EPA's mismanagement has led to elevated PM 2.5 emissions even though Congress has provided almost $100 million for wood stove changeouts.

A lack of promises made and promises unfulfilled. A little bit of a pulling the rug out from underneath us.

How do you respond, though, to just the reality that the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) creates a rural priority for subsistence based on where one lives.

It has been observed on roughly 193,500 acres statewide, more than 98 percent of those acres mapped in 2021.

This obviously represents the exact wrong direction for Alaska, certainly the wrong direction for a country.

I want to discuss the issue of opportunity between the Forest Service and many of our tribes, specific to tribal co-management.

Thank you Mr. Chairman. Appreciate the opportunity to be back at work here on the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies; and to kick off our hearings with the Chief of the Forest Service.

It is nice to have Senator Fischer on.

It ought to not be this hard.

The Tribe needs funding for facilities that would house the Trial, Appellate, Wellness, and Traffic Courts.

Thank you, Chairman Jeff Merkley, Ranking Member Lisa Murkowski, and Members of the subcommittee for your leadership to reduce pollution in rivers, improve clean water access, safeguard public drinking water supplies.

I hope we are able to reconcile that. Let us know if we can be helpful.

I would simply urge the subcommittee here to utilize the terminology that is founded in the law, and the regs.

I have had subsequent conversations and I will share with you, they are somewhat confused. They don't know who to believe anymore.

We can all look at steps along the way when it comes to a required Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and how long the process takes.

I am going to be up in Fairbanks this weekend, and I can tell you this is going to be a hot, hot, hot topic there.

You know that is not right. They know that is not right.

Domestic supply matters to our energy security and also matters to our mineral security.

By failing to properly certify and test wood heater emissions the EPA has frustrated Congress' investments and intended goals.

We have a trust and treaty obligation. That absolutely includes health care, education, housing, and so forth.

I would love to have further conversation with you.

I am looking forward to finding further creative funding solutions with you.

I think we recognize we not only--we not only need the minerals but we are going to have to do more to promote some efficiencies, and deal with the permitting issues; something that we are all talking about here on a bipartisan basis.

But I do want to impress upon you that right now the community leaders, the mayors of the Borough of the Kenai Peninsula, as well as within the Anchorage area, they are coming to me, not for more in appropriations, because they are not…

We want to put that into just nothing more than bad memories.