"Tonight, I announce that this year I will designate ten American Heritage Rivers, to help communities alongside them revitalize their waterfronts and clean up pollution in the rivers," President Clinton proudly declared- during his State of the Union Address on February 4, 1997. The initiative, he insisted, would prove "that we can grow the economy as we protect the environment." Predictably, the announcement provoked the suspicion of those familiar with the President's habitual disdain for the constitutional limitations on his powers, but without more specific information about the plan, little could be said. That all changed on May 19th when Kathleen McGinty, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), finally released the American Heritage Rivers Initiative.

Created under the authority of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the Rivers initiative will supposedly enable "river communities" to protect and restore their waterways through "partnerships" among all levels of government, community organizations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Assurances were provided that the initiative would be entirely voluntary, and that it would protect water and private property rights without imposing new federal regulations or appropriating additional federal money. A three-week public comment period was granted before implementation of the plan.

McGinty's announcement provoked an angry protest from Representative Helen Chenoweth (R-ID), chairman of the House Forests and Forest Health Subcommittee. "The Clinton Administration has once again usurped Congress' lawmaking authority," declared Chenoweth in a June 10th speech on the House floor. "Nowhere in law can one find the American Heritage Rivers Initiative." She further observed that the initiative would "insert federal officials into community decision-making" in a way that threatens the republican form of government guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.

In the same speech Congressman Chenoweth introduced H.R. 1842, which would "terminate further development and implementation of the American Heritage Rivers Initiative." The one-page bill specifies that "none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available to a Federal agency ... may be used to develop, implement, or carry out the American Heritage Rivers Initiative ... or any similar program." The bill quickly gained 46 cosponsors in the House.

International Link

The American Heritage Rivers plan is the latest outgrowth of a regulatory strategy first outlined in Use of Land: A Citizen's Policy Guide to Urban Growth, published by a Rockefeller Brothers Fund task force in 1972. That report maintained that development of private property must be controlled "through the police power of the federal government" for the "good of society." The United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I), held in Vancouver in 1976, incorporated the same basic design for land-use control into a framework for a global plan. The preamble of the Habitat I plan asserted, "The provision of decent dwellings and healthy conditions for the people can only be achieved if land is used in the interests of society as a whole. Public control of land use is therefore indispensable...."

The attack on property rights continued in a succession of documents published by the United Nations Environmental Program, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the World Resource Institute, and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature. These documents were designed to build the case for national and supranational authority to control human activities -- especially land use. With the publication of Our Common Future by the UN Commission on Sustainable Development in 1988, the stage was set for a major step -- the 1992 Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro. At the Earth Summit all of the land-use concepts developed over a 20-year period took form in Agenda 21, a massive blueprint for global eco-government. Agenda 21 represents what is known as "soft law"--it establishes goals without specific enforcement measures. The enforcement mechanisms were to be created through a variety of treaties, the most important being the Convention on Biological Diversity. But ratification of the Biodiversity treaty was derailed in the U.S. Senate in September 1994, after Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) provided damning evidence from a document entitled the Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA).

The GBA, a 1,400-page supplement to the Biodiversity Treaty, set forth, in blunt and shocking detail, the specifics concealed in the "soft law" language of UN environmental treaties -- from depopulating the earth to setting aside up to one-half of America as a vast nature preserve (the "Wildlands Project"). Central to these designs was the need for "reallocating" property rights from the individual to the UN. Under the GBA plan, land-use decisions would be made through a new form of governance whereby local people form "stakeholder groups" or "partnerships," who would make land-use rules by "consensus." Of course, this arrangement would effectively dispense with property rights altogether.

Nature Versus People

Undeterred by the Senate's refusal to ratify the Biodiversity Treaty in 1994, President Clinton began implementing key provisions of it and Agenda 21 through the President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD). In 1996, PCSD issued its report, Sustainable America: A New Consensus, which sets out the radical, anti-human concepts that form the backbone of a host of federal programs, including the American Heritage Rivers Initiative. Sustainable America and the initiatives that grow out of it represent a fundamental change in the role of government. Under the concept of "sustainability," government no longer serves the people; its purpose is to protect nature from people. Thus the Rivers Initiative focuses on protecting and restoring river ecosystems rather than the communities abutting them. Both the PCSD report and the Rivers Initiative call for individuals, communities, and institutions to collaborate as non-elected such as a watersheds." This is an open-ended grant of regulatory power to unaccountable special interest group representatives, who are to devise "heritage plans" that will supposedly "grow" affected economies even as they protect the environment.

