25 



Mr. Penfold. Mr. DeFazio makes a very important point there. 



Mr. Vento. Yes. Well, O&C is sort of a special category. So that 

 is a factor. 



And what about this issue? I didn't notice it in your prepared re- 

 marks, although it may be there. I was just looking at it for the 

 first time this morning, Mr. Penfold. What about the issue of ease- 

 ments? 



We xuiderstand the checkerboard pattern of land ownership. In 

 fact, I would like to get a little better focus on that. 



Mr. Penfold. Yes. The IG, I believe, would have liked to have 

 seen a more aggressive total program for easement acquisition in 

 the O&C lands. Our program focuses on those easements we need 

 in the near, coming vears, so we disagreed that we had any signifi- 

 C£int and major problem as far as not being able to acquire the 

 easements that we need. And, of course, there are reciprocal agree- 

 ments in the areas where you have large private holdings. 



But easement problems primarily are when you are getting up 

 into the checkerboard, so there is a large need for better easements 

 out there. But we think that we are keeping up fairly well with our 

 priority needs. 



Mr. Vento. Recentlv we had a report back from the GAO that 

 indicated that a lot of public lands in the West, in fact, nearly 50 

 million acres, are inaccessible and essentially locked up because of 

 easement problems. This is, obviously, a different case here. I think 

 we are talking about easements for the purpose of some of the res- 

 toration, some of the reforestation work apparently and/or prepara- 

 tion for sale. 



Mr. Penfold. Yes. Most of our acquisition of easements is fo- 

 cused around forestry practices, and across the West there is a 

 huge need for a more aggressive allocation of funds to acquire pub- 

 lic easements and to do excheinges to provide legal rights-of-ways. 

 That is a big problem area across the Western States. 



Mr. Vento. Ms. Fleischman, did you want to comment on any of 

 this in terms of my questions? 



Ms. Fleischman. At the time we did this audit regarding the 

 question of easements, the Bureau told us that they needed ap- 

 proximately 885 easements to obtain access to 800 million board 

 feet of harvestable timber; that is, mature timber ready to cut, and 

 the value of that timber at that time was $302 million. They had 

 a total of $300,000 and 6 full-time positions dedicated to obtaining 

 those 885 needed easements. Needless to say, we estimated that if 

 they continued at that rate it would take 25 years to obtain the 

 necessary easements to get to that timber. 



We hope that they have improved that dedication of personnel 

 and resources, because 25 years strikes me as a long time to go to 

 try to get easements to harvestable mature timber. 



Mr. VENTO. Mr. Penfold. 



Mr. Penfold. Obviously, a lot of programs in western Oregon 

 will need to be looked at in light of new approaches that are being 

 considered in our western Oregon plans ana what comes out of the 

 forest conference. It would be nice to have, of course, an easement 

 acquisition program that is substsintial and very long, future look- 

 ing. I think we will have a substantial easement acquisition need 

 when our plans are completed. 



