West Virginia Highlands Voice

New Year’s Resolution

by Hugh Rogers

We’ve been watching Chicago, home of the administrationin- waiting, for signs of resolution—not so much in the first sense, “a firm decision to do or not to do something,” as the second, “the action of solving a problem,” or even the third, “chiefly Chemistry: the process of reducing or separating something into constituent parts or components.”

At this stage, resolution appears in the form of individual people, the components of governing. Through all the drama—whether Hillary would become Secretary of State, Bill Richardson would resent his consolation prize, Eric Holder would be held back by a notorious pardon he’d facilitated, and so on—we’ve waited to see who would get the top positions affecting our environment.

The stakes could not be higher. For eight years, instead of addressing problems that confront us at each scale from our headwaters to the whole planet, the Bush Administration has run a crude flea market where everything’s for sale.

The latest revelation as this was written, a week before Christmas, came from the Department of Interior’s Inspector General, with details on how that department’s chief official in charge of protecting fish and wildlife had done the exact opposite. In at least twenty cases where she had weakened protections for endangered species, the official, Julie MacDonald, had gone against the advice of agency and independent scientists, distorting or ignoring their reports. Politics blew away science, the analysis concluded; here politics may be understood as a combination of ideology and simple greed.

When he announced his choices to head the regulatory agencies that deal with the financial markets, President-elect Obama said the government had been “asleep at the switch,” and added, “There’s not a lot of adult supervision.” Amen. Now, may we have some adult supervision over our land, air, and water?

It’s just as well that Carol Browner, Obama’s coordinator of energy and climate, will work in the White House under his supervision. She was in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during the Clinton Administration. We have some history. In 1995, when that agency’s staff scientists rated Corridor H as “Environmentally Unsatisfactory,” she fired the Regional Administrator and overruled the scientists—for political reasons. As the old saying has it, we knew her before she was a virgin.

While Obama was announcing his selections for EPA and the Department of Energy, the politicking continued over who would head the Department of Interior. Most environmentalists were supporting Raul Grijalva, an Arizona Congressman who has served with West Virginia’s Nick Rahall on the House Natural Resources Committee. We got to know him when our Wild Monongahela wilderness legislation went through his subcommittee.

Maybe Grijalva and John Berry, an Interior Department veteran from the Clinton years, knocked each other out. Instead, Obama picked Colorado Senator Ken Salazar—no virgin, to be sure. Most notably, he has supported throwing federal money at “clean coal” research on technology to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal-burning power plants. Oil and mining interests praised him; coal company stocks rose.

These days, the industry regards Obama as anti-coal, Salazar as pro-coal. Our Governor Manchin has told the President-elect thatthey are “not on the same page” on the issue of climate change. I wouldn’t count on his pagination any more than I would study investors’ bets for reliable clues to what will happen with coal.

The environmental activist community’s reaction to the appointment has been mixed, not to say confusing. Salazar was called a “staunch conservationist” who opposed oil shale development on public lands, and he was criticized for his willingness to allow some drilling in national forest roadless areas. Kieran Suckling, of the Center for Biological Diversity, said, “It’s a very disappointing choice for a presidency which promised visionary change.” But Carl Pope, national director of the Sierra Club, said the Club was “very pleased with the nomination.” The same compromise over natural gas exploration on the Roan Plateau in Colorado was cited both for and against him.

The Highlands Conservancy paid close attention to the Interior position (and communicated with the Presidential Transition Team) because the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation, and Enforcement— usually known as OSM—is located within that department. But why is it there?

One Secretary of Interior said the department should have been called the Department of Western Development. In the 20th and 21st centuries, every Secretary but one has come from the West. By far the greater proportion of the public lands it deals with is in the West. The National Park Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Geological Survey, Bureau of Land Management—all deal primarily with the West. The Bureau of Reclamation doesn’t reclaim, it builds and runs dams. The Minerals Management Service manages minerals on public lands— not coal fields in the East.

In 1970, the EPA was established as a separate agency because Interior was too pro-development. A few years later, for the same reason, the Mine Safety and Health Administration was made independent of Interior’s Bureau of Mines. So when Congress passed the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) in 1977, why did it put OSM in Interior?

A long-time ally on surface mining issues who was present at the creation told me the answer was simple: The late Mo Udall, who shepherded SMCRA through Congress, was chairman of the House Interior Committee, and he wanted to retain oversight of OSM. He was “the man” through its early years. Since then, the agency had lost its way. Even under the more enlightened administrations, it could not get traction because it was such an odd duck in Interior. “Better EPA, Energy, anywhere other than the department responsible for . . . natural resource exploitation,” said this informant.

Politics always comes back to people. No resolution is permanent.