As an August 1993 EPA internal working document specified, all land-use programs instituted by President Clinton follow the strategy laid out by the PCSD and Agenda 21: "Natural resource and environmental agencies [should] ... develop a joint strategy to help the United States fulfill its existing international obligations [e.g. Convention on Biological Diversity, Agenda 21].... The executive branch should direct federal agencies to evaluate national policies ... in light of international policies and obligations, and to amend national policies to achieve international objectives." The Rivers Initiative adheres to this directive by amending the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 to fit the goals and strategies of Agenda 21 and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

The Rivers Initiative also harmonizes with the notorious "Wildlands Project" (mandated by the Biodiversity Treaty), which would set aside up to one-half of America into totally protected wilderness reserves interconnected by wilderness corridors up to 30 miles wide -- primarily along river corridors. This raises the ugly possibility that the Rivers Initiative is but the first step in establishing federal land-use control in and along our nation's rivers in order to eventually implement the Biodiversity Treaty without ratification. "partners" and "stakeholders" within a heritage framework based on "natural systems."

Impact Potential

Despite Administration efforts to depict the American Heritage Rivers Initiative as a minor program affecting only small sections of rivers and a few communities, it could have an impact upon the entire country. Executive Order 13061, which authorizes the American Heritage Rivers Initiative, mandates that executive agencies "coordinate federal plans, functions, programs, and resources to preserve, protect, and restore rivers and their associated resources important to our history, culture, and natural heritage." Supporting documentation in the Federal Register makes clear that the federal focus is preservation and protection of rivers, rather than protecting the cultural heritage of the communities along the rivers.

Additionally, since the activities upstream affect the ability to protect and preserve river ecosystems along the designated portion of the watershed, planning decisions must encompass entire watersheds. Watersheds often cross many state lines and can take in enormous portions of the U.S. landscape. The Mississippi River watershed, for instance, drains over 40 percent of the United States. Additionally, the Rivers Initiative is so loosely written that it could be interpreted to mean that if a portion of a river is designated, the entire watershed is impacted. Thus, if a portion of the lower Missouri River were designated as an American Heritage River, for instance, it could potentially impact over 13 million people living in the states of Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana.

The Environmental Protection Agency has divided the contiguous U.S. into 18 watershed basins or regions, including six within the Mississippi River basin. In the EPAs definition, basins include complete watersheds, whereas regions include multiple watersheds having common characteristics that should be managed similarly. Coastal rivers that drain directly into an ocean are examples of the latter. (See map on page 14.)

The Rivers Initiative totally subverts the constitutional guarantee of a republican form of government, in which the real "River Communities" are the incorporated towns, villages, and counties within each state. As defined in the initiative, a River Community could be made up of nothing more than radical environmental NGOs and state bureaucrats. A team of appointed "planning and technical assistance experts" would be assigned to "help" each so-called River Community to assess its strategy and implementation plan and to identify technical assistance and funding needs. Eligibility for federal funding would depend on "widespread community support," a community including such radical organizations as the Sierra Club and the National Audubon Society. This "consensus" approach relegates elected local governments to a minority role in a team of "partners" or "stakeholders" dominated by non-elected special interests. Helping keep local communities in line will be the "River Navigator," an appointed federal official with significant powers to coordinate the initiative and simplify delivery of federal funds to "River Communities." Once on the federal dole, it will be extremely difficult for these River Communities to wean themselves from this type of legalized extortion.

It Can Be Stopped

The only way to avoid being victimized by such extortion is to avoid entanglement in the scheme -- and this is an option that remains open at present. During a House hearing on H.R. 1842, which would terminate the Heritage Rivers initiative by de-funding it, Congressman Helen Chenoweth asked CEQ head McGinty if a state could still opt out of the Rivers Initiative by presenting written notice of withdrawal through its congressional delegation, as McGinty had once promised. After several moments of waffling, McGinty acknowledged that it could. Before McGinty could take a breath, Chenoweth took out a letter of withdrawal signed by the entire Idaho delegation and gave it to McGinty. Since then Texas has done the same.

