Mark Udall: “I considered offering an amendment dealing with RS 2477 claims that was printed in the Record. I will not offer that…”

“I considered offering an amendment dealing with RS 2477 claims that was printed in the Record. I will not offer that amendment today, but I do want to briefly explain the problem that it was intended to address. Last year, the House adopted a similar--not identical, but similar-- amendment. Unfortunately, it was dropped in conference. So, the original need for an amendment remains. The need is to protect not just Federal lands but also private property and the public interest. All three are threatened by the plans of the Interior Department to go ahead with back-room land deals that fly in the face of Congressional intent. The Interior Department would do this by issuing ``disclaimers of interest''--documents like deeds that cede land--under new rules that allow the disclaimers to be issued to applicants who wouldn't have been eligible before. And the Interior Department has announced it is ready to give those ``disclaimers'' to parties seeking them in order to clear the way for building roads under an 1866 law. That law--one of the 19th-century laws to promote settlement in the West--granted rights-of-way ``for the construction of highways'' on Federal lands. It later became section 2477 of the Revised Statutes--or RS 2477. It was repealed in 1976, but the repeal did not affect existing rights, and did not set a deadline for claiming those rights. So, there is no way of telling how many claims might be made or what lands could be affected.”