Alan Simpson: “I thank the gentleman from Utah for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 876, the Idaho Wilderness…”

“I thank the gentleman from Utah for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 876, the Idaho Wilderness Water Resources Protection Act. This bipartisan, noncontroversial legislation is a technical fix intended to enable the Forest Service to authorize and permit existing historical water diversions within the Idaho wilderness. A few years ago, one of my constituents came to me for help with a problem. The Middle Fork Lodge has a water diversion within the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness Area that existed before the wilderness area was established and is protected under statute. The diversion was beginning to leak and was in desperate need of repairs to ensure that it did not threaten the environment and watershed, but it turned out that the Forest Service did not have the authority to issue the lodge a permit to make the necessary repairs. As we looked into this issue, we discovered that the Forest Service lacked this authority throughout both the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, where there are 22 known water developments, and the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, where there are three. These diversions are primarily used to support irrigation and minor hydropower generation for use on non-Federal lands. While the critical situation at the Middle Fork Lodge brought this issue to my attention, it is obvious to me that this problem is larger than just one diversion.…”