WASHINGTON — Alaska lawmakers are on the lookout for potential presidential decrees that could block fishing and drilling in the state's ocean waters.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski and others have introduced legislation that they hope might stop future presidents from using a 110-year-old law — the Antiquities Act — to carve out lands and waters for new environmental protections. But the chance for new federal legislation to curb executive powers during President Barack Obama's term has all but passed.
Now, with Obama's recent expansion of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine Monument in Hawaii and designation of the first-ever marine monument on the East Coast, worries about a surprise Alaska announcement have arisen again.
"It seems like we read about a new designation every week — that's probably an exaggeration, but it just seems like that," Murkowski said Thursday. The Obama administration has used the 1906 Antiquities Act "as a tool to both sidestep and threaten Congress," Murkowski said.
