The CHAIRMAN. I understand that.

Senator MONRONEY. Fishing worms, minnows, or things of that kind.

The CHAIRMAN. I understand that, but my point is that there is a prohibition in here on the Corps from charging fees for the use of docking facilities, but there is no prohibition on the entrepreneur, the private operator who has such a facility, from charging fees to a person who may wish to use the docking facility to moor his boat.

Senator MONRONEY. For a permanent mooring base. I think it would have no relationship to that because this would be on a concession basis where the concessionaire obviously would be paying an annual rental to the Army Engineers for that special commercial privilege and he and the commercial operator would charge fees that were not above that limit which the Army Engineers usually crank into the contract stating how much can be charged for the private fees. The CHAIRMAN. Are there any questions of the Senators? Senator Anderson?

Senator ANDERSON. I just want to say a few words here.

There was a reorganization act passed by the Congress a few years ago to the effect that each such standing committee shall, so far as practical, require all witnesses appearing before it to file in advance a statement of their proposed testimony. You gave one copy. I hope someday we will have a chance to rehear this bill so that we can find out what the background has been. We don't have it at the present time.

Did you participate also in a vote that we had on the tidelands oil matter, Senator Monroney?

Senator MONRONEY. The bills I referred to?

The CHAIRMAN. No. Did you participate in the vote on the tidelands oil matter? That was back in 1953.

Senator MONRONEY. Yes, sir; I certainly did.

Senator ANDERSON. At that time, we tried our best to obtain funds for education. This would take away all these fees, would it not? Would this not change quite a bit the established pattern?

Senator MONRONEY. No. This has to do with the Corps of Engineers and on projects developed with tax money for the Engineers. The tidelands matter, as I recall, was a matter of collecting the revenue in royalty from our declaration in the Tidelands bill that the public lands were all lands lying beyond the 3-mile limit and in the case of Texas, I believe, and one or two other States that claimed historic ownership of the lands out to the 12-mile limit, I believe. This had nothing to do with that.

This is the development of natural resources and the charge that was acceptable to everyone. The question is, who is going to get the result of the charge, whether it be the States that had the tidelands and what their extent of this sovereignty historically was.

Senator ANDERSON. Are the Corps of Engineers opposed to this bill, or Secretary of Interior, or Secretary of Agriculture?

Senator MONRONEY. I can't hear you.

The CHAIRMAN. Are the reports from the executive agencies favorable or unfavorable on the pending measure? I think the answer is that there has been an adverse report filed with the committee on the proposed bill.

Senator HARRIS. You would be the proper one to respond to that. The CHAIRMAN. Talking about S. 2828, your bill.

Senator MONRONEY. The report has come to the committee, I pre

sume.

The CHAIRMAN. You probably have not had a chance to see it.

Senator MONRONEY. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. There is a report from the Secretary of the Interior recommending against it and also from the Department of the Army by the Secretary of the Army, opposing the enactment of the bill. I think that answers the question.

Senator HARRIS. I might say I am not surprised nor moved by that

report but I had not known that you had received it yet.

Senator MONRONEY. Could I ask a question?

Am I not correct that the bill, when it did pass the Senate, struck the provision for the collection of fees and that the collection was restored by the conferees on that piece of legislation?

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Monroney, I am trying to check that very point. I did not raise it because I am not sure about it. We had an argument, as I recall, over the question of access to these areas. This is what the hassle was about between the House and the Senate. But I can't specifically respond to your question until we find the bill as it passed and we are trying to get a copy of that.

Senator MONRONEY. I have had my staff working on it. I apologize for not having my statement ready but I have been busy with matters of campaign.

The CHAIRMAN. We never enforce the rules on Senators or House Members. We realize that it is not possible.

Senator MONRONEY. It is a very good rule, I will say, and it should be observed by Senators as well as departments.

The CHAIRMAN. The trouble is that you depart from your text anyway so it does not matter.

Any further questions?

