Ended Controversy Without Changing Policies : Clark Able Trouble-Shooter at Interior

To conservatives, William P. Clark proved to be just the “trouble-shooter” that President Reagan had sought in September, 1983, to replace abrasive James G. Watt as head of the Interior Department.

During Clark’s 15-month tenure as secretary of the Interior, an almost endless controversy over Watt’s pro-development lands policies quickly faded from public view--and from the election-year speeches of Democrats who had hoped to capitalize on Watt’s unpopularity.

Critics Almost Wistful

Indeed, it is one measure of Clark’s success that his sudden resignation Tuesday leaves some of his environmentalist critics almost wistful for the headline-grabbing days of his predecessor.

Admirers and critics alike agree that the change from Watt to Clark was one of style, not substance. Clark “has been well above average for an Interior secretary,” said Gordon S. Jones, vice president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank. “In general, he continued most of the policies Secretary Watt had put into place.”

In contrast, William Turnage, president of the Wilderness Society, said: “He’s a very slick PR operator. He covered up Watt’s disasters while carrying out his policies. In terms of environmental records, they’re the two worst Interior secretaries in the history of the United States.”

Although most environmentalists were kinder, most agreed that Clark’s greatest accomplishment has been to remove the Interior Department as a political thorn in the Administration’s side.

The genial, soft-spoken Clark quietly abandoned several losing battles that the flamboyant Watt had waged with Congress and environmentalists. Shortly after taking office, he defused a debate over Watt’s below-cost leasing of federal coal reserves by naming a panel to look into the matter. No coal leases have been issued since.

Under fire from Congress, Clark reduced the amount of offshore oil and gas acreage in environmentally sensitive areas that Watt had planned to lease to private firms for exploration. And he abandoned plans to let companies explore for minerals in wilderness areas.

But the Administration’s basic policy of promoting federal lands development--a policy attacked by conservationists but cheered by conservatives as pro-free market--has continued unchanged.

Clark refused to alter the Administration’s “area-wide” bidding process for offshore oil and gas tracts, which allows bidders to pick attractive sites from huge swaths of undersea land, and has argued that it will boost domestic petroleum reserves most quickly. Critics say that the process reduces competition and lowers the price paid for the tracts.

He fended off coastal states’ efforts to exert more control over oil and gas exploration off their shores and fought state efforts to obtain more of the revenues from offshore drilling.

And he has pleased the Interior Department’s constituency in the Western states, where most federal lands are situated, by scotching attempts to reduce Western water projects and other development efforts.

Clark helped kill a recent effort by Budget Director David A. Stockman to merge the Interior Department’s prime development agency, the Bureau of Reclamation, with the Eastern-oriented Army Corps of Engineers. And the department has renewed much-criticized contracts for below-market sales to Western power systems of electricity generated by federally built dams.

The department unsuccessfully fought congressional efforts last year to add millions of acres to the federal wilderness system. And the agency has since been attacked for seeking to remove millions of acres from review as future wilderness areas.

“We have too many problems with him on critical issues. Overall, it has not been a good record,” Michelle Perrault, president of the San Francisco-based Sierra Club, said. “He was not a friend of the environment.”

However, several erstwhile critics had praise for some Clark policies.

The League of Conservation Voters praised Clark’s “political courage” in forging a compromise plan for the Garrison Diversion water project in North Dakota. That irrigation project, one of the most controversial and expensive federal construction efforts in decades, would be dramatically scaled down under proposals made by a task force last month.

The National Wildlife Federation called Clark “a good listener and a gentleman.” And Rep. Morris K. Udall (D-Ariz.), chairman of the House Interior Committee, said that he was a “considerate and reasonable” spokesman for policies that Udall has ardently opposed.

“In light of Ronald Reagan’s basic policies on conservation and environmental matters, it is unlikely we could do much better” under Clark’s successor, he said.