3. ENTRANCE FEES AT ARMY ENGINEER LAKES DO NOT CONTRIBUTE IN ANY WAY TO MAINTENANCE OR IMPROVEMENT OF THE LAKES WHERE THEY ARE COLLECTED

The provisions of the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965 very clearly channel all revenue from fees into the Land and Water Conservation Fund, from which not one single dollar has been allocated or can be allocated to the Army Engineers for maintenance and improvement of the lakes and the federal recreational areas where the fees are collected.

As the Committee well knows, the federal share of this Fund goes to acquire additional lands for recreational purposes, generally for parks.

About the only way any of this money can be returned to an Army Engineer facility is by the decision of a State to spend a portion of its share upon a State park or community facility located on one of the lakes.

I am advised that a recent study by Arthur D. Little, Inc., made for the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, indicated substantial public approval of these entrance fees.

I also understand that the same report indicated that 83.7% of those interviewed thought that revenue from the fees which they paid was used for "Upkeep of Federal Areas".

This is simply not true, as any official of the Army Engineers, Forest Service, or Park Service can tell you.

Nor is it true that the substantial new dock rentals slated to begin in January are justified by "the cost of administering and maintaining surveillance of such facilities" as recently claimed by one of the resident Engineers in Oklahoma.

Scores of letters could be provided for the Committee to support the fact the Army Engineers are providing no utilities, no police or fire protection, and no services of any kind to the dock and swimming float owners on these lakes.

Charging as much as $75 for a single annual inspection is completely out of reason, and certainly cannot be justified.

4. ENTRANCE FEES ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO COLLECT EFFICIENTLY AND FAIRLY IN RESERVOIR AREAS

We have received numerous letters from constituents who have paid an entrance fee or obtained the so-called "Golden Eagle" at a cost of $7, only to discover that others using the same fee area had paid nothing.

A letter from a housewife in Muskogee, Oklahoma, dated August 28, 1967, reported that she was part of a party which had purchased two permits at a cost of $14, for a 3-day camping and fishing visit on Eufaula Lake. They used a fee area, and discovered that several other campers in the area were enjoying the same privileges without any cost.

In a recent letter to one of our colleagues in the Senate the Deputy District Engineer at Little Rock, Arkansas, pointed out: "Many of our park use areas have several entrances. Cost of enforcement with sentries at each entrance would be in excess of three times the present cost. We, therefore, feel that continuing our present program of advising the public of the fee requirements through the news media, of posting all entrances to the fee areas, and of checking the areas on a cyclic basis are the best means of enforcing the entrance fee system."

The fact is that without thousands of miles of new barbed wire around the reservoir recreation areas, and a new army of fee collectors, there is no practical and efficient way to collect entrance fees at these areas.

The Army Engineers know this.

The general public knows it.

The members of this Committee know it.

In fact, everybody with any familiarity with Army Engineer reservoirs knows that a facility use fee, limited to beaches and campsites, or to launch facilities where mechanical or hydraulic equipment is provided, is the only practical, fair and economical system for these reservoirs.

The entrance fees must be eliminated.

5. ENTRANCE FEES AT ARMY RESERVOIRS HAVE BEEN A FAILURE COSTING MORE TO COLLECT THAN THEY HAVE YIELDED IN REVENUE

On September 21, 1967, Lt. Colonel William R. Needham of the Army Corps of Engineers advised me by letter that a total of $594,174 had been collected in entrance fees at designated fee areas during the period 1 April through 31 August 1967.

Only last week, Congressman Carl Albert and I were told by top officials in the Army Engineers that approximately $600,000 had been spent by the Army Engineers in the last summer to employ additional rangers and personnel, in a major effort to collect entrance fees at reservoir recreation areas.

These figures speak for themselves.

They demonstrate that entrance fees are a losing proposition at Army Engineer lakes.

It is significant to me that the Arthur D. Little Survey Report of October 1967, as submitted to the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, conceded that collection costs "range from about 10% to well over 100% of revenue" for all of the fee collection system at outdoor recreation areas.

It is also significant that the same report says it is not possible to reach any precise percentage as to overall collection costs, because "the costs of fee collection under the present fee charge and collection system are sufficiently intertwined with the costs of other functions performed by the several recreation land managing agencies that we do not consider it feasible to make any numerical judgment about aggregate fee collection costs as such."

In the case of the Army Engineer reservoirs, the returns simply do not justify the continuation of entrance fees in the future and they should be discontinued without further delay.

