Dissipating the Clouds

Four years of dogged warfare between the U.S. Interior Department and environmentalists may be coming to an end. If so, everyone wins.

The two-month tenure of Donald P. Hodel as President Reagan’s third secretary of Interior has been encouraging, on the whole, to those who have battled the Administration’s crusade to exploit natural resources up to and including the very borders of the nation’s parklands.

Given that Hodel served as James G. Watt’s chief deputy before becoming Energy secretary, there were fears that he might resume Watt’s bombastic attack on anything that the environmental community stood for, or, at best, silently maintain most of Watt’s positions, as did William P. Clark.

Instead, Hodel has moved somewhat vigorously to undo some of the havoc created under Watt and tacitly continued since his departure. One of Hodel’s first acts in office was to approve the stalled purchase of an Arizona ranch as habitat for the nearly extinct masked bobwhite quail.

Then he slowed the pace of leasing offshore areas for oil exploration and drilling. While Hodel’s plan still contains several controversial lease sales, most notably off the California coast, there now may be some hope of reaching an accommodation without having to battle Hodel in Congress or the courts.

Hodel ordered the closure of Kesterson Reservoir in the San Joaquin Valley because contaminated irrigation-runoff water was killing and maiming waterfowl at the Kesterson wildlife refuge. The totally unexpected action stunned farmers in the area, but the closure was something that environmentalists had been trying to achieve for months--against stubborn Interior resistance. An appropriate compromise was struck last week that will avert the immediate cutoff of irrigation water to farmers in the area.

Hodel still is stuck with the Reagan Administration’s budget that squeezes 15% from current Interior spending and tries to pinch every dollar that it can from the people’s resources. But there was another hopeful sign recently when Hodel pledged to support increases in entrance fees charged by the National Park Service “only where reasonable and appropriate.” Reason has not been one of Interior’s most plentiful commodities in recent years.

The new secretary also said that he would not allow mining in the national parks, and he is reported to have rattled Interior’s bureaucratic cage to make certain that his directive was carried out.

Hodel even has invited leaders of environmental groups to meet with him, and has pledged to settle conflicts through consultation and consensus-building. That is a decided, and refreshing, change. Perhaps Hodel recognizes a fundamental fact that Watt never could: Environmentalism is the mainstream of American political life today, not just a mythical 1960s fringe element of backpacking flower children to be sneered at.

No secretary can be expected to make fundamental changes in Administration policy. But the new attitude at Interior since Don Hodel’s arrival has dissipated some of the black clouds of animosity that have gripped the Interior Department since January, 1981.