Federal – State Relations: A Matter of Balance

Abstract

DOI 10.1515/cjpp-2013-0044 Calif. J. Politics Policy 2014; 6(1): 45–59 Cecil D. Andrus and Marc C. Johnson* Federal – State Relations: A Matter of Balance Abstract: Balance, with an eye toward the benefit to broad public and national interest must be, and in fact has become, the only acceptable approach to western natural resource policy. At the same time, there are legitimate occasions when western states must assert themselves in the face of a failure of national policy or political will or when specific issues and concerns in the states or across the West have gone unmet. Keywords: nuclear waste policy; public lands; state’s rights *Corresponding author: Marc C. Johnson, 7601 N. Calle Sin Envidia Unit 59, Tucson, AZ 85718, USA, Tel.: 208-866-6864, e-mail: marcj@gallatinpa.com Cecil D. Andrus: PO Box 852, Boise, ID 83701, USA 1 Preservation and the National Interest Since March 1909 1 when President Theodore Roosevelt took the last of his unbe- lievably farsighted actions to conserve the vast forest reserves and natural areas of the US – most located in the West – the states in the American West and the federal government have struggled to achieve a delicate balance between a broad national interest, effecting all the country’s citizens, and the interests of resource rich states that often find themselves motivated, by economics and politics, to pursue exploitation of a state’s natural resources. When Roosevelt acted to protect the Grand Canyon from development in 1908, for example, he did so, in part, out of fear that political forces in the then-territory of Arizona would allow the commercial exploitation of the canyon to the detriment or destruction of its scenic values. 2 As historian Douglas Brinkley has written in his book about Teddy Roosevelt’s environmental legacy: “What disturbed Roosevelt . . . was that the Arizona terri- tory was debating whether to leave the canyon virtually untrammeled (allowing 1 Proclamation of March 2, 1909 (no. 896), Mount Olympus National Monument, 35 Stat. 2247. Presidential proclamations were authorized by the 1906 Act for the Preservation of American Antiquities, (American Antiquites Act) 16 U.S.C. §§ 431–33, 34 Stat. 225. 2 Proclamation of January 11, 1908 (no. 794), Grand Canyon National Monument, 35 Stat. 2175.