Mississippi River in Iowa: CWI calls for lockup of two million miles of private land lying within river "corridors."

While the media and the American people have been focusing their attention on the seedy saga of our impeachable President, that same President has continued with his systematic destruction of our liberties, including implementation of Agenda 21 -- the 40-chapter manifesto to reorganize the world into an eco-socialist gulag controlled by the United Nations and the global elite. Now that the first of the American Heritage Rivers have been designated (see sidebar on page 18), Mr. Clinton is coming out with the granddaddy of all land-use control mechanisms: the Clean Water Initiative.

The potential impact of the Clean Water Initiative (CWI) is breathtaking. It stipulates, among other things:

The creation or restoration of nearly one million acres of wetlands.

	A whopping two million miles of river protection corridors taken almost entirely from private lands.
	Closure of over 20,000 miles of roads on federal lands that are essential to commercial and recreation activities.
	Federal land-use authority over nearly one-half of all watersheds in America.

All this is to be fully implemented between the years 2002 and 2004.

Private Lands Lockup

First announced by Vice President Al Gore in November 1997, the CWI has been formalized into the Clean Water Action Plan, an umbrella for a host of very specific plans to control how and by whom water is used throughout the United States. Predictably, the President has not sought authority from Congress for this action, but claims that authority already exists in the 1972 Clean Water Act, which calls for "fishable and swimmable" waters for all Americans.

Never mind that taxpayers have already spent tens of billions of dollars on cleaning up our water over the past 25 years. That effort, according to the Action Plan, was only focused on "point source" pollution, such as community and city sewage discharge, pollution from large manufacturing facilities, and other concentrated sources. The tough job, contends the Action Plan, still remains to be done: controlling non-point source pollution coming from farming, forestry, urban sprawl, and other human activities.

To judge from the Action Plan, the waters of the U.S. are still in deplorable condition. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that after 25 years of very expensive cleanup efforts, only "sixteen percent of the watersheds in the continental United States have good water quality." But not to worry. The Clean Water Action Plan provides a "blueprint for restoring and protecting the nations precious water resources."

The magnitude of the CWI is stunning. In addition to calling for a host of yet undefined regulations, the Action Plan calls for the creation of two million miles of river and stream corridor buffers and the restoration of 975,000 net acres of wetlands by 2002 and 2005, respectively. The intent is to filter sediments and other pollutants from agricultural and urban runoff before they enter streams and rivers.

According to the Action Plan, only about 25,000 miles of corridors will lie within federal lands, meaning that nearly all of the two million miles of corridors will be on private lands. What the Action Plan conveniently does not tell its readers is that rivers on federal lands already account for about one million of the 3.5 million miles of streams and rivers in the 50 states. So a staggering 80 percent of all private land along America's streams and rivers will likely have stream and river corridors by the year 2002 if CWI goals are met.

Bad Math

But that is just part of this eye-popping plan. Stream and river corridors "range in size from a few feet on either side of a small stream to several miles wide on large river systems." According to the 600-page draft Stream Corridor Restoration, a supporting USDA manual to the CWI's Action Plan, each "corridor should extend across the stream, its banks, the floodplain, and the valley slopes. It should also include a portion of upland for the entire stream length to maintain functional integrity." Therefore, "to the extent feasible, the restoration process should include blockage of artificial drainage systems, removal or setback of artificial levees, and restoration of natural patterns of floodplain topography.... Establishment of inappropriate and narrow corridors can have a net detrimental influence at local and regional scales."

While the Stream Corridor Restoration manual recognizes that legal or social considerations may cause gaps and other limitations to the implementation of this plan, the clear intent is to minimize these impacts--even for urban stream and river corridors. Although nationally, "urban stream buffers range from 20 to 200 feet in width from each side of the stream...a minimum base width of at least 100 feet is recommended to provide adequate stream protection," up to "the full extent of the 100-yr flood plain [and] all undevelopable steep slopes."

The intent of the CWI's Action Plan iseither to purchase the land or, more desirably, sign "conservation easements" (leases) using existing programs like the Conservation Reserve Program, Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, Wetlands Reserve Program, Environmental Quality Incentives Program, Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, and the Forest Legacy Program.

Although there is the appearance that the federal government will pay private landowners for their losses, the numbers just dont add up. Using a bare-bones minimum of 100 feet on both sides of a stream or river, this program would require the withdrawal from human use of 48 million acres.

Most of this effort will buffer agricultural lands often worth over $10,000 an acre. Assuming the government could somehow convince farmers to relinquish jurisdiction of critical water to the federal government by leasing the land as conservation easements for $50 per acre per year, the total cost to the federal government would be nearly $2.5 billion dollars per year--over $600 million in 1999 alone. This figure does not even include the cost of the wetland restoration efforts. Yet President Clinton has only requested about $120 million for corridor restoration work by the USDA in 1999. Either the President is not serious about his own plan, or he plans to use other methods to secure the land for these corridors. Given the federal government's past record, one can only assume that it will use the tried and true way of regulatory confiscation.

Links to Agenda 21

The CWI's blueprint for integrated watershed management and land-use controlcomes right out of the UN's Agenda 2]. Signed by President Bush in 1992 during the UN's "Earth Summit" in Brazil, Agenda 21 lays out a massive blueprint for global eco-government. Agenda 21 represents what is known as "soft law," which establishes goals without any enforcement ability. Enforcement is intended to come via a variety of treaties, foremost among them being the Convention on Biological Diversity. Thankfully, the treaty was derailed in the U.S. Senate in September 1994, after Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) provided damning evidence from the UN Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA) that the treaty would turn up to one-half of America back to wilderness.