As Chenoweth points out, the American Heritage Rivers Initiative "is illegal, has not met public comment requirements, misappropriates funds Congress mandated for other purposes, and is a bold and shocking attempt by the Administration to usurp individual water rights, private property rights, and state sovereignty.

I am appalled that President Clinton continues his attempt to ram this initiative down our throats despite widespread resistance; but I am not surprised."

Success on the Wabash

As Americans living along the Wabash River have demonstrated, the Heritage Rivers scheme can be defeated. The Wabash Heritage Corridor Commission in Indiana represents all that is wrong with the American Heritage Rivers Initiative. The 510-mile Wabash River begins its journey in western Ohio, transects Indiana to the Illinois-Indiana state line at Terre Haute, and finally connects with the Ohio River where the two states meet Kentucky. In 1991 the Indiana Legislature created the Wabash Commission to offer land-use recommendations to the state. Over the next two years federal agents, state regulators, and environmental NGOs hammered out the Wabash River Heritage Corridor Plan -- a template for what would be done under President Clinton's Rivers initiative. (See map on page 15.) But in 1993, the Wabash Corridor Plan was soundly rejected by the Indiana State legislature, only to be rejuvenated by the Rivers Initiative. The Commission dusted off and updated the rejected Corridor plan, joined forces with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR), and declared itself to be the official "River Community" for the Wabash. This was done in defiance of the elected legislature and significant local resistance to the Corridor plan.

That resistance began with Dave and Sandy Ealy, citizens who live in a rural area along the Wabash near Perrysville, Indiana. The Ealys, along with state legislator Lee Clingan, mobilized a grassroots effort to stop the drive to designate the Wabash an American Heritage River. Ealy and others recognized that the Rivers Initiative was an outgrowth of Agenda 21, and took proper offense at having a UN-linked program in their backyard. Ealy and other river residents also recognized that the initiative borrowed from the UN's deceptive "soft law" approach; it was merely the first step in federal control that would eventually move them off of their land to create a wilderness corndor as part of the UN-created Wildiands Project.

Ealy observed: "The plan calls for a massive increase in government controls, new taxes, new environmental courts, impact studies, and more. It finds that farming and urban runoff are the greatest source of pollution, and calls for the elimination of all agricultural runoff." Ealy and his constituency learned that once a river is designated as an American Heritage River, all citizens are included whether they like it or not, and there is no mechanism to reverse the designation. Furthermore, although the designation directly affected 19 counties abutting the Wabash River, the plan's restrictions on land-use could be imposed on the entire Wabash watershed.

The Wabash experience also proved that special interest groups and government bureaucrats, not local citizens, would control the "consensus" process. Three meetings supposedly designed to solicit public input on the Wabash designation, according to Ealy, were devoted entirely to presentations by federal representatives; upset citizens were allowed to state their concerns on audiotape after the meetings had adjourned. In one particularly ominous incident, citizens who wanted to speak in the meeting held in Lafayette "were harassed and intimidated by armed DNR agents," Ealy recalled. Despite the fact that opponents of the designation typically outnumbered supporters by at least two to one, the Wabash Heritage River Corridor Commission reported that there was "broad support" for the plan. It wasn't until 16 of the 19 Wabash counties submitted letters officially opposing the designation that the Wabash Heritage River Corridor Commission tabled its plan to apply for official American Heritage River designation. Ealy and his grassroots movement had shown the county commissioners the fatal flaws in the initiative and then led them through the process of how to defeat it.

The force used to stop the Wabash designation was vigilance, truth, and a lot of legwork. Ealy predicted, "The cancer which attacked the Wabash is in remission -- but probably only until next year."

Citizens living along other rivers that have "River Communities" can follow Ealy's example. But time is short. President Clinton is expected to issue a proclamation announcing the designated rivers sometime in January.

-- 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.