Environmental group draws response

Editor’s Note: The following is a Letter to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal by Senator Cathy Giessel, Senate District N.

National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) lawyer, Joel Reynolds, sits in his Santa Monica office and proclaims that Congress granted EPA the authority to stop development of state-owned resources on State of Alaska lands before projects are proposed or reviewed under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). He says “the people of Alaska, by overwhelming numbers, have urged the EPA” to take this action.

Mr. Reynolds is not only wrong in law, but he also totally misrepresents the people of Alaska. In addition, he is disingenuous about his own organization’s position.

The NRDC is urging EPA to issue the first preemptive veto in the 43-year history of the Clean Water Act. If successful, this veto will annihilate business investment in my state and throughout our country. EPA is being litigated for its actions and rightly so.We can only hope our courts stop EPA’s usurping of power that Congress never delegated to them.

Reynolds is dead wrong when he says Alaskans want a faceless bureaucracy in Washington to tell us how to manage our land and resources.The NRDC does not speak for my state, never has and never will.

It is the height of hypocrisy for Reynolds to demand that EPA stop resource projects in this country before they are subject to a full review under NEPA, legislation which the NRDC calls the “Magna Carta of environmental protection laws.

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