The GBA outlines a plan by which vast tracts of land would be set aside as wilderness reserves, interconnected by wilderness corridors that generally follow streams and rivers. Not surprisingly, the CWI provides the template for that process. By withdrawing 5,000 miles of roads from federal lands a year through 2002 (as outlined by the CWI's Action Plan), vast tracts of de facto wilderness would be created within the 40 percent of America that is classified as federal land. Add to this the CWI's river corridor plan, and you have a giant step toward implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity without Senate ratification.

A key element of the Action Plan is a "cooperative approach to restoring and protecting water quality in which state, federal, tribal, and local governments work with stakeholders and interested citizens to (1) identify watersheds not meeting clean water and other natural resource goals, and (2) work cooperatively to focus resources and implement effective strategies to solve these problems."

While the Action Plan gives the appearance of maintaining local control, it is the federal agencies that control the planning process by "coordinating the implementation of national programs" within watersheds. The feds determine which watersheds must be restored or protected through the use of "holistic" and "integrated" techniques such as the EPA's unverifiable "Index of Watershed Indicators." The feds direct the range of possible solutions by "directing program authorities, technical assistance, data, and enforcement resources to help states, tribes, and local communities design and implement their drinking water source water assessment and protection and restoration efforts."

Such doublespeak allows the state and local governments to believe they are collaboratively making the decisions, when in fact the problems and allowable range of solutions are defined by federal agents --all according to Agenda 2].

Cooking the Books

The 1,000 watersheds which the EPA says require restoration and protection are determined by using the EPA's "Index of Watershed Indicators." As it turns out, the index is comprised of 15 totally disparate measurements of watershed condition, such as "contaminated sediments," presence or absence of "four toxic pollutants," "wetland loss index," "urban runoff potential," etc. "For each condition indicator," notes the EPA, "values were selected which, in the EPA's professional judgment, represent an appropriate basis to describe the aquatic resources within the watershed as having good quality, fewer problems, or more problems. Similarly, for each vulnerability indicator, the Agency selected values that we believe are appropriate to differentiate 'lower' from 'higher' vulnerability."

In other words, like mixing apples and oranges, the "Index of Watershed Indicators" is totally subjective and unverifiable. Yet, it is this index that forms the basis for the Clinton Administration's claims that nearly one-half of America's watersheds require the restoration and protection efforts stipulated in the Action Plan.

Not only did the EPA use a subjective method to arrive at its index, but it also cooked the books, apparently in an effort to skew the results to make the numbers appear even worse. While it is true that only 16 percent of the watersheds were determined to have good water quality (using this subjective approach), another 27 percent of the watersheds lacked sufficient data to make any Index assessment.

A quick glance at the EPAs map of "Watershed Indicator Indices" reveals that most of these watersheds are found in the Western United States, where there is a very high probability that the water quality is good because of the very low population density. It is likely that the data does not exist for these watersheds because they were in such good health that the scientists placed them low on the assessment priority list. If these watersheds were included in the good water quality category, the total of good watersheds would jump from 16 percent to over 40 percent--dramatically changing the perception of Americas water quality problem.

Playing fast and loose with data has become the hallmark of EPA Secretary Carol Browner. Dr. Bonner Cohen, in The People v. Carol Browner. EPA on Trial, details a litany of scientific corruption designed to advance a radical environmental agenda. Under the leadership of Browner, the abuse of power by the EPA has become blatant. Bonner cites evidence that the EPA is creating and submitting backdated documents for filing with federal courts, requesting career scientists to lobby Congress in violation of federal law, and severely intimidating EPA employees to keep them from speaking out.

Publicity generated by Cohen's work led 19 EPA officials to sign a letter to the Washington Times dated June 8, 1998 protesting the "egregious misconduct" at the EPA that has created a "reprehensible" situation under the tenure of Carol Browner. Claiming to be "but a few of the EPA scientists, managers and affiliated persons protesting fraud and waste within our agency," the officials painted an incredible picture of corruption within the EPA, where "employees are harassed, even fired, for protesting illegal or irresponsible behavior by managers who jeopardize the proper enforcement of the law.... At the EPA, retaliation against whistle blowers occurs at every management level. At times, it involves the highest levels of administration, including the offices of Regional Administrators and the Office of Administrator Carol Browner. Because retaliation is supported at the highest levels, EPA's Office of Inspector General, Office of General Counsel, and the Office of the Administrator will engage in retaliation either singularly or collectively."

On behalf of the National Wilderness Institute, which published Cohens report, Landmark Legal Foundation has repeatedly petitioned the Attorney General to investigate these allegations, only to be stonewalled. The General Accounting Office, on the other hand, has launched an investigation into the charges at the request of James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), chairman of the House Science Committee.

Meanwhile, junk science continues to be used to justify the Clean Water Initiative, and other Administration programs continue to undermine our Constitution and threaten every American. •

-- MICHAEL S. COFFMAN, PHD

Dr. Coffman, an environmental consultant, is the executive director of Sovereignty International and President of Environmental Perspectives, Inc. He is author of the book Saviors of the Earth? which details the goals and religion of environmental leadership.