2001-September 1, 2003
Energy Development
From its first week in office, the Bush administration has made energy development on public lands a top priority. Just four months after taking office, the administration issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to fast-track energy projects. The agencies -- particularly the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) -- have taken that order to heart.
From New Mexico's Otero Mesa region, to Utah's Dome Plateau, to the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming, the BLM has rushed to approve permits for exploration and drilling. In 2001 and 2002 alone, the bureau approved more than 7,000 drilling permits in five western states alone -- Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana. As of July 1, leases had been awarded on more than 5 million acres in those states alone. Then in April of 2003, the BLM approved the largest energy development project ever conducted on federal lands when it gave the green light to a plan to drill as many as 77,000 coalbed methane wells and more than 5,000 oil and gas wells in the Powder River Basin.
"It's not just public lands at risk, it's the ranchers, farmers and private landowners in the Powder River Basin whose livelihood and quality of life are jeopardized by the Bush administration's rapacious appetite for energy development," says Johanna Wald, director of the Nutural Resources Defense Council's land program. "The BLM's decision lit the fuse on a huge powder keg, and the administration is going to get burned."
Still, the biggest prize in the Bush administration's energy grab has to be the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. As a candidate, Bush repeatedly called for the reserve to be opened to oil exploration and drilling. And he followed that rhetoric with action, appointing outspoken proponents of drilling in the reserve to key policy positions in his administration. But, unlike the energy rush taking place in the Rocky Mountain states, opening the reserve to drilling will require an act of Congress. So far, the House and Senate have blocked the president's bids, but the White House is again on the offensive, linking drilling in the arctic reserve to
© 2003 The Foundation for National Progress
September 1, 2003
The Roadless Rule
Even before he took office, President Bush expressed his distaste for the landmark Clinton administration initiative protecting 58 million acres of wild forest lands from road-building and commercial logging. And, within a month of his inauguration, Bush directed the Forest Service to delay implementing the roadless rule. Ever since, the White House has been chipping away at the protections.
The administration did not attack the roadless rule directly -- overturning the Clinton decision would have required an act of Congress or an extensive rule-making process, complete with public hearings. Instead, the Bush team has sought to limit its reach. The frontal assault on the rule has been left to the administration's allies: Republican governors in Idaho, Utah, and Alaska and the giant logging company Boise Cascade, all of which challenged the rule in federal court.
The administration waited until the very last day of a court-imposed deadline before announcing its response to the suits. It was a sterling piece of political double-speak. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman declared that the administration would uphold the road-building ban, and would defend it in court. But Veneman also said the rule-making process would be reopened, allowing the protections to be amended on a forest-by-forest basis. Less than a week later, after what environmentalists described as a feeble legal defense on the part of Justice Department lawyers, US District Court Judge Edward Lodge issued an injunction against the roadless rule, barring it from taking effect.
The injunction was lifted in December of 2002, but a federal judge in Wyoming subsequently struck down the roadless rule again, declaring it a "thinly veiled attempt to designate 'wilderness areas'." It now appears likely that the matter will end up before the Supreme Court. But the Bush administration isn't waiting. A day after the Wyoming ruling, the White House declared plans to exempt the two largest federal forests -- Alaska's Tongass and Chugach -- in order to settle a lawsuit brought by the state's Republican governor.
"The roadless rule is one of the most popular federal policies in the history of the United States," says Sean Cosgrove, a forest policy expert with the Sierra Club. "We're talking about the last remaining 58.5 million acres of roadless forest, and one of the first things President Bush did in office was to tell the forest service to halt implementation." |
