Rep. Lewis Loses His Way in the Desert

There is much we admire about Rep. Jerry Lewis, the able Republican from Redlands. His recent vote to scuttle efforts to allow new oil drilling off the California coast demonstrated both the political courage to buck his own party’s leadership and healthy bipartisanship.

However, except for a few special interests, all Californians should be outraged by Lewis’ petulant guerrilla warfare against the California Desert Protection Act, supported heavily by the public and passed by Congress last year. Lewis, who opposed passage, has now persuaded the House Appropriations Committee to cut the National Park Service’s budget for the 1.2-million-acre Mojave National Preserve to $1, transferring the remaining $599,999 back to the Bureau of Land Management, which used to operate the land under looser rules for mining, grazing and other commercial uses.

The action appears legally dubious. Congress explicitly turned management of the land over to the park service. Lewis says he wanted to send the service “an unmistakable message” about what he called its highhanded treatment of desert residents.

But most of this is plain misunderstanding. For example, some local private landowners mistakenly thought new signs barring commercial traffic applied to their propane deliveries rather than just to 18-wheelers. And signs limiting access to wilderness roads did not apply to holders of mining and grazing permits. At any rate, how highhanded can the park service get with only three rangers to cover an area the size of Delaware?

Such issues are easily resolved. More difficult are deeper ones of balancing the law’s intention of preserving this fragile, if not pristine, desert land against legitimate economic needs of mining, ranching and other interests. These are significant industries in this arid, sparsely populated region. But tourism is a potentially larger one, as business leaders in nearby Baker have realized.

The law preserves existing mining rights in the Mojave. For example, Pluess-Stauffer Inc. has 90 undeveloped claims in 2,200 acres east of the New York Mountains to mine limestone, a key industrial component of paints, roofing materials, even toothpaste. The park service has balked at allowing the company to mine by environmentally destructive open strip mining rather than more costly tunneling. The company says tunneling is impossible, because the minerals lie at or near the surface, and that it willingly complies with laws to restore land after such mining.

This is a legitimate issue, but one that Lewis could better help resolve by negotiating with Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt than by engaging in legislative sabotage. Perhaps Lewis is posturing to make points with influential local constituents and contributors. He has now made his point, and gotten the attention of the park service. We assume he privately hopes now the Senate will correct his folly.