Ike, McKay and the Giveaway

Election of a trout-fishing President in 1952 must have encouraged conservationists and those who favor orderly development of natural resources. After all, the G.O.P. was the party of Theodore Roosevelt, of Gifford Pinchot, and of George Norris, all pioneers in the conservation field. And Eisenhower's selection of Douglas McKay as Secretary of the Interior might even have seemed auspicious, for McKay, while Governor of Oregon, had favored federal development of a high multi-purpose dam at Hells Canyon.

Of course, the current regime's 1952 campaign failed to suggest any rich heritage of conservation. Instead Eisenhower promised to hand over the Federal government's vast offshore oil reserves to a few states.

Nor did natural resources fare any better when Eisenhower actually came to power. The President stoutly defended all aspects of the Dixon-Yates deal, an affair so disreputable that even Ike-liker John Sherman Cooper opposed it. A complicated issue, the Dixon-Yates proposals included obvious attempts to whittle down TVA and to encircle it with a giant utilities holding company. And the President, not normally prodigal with his immense influence, worked as hard to defeat the Hells Canyon dam as he worked on any other bill in four years.

These three issues, by and large, were the ones with which the President concerned himself. He did veto the Natural Gas Bill although for the wrong reasons. Otherwise he "roughed it" in the Rockies and even managed to upset the angling fraternity by taking 40 trout without a licence in a single day. He left natural resources under the infrequently benevolent hands of McKay who eventually resigned to run for the Senate against Wayne Morse. Fred Seaton replaced McKay, and continued his predecessor's policies.

McKay's record is not all bad. His projected Mission 66 for the National Parks is constructive, and the Parks have received more funds under this Administration than previously. He has sold some dispensable, scattered public lands, and he and Secretary of Agriculture Benson sometimes stepped in to prevent wanton timbering on the public domain. McKay also protected the world's last 28 whooping cranes by blocking an Air Force plan to practice night photoflash bombing near the cranes' refuge.

'Partnership' in Power

Cranes need protection, but so do natural resources, and McKay, Eisenhower and a private-power-stacked Federal Power Commission have substituted "partnership" for careful development of hydroelectric potential. "Partnership" is a policy with chameleon tendencies, but essentially it can mean:

1) Government encourages private industry to develop a dam site by itself or

2- Government and private industry share the expense of a dam, with government retaining control of all nonpower aspects, while the company sells the power.

The most obvious results of this policy are shown in the Pacific Northwest, where McKay withdrew Interior Department support for a high federal dam at Hells Canyon. Then the FPC ignored its examiner, who had found that a high dam would provide more power, more flood control, more navigation, and more recreation for the Hells Canyon area than the three low private dams. The FPC granted permission for the three-dam plan.

McKay and the Commission have consistently opposed Federal dams, despite the fact that substitute private dams are less productive in most aspects, and rarely take any notice of comprehensive development plans prepared for the areas in question.

This is not to argue public power to the exclusion of private power. But private companies are frequently unable to utilize a dam site fully, and wasting the heritage of future generations in this respect is inexcusable. These federal projects pay for themselves through power revenues, and the experience of TVA and the Bonneville Power Administration shows that they stimulate the area's economy so it can pay a larger share of the nation's taxes.

The Democrats have not been perfect on the issue, either, but the dominant element in the party swung 83 per cent of the Senate Democratic vote for Hells Canyon, while 96 per cent of the Republicans, under Eisenhower pressure, opposed it.

The Administration has opened Wildlife Refuges to oil drilling, while McKay was publicly announcing it would be forbidden. Appropriations for the Rural Electrification Administration and the Bonneville Power Administration were drastically cut. The Rogue River National Forest has been lumbered extensively under a phony mining contract. The Administration backed a bill to give lumber operators choice public forest lands instead of cash compensation when their properties were condemned for reservoirs or similar purposes.

America's natural resources are strictly limited, and their preservation requires a careful, foresighted use of them. For hydro-electrical potential and public lands, for wildlife and fisheries management, for all the resources under the public domain, the America of tomorrow requires that we turn our backs on the wasteful ways of today, that we hold firm to what remains and use it wisely in the years to come.