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Secure Rural Schools Act is bad idea for N.C.
The chorus keeps on growing – Gov. Mike Easley, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr, and U.S. Representative Charles Taylor, to name a few. Almost everybody who’s anybody in North Carolina is joining with others around the country to voice opposition to a legislative effort that would sell more than 300,000 acres of U.S. Forest Service land in 41 states as a temporary fix to provide money for rural schools. More than 9,000 acres of North Carolina’s pristine woodlands would be at risk.
Now’s the time for all of us in North Carolina to join the chorus opposing the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, a Bush-Administration proposal that offers a “quick fix” for the long-term school funding problem at the expense of our treasured natural resources. Rural schools need our help, but this is something that should be funded from general tax revenues, rather than at the loss of our national heritage and natural lands. Schools need long-term continuous funding; natural land and the goods and services it provides, once lost, are gone forever.
The administration has promised that local land trusts will have first crack at the parcels identified for sale. However, without major, immediate fund-raising, the land trusts in North Carolina don’t have the money to purchase more than a small portion. Most likely developers will acquire much of the land, ensuring its loss as a recreational, aesthetic, and ecological resource for further generations. A loss of 9,000 acres of forest service land is a poor first step to the urgent need for North Carolina to preserve up to 10,000,000 acres of land to ensure sustainable ecosystems and a vibrant economy for our future—as concluded by the Horizon 2100 Committee of Environmental Defense last year.
For North Carolinians, the act is a bad idea for other reasons, because it includes a major disparity in the amount of revenue going to different states. Money generated from land sales in North Carolina will not stay in North Carolina. Far from it. According to the U.S. Forest Service, out of the $1 billion potentially raised, North Carolina would only receive about $1 million for the acres we would sacrifice. However, the state of Oregon, which will have about the same acreage for sale, would receive more than $150 million.
Right now, The Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act is in its public comment period. Right now is the time for North Carolinians to express their opinion against the act to our elected representatives and to the U.S. Forest Service.
Everyone would agree that funding our nation’s rural schools is a good idea. But doing so by selling our precious natural resources is the wrong way. And for those of us in North Carolina, it’s against our future economic interests in every way.
– William Schlesinger is Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.
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