the single most optimistic and affirmative idea that conservatives gave America. What could be more conservative than taking collective action today to make the world a better place for our kids tomorrow?"

Chris Wood is president and CEO of Trout Unlimited, which is dedicated to protecting, conserving, and restoring North America’s trout and salmon fisheries and their watersheds.