Democrats and green groups are criticizing a measure in the Puerto Rico debt bill that would allow the transfer of several thousand acres of federally-controlled land back to the Caribbean island.
Critics argued in a letter Monday addressed to the Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as to the Democratic and Republican congressmen supporting the measure, the move to give the Department of the Interior (DOI) the ability to divest a portion of a tiny island called Vieques would jeopardize the wildlife sanctuary the U.S. purports to protect.
“We simply want the Puerto Rico to regain control of their own land,” Parish Braden, the communications director for the House Committee on Natural Resources and a supporter of the bill’s provision, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Braden referenced comments made by Democrats like Illinois Rep. Luis Gutiérrez of Illinois and New York Rep. Joseph Crowley, both of whom sponsor and cosponsor the bill respectively and want the U.S. to stop meddling with Puerto Rico.
“Why don’t we all just come to the conclusion, which I’m sure Mr. [Pedro] Pierluisi agrees as the resident commissioner of Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States of America. Puerto Rico is war booty from the war in 1898,” Gutiérrez said at a hearing of the House Committee on Natural Resources in February.
Crowley echoed Gutiérrez’s call. “I think the lands should be transferred to the government of Puerto Rico. Only that will assure the people that these lands will never again be used for military purposes.”
The letter was signed by groups such as Sierra Club National Wildlife Refuge Association and the National Audubon Society, among others, and contends the provisions would nix environmental reviews for development projects going forward.
“On behalf of our millions of members and activists we write to urge you to strongly oppose two environmentally damaging provisions in the draft legislation,” the letter reads.
The provision, according to the letter, allows the DOI to take “the Vieques National Wildlife Refuge away from the American people thereby placing nationally protected endangered species habitat under threat of bulldozers and development and encouraging efforts to sell off public lands for private gain.”
“We urge you to oppose these provisions and work to remove them” from the bill, the letter concludes.
Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona opposed the measure Wednesday. Other Democrats have joined Grijalva in opposing it.
“A provision permits the transfer of 3,100 acres of federal land to Puerto Rico. I believe we need to incorporate protections to ensure that this land is not sold and used to make a ‘quick buck’ by private developers,” Rep. Nydia Velázquez, a Democrat from New York and a native of Puerto Rico, told reporters.
The Department of the Navy, which is comprised of both the Navy and the Marine Corps. acquired an 8,000-acre stretch of land on the western side of Vieques and a 14,000-acre portion on the eastern side of Vieques between 1941 and 1950. The Navy-occupied land equaled 22,000 acres, which constituted about two-thirds of the entire island.
The island’s inhabitants were forced to relocate.
The Navy and Marine Corps used the eastern portion of the island for training exercises, while the western side was used to store and dispose of munitions, making it far less contaminated.
Congress directed the Navy to close down both facilities in the 2000s in response to public safety and environmental concerns stemming from years of weapon use.
“The notion that land from which residents of Vieques were forced to relocate in the 1940s and 1950s must remain in federal hands forever, even though it is not contaminated and even though Interior wanted Congress to transfer the land to the government of Puerto Rico in the first place, confounds common sense,” Braden told TheDCNF.
The Puerto Rico debt bill, its proponents hope, will receive a vote by next week.
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