WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved land-exchange legislation Monday that would allow the Quileute tribe to move its headquarters, school, day care center and elder center out of a tsunami zone and ensure unfettered public access to popular beaches along Washington’s coast.
In the first step toward final approval, the legislation, approved 381-7 late Monday afternoon, would give the tribe 785 acres of Olympic National Park in return for the Quileute ensuring access to Rialto, Second and other stunning beaches that skirt the coast but which are reached by trails that pass through tribal land.
The legislation includes the transfer of 492 acres of parkland at the northern part of the reservation to the tribe, ending a half-century boundary dispute with Olympic National Park.
“This resolves all that outstanding controversy,” said George Behan, spokesman for U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, a Belfair Democrat whose district includes Clallam and Jefferson counties and who sponsored HR 1162.
A similar bill co-sponsored by Washington Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Mountlake Terrace, and Patty Murray, D-Bothell, awaits Senate approval.
“The Senate does understand the immediacy,” Behan said Monday. “We expect it to move this spring.”
Tribal spokeswoman Jackie Jacobs said the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs is finishing a report on the legislation so it can be brought to the floor for a vote.
The Senate bill differs from the House version in adding other factors.
It designates 4,100 acres in the Lake Crescent area as wilderness and adjusts the lake’s boundary to allow three things: management of the Spruce Railroad grade as the Olympic Discovery Trail, operation and maintenance of the existing county road and management and maintenance of Pyramid Peak lookout as a historic structure.
“The tribe is urging the House and Senate committees and leadership to proceed as quickly as they can with the amendment-conference process so that the children and elders of the tribe are not at risk a day longer than is necessary,” Jacobs said.
The need for the legislation “could not be greater,” tribal Chairman Tony Foster said Monday in a prepared statement.
Last March the tribe, whose low-lying land also sits at the mouth of the Quillayute River, evacuated some its residents in response to a tsunami advisory and briefly closed its flood-endangered school.
On Saturday, a 5.7 earthquake off the coast of Vancouver Island served as “an ominous reminder of the imminent danger facing our tiny village,” Foster said.
“When [not if] a tsunami comes, the devastation and loss of life in LaPush will be horrible,” he said.
“Today is the historic first step toward providing safety and protection for the Quileute people.”
The tribe has been seeking land to move to outside of the tsunami zone for about 50 years.
While breathtakingly beautiful, its one-square-mile reservation “is a dangerous place to live,” Dicks said during debate over the legislation on the House floor.
The dangers that could be brought on by a tsunami are compounded by damaging floods from the Qillayute River that occur nearly every year, Dicks said.
The legislation would designate 275 acres of Park Service land for infrastructure, 222 acres of which would be de-listed as “wilderness.”
A provision in Dicks’ original legislation that designated other acres within the park as wilderness was removed by the House Natural Resources Committee before it to the floor for debate.
Dicks subsequently introduced HR 3222 that would designate as wilderness that acreage that was stripped from his original bill.
The House National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Committee held a hearing on the bill in December.
“There’s only one road in and one road out of LaPush, and this road is usually under 3 to 4 feet of water when flooded,” former tribal chairwoman Bonita Cleveland told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs last year.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.