The request made by the county to be a cooperating agency was a very reasonable request, and its denial was patently unreasonable.

There is no evidence that anything has changed that requires NASA to now withdraw the land.

H.R. 3883 is not about somebody should have said yes or anything else like that. It is about hypocrisy.

NEPA is a good thing, because it provides due process and transparency in decisions we make about resources and land use.

Hey, NASA, come on, it is the county where it is located. They ought to be able to have a say.

the question as to whether you have valid, existing rights is also one that is a little bit nebulous to us

So, that is why we have this bill. That is why we brought it to say this is about, hey, can they have a chance to try to go through the recognized, transparent due process of NEPA?

We don't want your input, we don't want you to be a cooperating agency.

I look forward to talking offline substantially about the solutions to those problems.

So it is fair to let Ms. Stone-Manning know, hey, we would kind of like to know how you are going to pay for operating this, not as public land, but as special public land.

We can probably start with what are you doing now.

Just having positions on the book at the lower end that nobody will ever take isn't solving anybody's problem.

We would like to make sure we understand that.

We look forward to following up with you.

I appreciate that one size doesn't fit all. It is, like, I am not going to go manage it for one county in Nevada or Montana, or whatever, but when it represents about a third of the land area of the country, I think it is worthy of being…

I think it is beginning to look that way, chronically open on staff positions which nobody can afford to take.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Do they benefit from dirty air? Do they benefit from breaking the rules? Obviously not.

But dealing with them correctly in the Intermountain West in high arid places, with all due respect, is not the same as other areas.

People are waiting a decade to get a conveyed title where it is like try to build a home, try to do anything where you don't really own it.

I think when you are talking about a public lands withdrawal where there are arguably claims, rights involved, that the agency that is deciding probably shouldn't be helping the agency that is applying for something that would require the…

So it is like all those things, it would just be nice to have comprehensive cradle-to-grave understanding of here's the plan now that EPA's going to take the primary position and hire people, and people are going to be in the river doing…

And obviously you can't pollute the water, and you can't pollute the air, you can't pollute the anything, but it feels like a long ways away.

If you do, fire away, but we are going to be following up on that because it would be unique to me to find that out.

I would like to get with your BIA person, and I understand they are going to be in front of us later.