CORE Act Suffers Setback
Amendment scrapped from final version of defense budget
By Sophie Stuber, Telluride Daily Planet Contributor
Large holiday gatherings, après-ski parties, and concerts at the Sheridan are on hold until 2021. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic showing the importance of wild lands and outdoor space, Coloradans will also have to wait until the new year for any new public lands protections. Due to staunch Republican opposition, Congress removed the CORE Act amendment, which would have protected 400,000 acres of public lands in Colorado, from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
“It's obviously disappointing to be so close to the finish line and not be able to complete the journey this year,” said Mark Peason, executive director of San Juan Citizens Alliance, in an interview with the Daily Planet.
The CORE Act has strong bipartisan support in Colorado.
“There really should be little controversy associated with it anymore,” he added.
On Tuesday Dec. 8, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a $740.5 billion annual defense spending budget for the fiscal year of 2021. The Senate has yet to vote on the final version of the NDAA, but representatives of both chambers of Congress negotiated this iteration of the NDAA last week, and the budget is expected to pass in the Senate.
Although Congress must pass a defense spending budget every year, the decisions over what to include are often hotly debated — and not necessarily directly related to military, defense or security. In past years, the NDAA has been a strategy for Congress to get through public lands legislation that was unable to pass as a standalone bill. The 2015 NDAA included the Hermosa Creek Watershed Protection Act as an amendment—protecting 100,000 acres of land in southwest Colorado.
For 2021, Colorado Senator Michael Bennet and Representative Joe Neguse had hoped that the defense spending budget would be an avenue to finally pass the CORE Act. Although the House version of the NDAA included the CORE Act, the bill did not survive the final version. The CORE Act has now passed in the House twice — once as a separate bill and once as an amendment to the NDAA — but it has been unable to get through the Republican-controlled Senate.
“Michael is disappointed that the CORE Act wasn’t included in the final defense authorization bill,” a spokesperson in Senator Bennet’s office told the Planet. “He’ll continue to pursue every opportunity to pass this critical bill for Colorado.
Locally, the CORE Act would protect 61,000 acres of land in the San Juan Mountains, including Mount Sneffels and Wilson Peak. If the proposed bill becomes law, Colorado would get 73,000 new acres of designated wilderness area. The bill also bans future leasing for oil and gas drilling on the Thompson Divide. Near Telluride, Ice Lake Basin would be protected from future mining, and Sheep Mountain would be designated a Special Management Area. Notably, the CORE Act would establish Camp Hale as the first ever designated National Historic Landscape in tribute to veterans and the 10th Mountain Army Division.
Although Senator Bennet and Representative Neguse introduced the CORE Act to Congress in 2019 local wilderness advocates have been trying to protect the same local lands for over a decade. The San Juan Wilderness Act is one of the smaller bills that got fused together to create the CORE Act.
“We’ve been working on this for more than a decade,” Pearson said.
Congresswoman Diana DeGette, a staunch supporter of public lands bills, was a member of the NDAA conference committee negotiated between the House and the Senate to draft a final version of the NDAA. Unfortunately, Representative DeGette and other wilderness advocates were unable to convince the Republican-majority Senate to include either the CORE Act or the Protecting America’s Wilderness Act. Members of the timber and fossil fuel industries lobbied strongly against these wilderness bills, which could reduce future resource extraction — as with the Thompson Divide.
“It’s shameful that Senate Republicans refused to include any of our public land bills in the final version of this year’s NDAA. Our fight to protect more of Colorado’s wilderness, through both the PAW and CORE Act, is far from over,” Senate DeGette said.
With the CORE Act cut out from the defense spending budget, wilderness advocates are looking towards 2021, which will bring a new Democratic administration come January 20, and potentially even a Democratic Senate — depending on the results of the run-off elections in Georgia.
One big change will come immediately with Biden’s administration, who will be able to testify in support of the CORE Act.
“Previously this year, the Trump administration opposed the CORE Act and threatened to veto it. There will no longer be that threat,” Pearson said.
With the election of John Hickenlooper to the Senate, Colorado has momentum for public lands legislation, as Hickenlooper will likely join Senator Bennet in sponsoring the bill.
“That should potentially change the dynamic in the Senate quite a bit,” Pearson said.
With these political changes, 2021 might actually be the year for public lands legislation.
“The amount of progress we made this year sets us up for getting a quick start in the next Congress in January,” Pearson said.