William M. Thomas: “If you are going to have to build a road along a ridge, when less than half a mile away was a route that would save the…”

“If you are going to have to build a road along a ridge, when less than half a mile away was a route that would save the taxpayers an enormous amount of money, then I would prefer desirable, rather than necessary. The counter offer was, yes, you can have desirable but you have to add their language ``and such road by located so as to have the minimum practical impact on wilderness values.'' Now they gave me desirable, but it has to have minimal impact. It is entirely possible the ridge route, which was the unacceptable route, may be the one with the desirable impact. On the one hand they give you 15 years, and on the other they take it away with new language that had to be put in there. The dance continued. I said why is it you cannot understand that all I wanted is the opportunity to save taxpayers money in building a road in an area less than 1 square mile? My original amendment was to simply delete the 1 square mile. The deletion of even 1 square mile produced this ongoing marathon language dance to try to indicate that they would hold in front of me a promise that I could not tell people honestly that I could deliver. Deleting the 1 square mile was certainly way to do it. We have now come to the point where in the negotiations, the language is desirable. Not necessary, but desirable. Desirable so that the taxpayers could save money.…”