We appreciate Rebecca Watson’s invitation to
Westerners, and we salute the many positive efforts Interior is
undertaking to protect wild places and involve the public. But we
do not believe HCN has mischaracterized the Bush
administration’s record.
On the subject of opening
land to development:
In 2001, the Department of
Agriculture rewrote the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which
would have protected 58.5 million acres of national forest (HCN,
7/30/01: Bush fails to defend roadless rule). In the past two
years, the Forest Service has leased 92,000 acres of roadless lands
for oil and gas development, and proposed logging on another 17,000
acres. Dozens of additional projects are in the works.
While the 4.4 million acres of wilderness-quality Bureau of Land
Management land in Utah never had legislative protection, the
previous administration gave them interim administrative protection
so that Congress could decide whether to formally protect them as
wilderness. Since the 2003 Norton-Leavitt settlement, the BLM has
leased approximately 148,000 acres of this land for oil, gas and
coal development. Hundreds of thousands more acres of
wilderness-quality land will soon be on the auction block.
Regarding Otero Mesa, Assistant Secretary Watson says
that “previously, nearly 2 million acres were open for leasing; our
recent record of decision closes more than 130,000 acres.” Those 2
million acres were open prior to 1998, when the BLM called a halt
to all leasing on Otero Mesa until it could complete an
environmental impact statement. The BLM’s final plan,
released in January, opens all but 124,000 acres to drilling.
On the subject of public participation:
The
administration’s Healthy Forests Initiative expands the use
of “categorical exclusions” to exempt logging operations on up to
1,000 acres from the National Environmental Policy Act, which
requires environmental review and public comment. In December, the
Forest Service adopted regulations that allow forest supervisors to
categorically exclude new forest plans, as well as plan revisions
and amendments, from NEPA analysis.
The Forest
Service’s “content analysis team” was widely believed to be
tops when it came to evaluating public comment. The shop was shut
down after staffers disagreed with administration higher-ups who
asked them to minimize the appearance of controversy, and stop
tracking overall public support or opposition (HCN, 4/26/04:
Outsourced).
Regarding renewable energy:
President Bush’s proposed 2002 budget would have cut funds
for renewable energy resources by $190 million. In 2003, he
proposed adding $21 million, but half of that was meant for his
hydrogen initiative and for hydropower, while solar, geothermal,
and biomass programs were cut. In 2004, he wanted to cut more from
wind and geothermal, and give solar and biomass only negligible
increases. Bush’s 2006 budget would cut solar energy programs
by more than $1.1 million and biomass programs by $30.5 million.
Watson quotes energy expert Scott Sklar as praising the
Department of Interior, but in that same article, Sklar gives the
Bush administration a ” ‘C minus’ … or maybe a
‘D plus’ ” for its renewable energy policies.
The editors of High Country
News
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Editors Respond.
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