Senator ALLOTT. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Allott.

Senator ALLOTT. I have just one question.

When this legislation originally came before the Senate, I was less than enthusiastic about the overall approach. One of the chief things that bothered me was the administrative cost of it. I thought that the mechanics of the enforcement of this would be a little beyond us and I will be interested to get from the testimony of both the Department of the Interior and the Corps of Engineers the actual amount of money that has been raised as compared with the administration and collection of it. The question I have I will direct to you, Senator Monroney.

We have with these two bills before us almost the opportunity to completely review this entire matter of the land and water conservation fund. I notice that my own State has taken a very strong position on it. Now, if you were to pass legislation that exempted Corps of Engineer projects from user tax, would you not be even more justified in exempting Interior Department projects from it?

For example, reclamation projects are in a major portion paid for by the users. In a Corps project, the major portion is paid by the general public. So, it seems to me that if you feel that fees should be done

away with, you have an even stronger argument for it where a great deal of the expense is borne by the individual people who use water or power from that particular project. Don't you think this is true?

Senator MONRONEY. I would feel for the recreational uses of your Interior Department projects, particularly reclamation, that we should have the removal of the fee by the Corps of Engineers because the lakes look pretty much alike after they are completed. There would be no reason to charge for one and not charge for the other or not to charge for one and to charge for the other.

Senator ALLOTT. I still have to make up my own mind about this but it seems to me that where you have a project-looking at it purely from an argumentative standpoint-where you have a reclamation project that is paid for to a great extent by private individuals, you have even less of an argument for user fees than you do in a Corps projects which is paid for the General Government. Senator MONRONEY. I would agree with that.

Senator HARRIS. Could I respond to that by saying that this bill was narrowly restricted to Corps of Engineers projects because of special national policy considerations historically and also particularly because it is a companion measure to an identical bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Edmondson.

Let me say I indicated in my statement both orally and written that I have grave misgivings about the entire entrance and user fee program and I would hope that, given this bill as a vehicle, and S. 1401, which is designed to bring in additional revenue to the fund, and the fact that only 8.9 percent of the fund presently has come from fees while 91.1 percent has come from other sources, it seems to me this would be a good time to review the entire entrance and user fee program.

I point out in particular one project that is very much of concern to me. The Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma, under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior, collected in fees $11,454. It paid out the following in costs to administer that: Salaries, $9,800; and first-year cost for collection, booths, signs, equipment, roadways, which will be amortized over several years, $12,000; for an initial cost of $21,800, as compared to an income of $11,454, and in the process excluded a great many poor people from the use of those facilities. Senator ALLOTT. I am not interested in getting into that matter at this point but I did want to raise the point about reclamation projects, which I think is a maximum issue.

Senator HARRIS. I am very sympathetic with what you have said. Senator ALLOTT. There is even less justification for charging on a reclamation project, where a major portion of the cost is borne by the private individuals, than charging on a Corps project, where the major portion of the cost is borne by the Government.

That is all I have.

The CHAIRMAN. The Chair wishes to state that it indicated at the outset that S. 2828 raises the whole question of user fees. The committee will review the matter de novo. We will go through the whole business. Otherwise, we can't properly reach a conclusion on S. 2828. I think our colleagues from Oklahoma will agree on that.

Senator MONRONEY. I agree completely because we are falling between two Chairs, jurisdiction between two committees, one with reclamation and one with Corps of Engineers projects. We could not very well go into a committee jurisdictional fight so we beamed it in on this one, which will set a pattern, I am sure, for the others.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any further questions?
Senator FANNIN. Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Fannin.

Senator FANNIN. I would like to ask if it would not be true that certain administrative costs would be nonrecurring so that perhaps it would not be proper to take the first year as a schedule for the later years in regard to the cost and the amount of revenue that will be forthcoming.

