Western lawmakers and leaders are rallying behind a disingenuous argument to solve the housing affordability crisis by privatizing public lands. Harriet Hageman, Wyoming's new congresswoman, mentioned the idea of using public lands to solve Teton County's housing crisis at a recent town hall meeting. Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo has also embraced the idea, calling for a "timely release" of Bureau of Land Management lands. And the Western Governors' Association, chaired by Colorado Governor Jared Polis, includes language in its 2023 housing policy resolution requesting that Congress make transferring federal land to local governments easier.
Hiding behind a guise of concern for Westerners, U.S. Senator Mike Lee of Utah, an advocate for land transfer, has a bill ready to go to answer these misguided calls. In the last Congress, Lee introduced a bill that would allow for the nomination of unlimited tracts of unprotected national public land to be transferred by the Interior Department to state and local governments, which could then sell the lands to private buyers to develop with minimal—and temporary—restrictions. The bill lacks meaningful affordability or density requirements to ensure that housing built on transferred public lands actually addresses the West's housing affordability challenges and includes commercial allowances that would encourage the construction of hotels and short-term rentals.
A one-pager from the Center for Western Priorities provides a full account of the bill's shortcomings and highlights policy solutions that already exist for state and local governments that are serious about addressing housing affordability.
Environmental Protection Agency vetoes Pebble Mine
In its final determination for the Bristol Bay watershed, the EPA exercised a seldom-used authority under the Clean Water Act to protect Alaska's Bristol Bay from the proposed Pebble Mine by prohibiting the disposal of mine waste in certain waters within the watershed, finding that such activity would have "unacceptable adverse impacts" on salmon fisheries. This effectively blocks the proposed Pebble Mine as well as other future mines that would have similar or greater impacts.
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In a hundred years, we will have lost almost 20 percent of our forests. That’s like all of Southern California’s forests being gone, or all of the Southern Sierras being gone.”
