194 



degrade as quickly as possible. That is the message that we give 

 as a society through the kinds of taxes we provide, the kinds of in- 

 centives and policies that we have. So I don't think anything is 

 going to change. 



You are absolutely correct, until Federal leadership is given a 

 new set of incentives and direction that, in fact, begins to change 

 behaviors. We have a group of folks who have been working on pri- 

 vate land strategies, national watershed register strategy, we bring 

 them into a watershed restoration program through a set of incen- 

 tives to prioritize grants from Federal programs for the creation 

 and implementation of a restoration plan to provide technical as- 

 sistance, as we have tried to do in our proposal, to make sure that 

 we keep the economic benefits of restoration locally tailored. Not 

 only keep the jobs in restoration local, but also the benefits of con- 

 verting agriculture crops to less water and energy-intensive crops. 

 To be sure that accrues to the private landowner. He will use less 

 electricity to pump the water, and they may be able to create more 

 income from different crops while we leave more water in the 



Those are things that are occurring across the country, and we 

 need a set of Federal incentives to catalyze them into a comprehen- 

 sive effort in the Northwest and elsewhere. 



I will go back and say that the other issue here is how long it 

 will take the administration to apply new policies; if they even get 

 that far. Time is of the essence to stormproof these watersheds to 

 eliminate these things. If we go through the full administrative 

 process, it could be two to three years. We would like to see this 

 happen quicker, although we know sometimes it takes Congress a 



while, too. jx- .u 4. 



Mr. DeFazio. Now wait a mmute, we are not recommending that 

 we short circuit the NEPA or the other process, are we? 



Mr. DOPPELT. No, but Congress can state that this is the law of 

 the land and that would short circuit a long, drawn out planning 

 process that we may not have time for. 



Mr. HiGGlNS. I will defer to my colleagues on the panel on this 



question. . r j 



Mr. Palmisano. Quickly, I wanted to summarize that we tound 

 that there was a multitude of factors that cause problems, and we 

 don't want to point fingers or spread blame, but if we do all of this 

 rehabilitation in the freshwater habitat it is important to know 

 that estuaries are just as important. And if there is no work in 

 those estuaries, we will have a surplus of fish upstream, and any 

 approach we take has to be a balanced approach. And along those 

 lines people have mentioned that we have to keep fishing going, be- 

 cause fish translate into jobs. Well, to be fair, timber also trans- 

 lates into jobs, too. 



And again, since everyone was part of the problem, everyone has 

 to be a part of the solution. It would be very unfair to blame every- 

 thing on the dams or everything on the fishermen. Whatever imple- 

 mentation we have to come up with, those have to reflect the life 

 history of the fish and be spread across the spectrum of users, not 



just one group. , . t. u 



Mr. Cassidy. I just wanted to stress that there is a chance here 

 to seize upon change, and for the Forest Service to implement 