6. ENTRANCE FEES DENY OUTDOOR RECREATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES TO PEOPLE OF LOW INCOME

One of the astounding conclusions in the Arthur D. Little report which I have mentioned previously in this statement is that very few people are being denied access to outdoor recreation by reason of the entrance fees at federal reservoirs. I could show the Arthur D. Little people and will be happy to show members of this committee, letters and cards and petitions from hundreds of people who disagree strongly with this conclusion. A letter from a constituent in Checotah, Oklahoma, states:

"I am one of several million who was forced to retire at age 65 and accept Social Security which amounts to about one-third my annual income while working. I was forced to sell my home in Okmulgee, because I could not keep up my payments, and buy a mobile home, putting it near Eufaula Lake in order to live and pursue my hobbies of hunting and fishing. To see my pension gradually whittled down, by this tax and that one, along with increased cost of living is very disheartening, and makes one wonder just what our nation is trying to do. *** Along with millions more, I am against any fees on federal lakes, and offer my support in your fight against them."

A letter from a constituent at Locust Grove, Oklahoma, calls on the Oklahoma delegation to "do their utmost to defeat this double taxation." In the writer's opinion, "For those of us who have been retired and are on a fixed income, i.e., Social Security, it is a little too much."

A letter from a retired couple living on a rural route near Wagoner, Oklahoma, advises, "This charge will be a great hardship on most of us." These sentiments are held throughout Northeastern Oklahoma, where a number of Army Engineer reservoirs are located, and could easily have been verified by Arthur D. Little, Inc.

7. ENTRANCE FEES ARE INCONSISTENT WITH THE PRACTICES OF OUR STATE AND MANY OTHER STATES IN THE UNION

Oklahoma has traditionally provided free outdoor recreational opportunity to its people, at all of our state parks, in the belief that these lands belong to the people and should not be denied to any of them.

I understand that this practice is followed by 24 states in the union, who make no entrance charges at any outdoor recreational facilities owned by the state. Only 12 states in the union, according to Arthur D. Little, follow the federal practice of selling an annual permit entitling citizens to enter outdoor recreational facilities of the state.

In most of the states, there are far more free outdoor recreational facilities provided by the state or by local government than there are subject to entrance fees. Significantly, the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, which is the great advocate of entrance fees, has never introduced entrance fees at the many fine outdoor recreational areas which are provided in the District of Columbia.

Apparently, the Bureau feels entrance fees would be out of place in the Nation's Capital.

We in Oklahoma feel they are equally out of place at Army Engineer reservoirs which are built primarily for flood control, navigation, power or other governmental purposes.

We believe the practice of the majority of States should be followed by the Federal Government, rather than the practice of 12 States of the Union.

We believe the entrance fees, along with the dock fees which violate congressional policy on free use of the waters, should be eliminated without further delay.

On behalf of the people of Oklahoma and most Members of its congressional delegation, I urge a favorable report of H.R. 11236, repealing all authority for these fees.

Mr. EDMONDSON. I would like unanimous consent to have the statement printed-or did the chairman just make that request? Mr. JONES. Yes.

Mr. EDMONDSON. I would like to cover several highlights from it. In the first place I want to make it very clear that the people of Oklahoma, like the people of most of the other States, are both willing and able to pay reasonable user fees for actual use of specific well-developed recreational facilities on land that surround the reservoir, such as campsites and beaches that require attendants and continuing maintenance.

On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of our people do not support entrance fees, which operate to limit access to water areas which have been guaranteed free to the public by both national tradition and law.

Most of them also believe that it is unreasonable to charge an entrance fee for sightseeing, picnicking, and similar activities on public lands.

I might say that our delegation joins them in that conviction. There is also overwhelming opposition in our State to the recently announced boat dock and float fees, scheduled to go into effect in January 1968, which most of our people believe constitutes an infringement upon free use of public waters and a breach of contract with American citizens who are licensed to put up these docks and floats without any prior notice of a fee or charge.

The right of the Government to issue permits for docks and floats is not disputed in view of the responsibility of the Government to prevent hazards to health and safety on these reservoirs, and I do not believe anyone would object to a reasonable charge for administrative costs involved in permit issuance and necessary supervision. The charges which are contemplated on these docks and floats, on an annual basis, to begin in January are far in excess of what is reasonable to recover such administrative costs and cannot be justified on such a basis.

I might say, Mr. Chairman, at this point I have had letters from people in Oklahoma who have been served notice that they are going to have to pay $75 a year or $85 a year-one man even $121 a year— for so-called annual inspections of the facilities that he put up under permit system that said nothing whatsoever about any kind of a charge.

This is an example of what I mean when I say that these are unreasonable fees for recovery of administrative costs and cannot be justified in that way.

