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John B. OakesJohn B. Oakes
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Part:         Session:         Page of 512

to point out to you specific areas where Watt really did undercut environmental protections in this country. And without looking back over the record at this distance, now quite a lot of years, I'm not able specifically to point to precise areas, except that it seems to me that, when there was any way to loosen or to untie controls that had been imposed by regulation -- whether it was forest protection under the Forest Service, whether there was any way to increase the timber cut for the greater profit of timber companies, or whether there was any way to cut down on the money available under the Land & Water Conservation Act, which involved putting aside up to $900 million from oil resources, from offshore oil royalties to the federal government each year, which had been authorized -- some $900 million had been authorized by Congress to be spent on land preservation or waterfront protection- conservation purposes. To the degree that that authorization was ignored and reduced to very, very little -- from $900 million down to, perhaps, I don't know, $100 or so million, which could be done through Congress, this kind of reduction was encouraged. The loosening or failure to enforce the Endangered Species Act. To put it broadly, any way it could be done under existing legislation -- to reduce or lessen the effectiveness of protection of land, water, forests, biological species and endangered species. Anything that could be done to reduce those federal protections originally set up by Congress, that could be done administratively, was done under the Watt regime. It's difficult for me to, at this point, without really looking at the record, to be any more specific than that. But I assure you, that is basically what was going on.

Q:

Moving, then, a little bit, over to the broader area of Reagan in terms of his general, negative impact --

Oakes:

You mean away from environment.





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