Senator HARRIS. Senator Fannin, you are quite correct. I thought I made that clear in the charges I cited on the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge, that of the $11,454 first-year cost, $9,800 were salaries made necessary by the program, $12,000 were for first-year costs, all of which would be amortized over a period of years.

Senator MONRONEY. May I make an addition here on the cost and it is extraneous to a degree on what we are talking about, but I do think it has a bearing.

Many of the lakes we have in Oklahoma will be part of the navigational facilities of the Arkansas navigation program. It is going to be pretty hard for Senator Harris and myself, the Oklahoma congressional delegation, to explain to a man who brings a rowboat or motorboat in at the back end of his pickup truck with a family of kids, why he has to pay a dollars to use the lake and he sees the towboats going up the entire lake length of the navigational project from the Mississippi River to Tulsa without any charge for navigation or use of the water whatsoever.

So, I think we have to be a little realistic in trying to keep this thing in balance. I would hate to see the public, for the minor use they put the lake to, to be penalized while we recognize the freedom of navigation on our inland waterways.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any further questions?
Senator CHURCH. Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Church.

Senator CHURCH. The issues raised by the bill that the two distinguished Senators from Oklahoma have introduced really extend beyond projects of any sort, that is, the chairman has indicated, the question here is whether or not we should continue recreational fees. It goes beyond reclamation and Corps projects. It extends to the Forest Service.

The CHAIRMAN. That is right. User fees.

Senator CHURCH. We have in the West many campgrounds with special facilities where a very minor fee is charged for the use of those facilities on a day-by-day basis. It seems to me we are going to have to apply this across the board and either eliminate these fees entirely or reaffirm the propriety of fees of this kind. That, it seems to me, is the issue raised by this bill, that there will be no justification to limit the application to corps projects alone.

Senator HARRIS. Mr. Chairman, could I respond?
The CHAIRMAN. Senator Harris.

Senator HARRIS. I respectfully disagree in one particular. I think there is this special situation in regard to the navigable waters of the United States as our statement indicated. Furthermore, as I said earlier, I have very grave misgivings about the whole fee program, anyway, with the burden it puts on people in this great rich, wealth country, and also on the cost of administration in connection with the income. I would hope the whole program could be reviewed but I think there are particularly distinguishing features about Corps of Engineers projects which we testified to.

Senator CHURCH. However, there are Forest Service camps that involve recreational facilities that relate to navigable waters, lakes, and rivers. It is difficult, I think, to draw a line of distinction that is completely tenable.

Senator HARRIS. I don't disagree with what the Senator says. I do, for example, urge that a facility such as Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge be a nonfee installation.

Senator MONRONEY. I think we are not asking for all or nothing in this. I think we are asking for a start and to take off the most obnoxious fees for the most incidental use of the facilities. I don't know when a picnic area becomes a genuine recreational area with bath facilities and with cabins or shelters and various things of that kind. This is going to be a hard line to draw.

I think when it does become a matter of habitation, of facilities beyond the normal day-to-day use, then we do have a right to collect a normal fee, whether it is a cabin or whether it is the Old Faithful Lodge.

Those things are matters of degree and the services rendered, particularly to the individual for his personal housing and comfort and safety might be subject to a nominal fee charge. I don't think the public would object to that.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Anderson.

Senator ANDERSON. Are you distinguishing between fees on navigable waters and fees on o other bodies of water?

Senator HARRIS. I think the history and policy of the U.S. Government has quite clearly always done that. As I said in my statement, since the ordinance of 1787 the navigable waterways of the United States are free. That has been our policy. Andrew Jackson reaffirmed it in 1830 when he said, "All improvements affected by the funds of the Nation for general use should be open to the enjoyment of all our fellow citizens exempt from payment of tolls or any imposition of that character."

That was renewed by the Congress in the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1882 and legislation ever since until the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act changed that historic policy.

The CHAIRMAN. Any further questions?

Thank you, gentleman. We appreciate having your statement and comments. We will review the entire matter of user fees in connection with your pending legislation and place the memorandum at this point.