The statement which I have filed, and which has been made a part of the record, lists seven strong reasons fully justifying passage of a bill to repeal all entrance and admission fees on Army Engineer lakes and reservoirs.

I would like to discuss a couple of those reasons with the committee for a minute here. I do not believe it is necessary to go over again the very strong tradition in our country for freedom of the waters. Mr. JONES. Mr. Edmondson, I would like to call your attention to the fact that in the recent Flood Control Rivers and Harbors Acts, we took into account the economic justification of recreation. We assessed the economic justification would be a national asset and fully accessible to the people of this country. So that has been the principle we have utilized ever since that time, and the imposition of admission fees is 180 degrees different from the original concept and original reason why recreation should be included in the economic justifications of all the projects. It seems to me this has been a total failure, either the enforcement or collection of these have been so unsuccessful that we ought to go back to the original position and remain steadfast on that position.

Mr. EDMONDSON. I agree thoroughly with the chairman on that subject. I think it should be pointed out that when we adopted the Land and Water Conservation Act in 1965 we wrote into it this specific language:

No fee of any kind shall be charged by a Federal agency under any provision of this Act for the use of waters.

That was stated specifically in the 1965 act, and I do not think it would have been passed without that language in it. But notwithstanding this policy, and this statement, the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act

Mr. JONES. Subsequent acts that we passed by this committee, the Appalachia Act, Economic Development Act, all of them took into account the use of Federal funds, authorized use of Federal funds for the development of recreational facilities in these reservoirs.

Mr. EDMONDSON. The point I am endeavoring to make is when you put entrance fees on substantial land areas that surround the reservoirs for practical purposes you deny access to the waters that adjoin those lands, and going beyond this, the Engineers seek to impose annual fees on floating boat docks, swimming platforms, again in clear violation of the congressional rule against charges for the use of waters, because these are floating facilities. They are not on the land. They are on the water, and they are clearly using the water and not using the land.

In the State of Arkansas several cases have been called to my attention involving formal charges against individuals whose automobiles were found parked in so-called fee areas, although the people charged were making no use whatsoever of the facilities provided in the recreation area except to engage in sightseeing or to gain access to the

water.

Here again is a clear violation of congressional policy.

If we mean what we say when we provide by law that no charge shall be made for the use of waters or for access to them, we must eliminate all authority for interest and admission fees on land areas surrounding our Army Engineer lakes and reservoirs.

The point on double taxation, I think, is evident on its face, because the people who are being taxed for these entrance fees are the people who paid for these lands and for these reservoirs.

Another misconception that is widely held by people regarding these fees is that the fee revenue is going into the upkeep or maintenance of the recreation areas around the reservoirs.

Arthur D. Little, Inc., in a recent survey reported that a substantial percentage of people approved fees, but also reported that the overwhelming majority of these people thought that the fee revenue being collected was going into the upkeep of these recreational areas.

The fact of the matter is that all the money goes into the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act. None of it is allocated to the Army Engineers for the upkeep and maintenance of their recreational areas. All of that is appropriated money. And the Army Engineers are being asked to operate a recreational facility to provide revenue for the Land and Water Conservation Fund without getting out of the fund anything to contribute to the recreational areas which they are responsible for.

Scores of letters could be provided for the committee to support the fact that the Army Engineers are providing no utilities, no police or fire protection, and no services of any kind to the dock and swimming float owners on these lakes, who are being asked to pay this big annual fee for so-called supervision and assistance by the Army Engineers.

I think the point also needs to be made that it is impossible to collect efficiently and fairly these entrance fees at Army Engineer reser

voirs.

I had a letter recently from a housewife in Muskogee, Okla., reporting that she was part of a party which had purchased two permits at a cost of $14 for a 3-day camping and fishing visit on Eufaula Lake. They used a fee area, and discovered that several other campers in the area were enjoying the same privileges without any cost.

Now, the fact of the matter is that you have a number of different entrances to these areas. And it is impossible to officially police and inspect these areas without providing thousands of miles of barbed wire and a new army of fee collectors, and it cannot be done efficiently and effectively on these big areas around the Army Engineer reservoirs.

The Army Engineers know it, the general public know it, the members of this committee know it. And anybody with familiarity with Army Engineer reservoirs knows that a facility user fee, limited to beaches and campsites, or to launch facilities where mechanical or hydraulic equipment is provided, is the only practical, fair, and economical system for these reservoirs.

Entrance fees should be eliminated.

I am also hopeful that the committee will look into the material on page 5 of this statement with regard to what has been collected by the Army Engineers.

On September 21, 1967, Lt. Col. William R. Needham of the Army Corps of Engineers advised me by letter that a total of $594,174 had