Hodel Denies Trying to Curb Coast Panel

Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel on Monday denied that his agency had initiated action intended to strip the California Coastal Commission of its authority to regulate the environmental impact of offshore oil drilling in federal waters.

In a statement that reiterated his criticisms of the state commission’s efforts to protect the California coast, Hodel said, “The Interior Department had not proposed, and it does not seek, to decertify the commission.”

The statement was issued after The Times reported that Hodel had sent Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige a memo on May 29 suggesting that the commission was “usurping” federal authority to regulate offshore oil exploration and production by imposing more stringent environmental protections than are required by federal regulators.

Baldridge, through the Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has the authority to review the commission’s compliance with the Coastal Zone Management Act, the federal law that gives states veto power over the installation of oil rigs that do not conform to state environmental protection laws.

The 1972 act was designed to encourage states to meet minimum federal coastal protection standards and requires that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration periodically review each state’s actions. If the agency finds that a state is not in compliance with the federal act, the secretary of Commerce can strip away its veto power.

The California Coastal Commission’s strict air-quality and oil-spill mitigation measures governing all offshore oil rigs exceed the federal minimum, according to the commission’s executive director, Peter Douglas. It was the imposition of these tougher standards that Hodel and his staff criticized in the May 29 communication to Baldridge, Douglas said.

In addition to Hodel’s memo, Assistant Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles sent the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration a long list of particular complaints and suggested to the agency that if the state commission did not change its ways the Commerce Department had grounds “to initiate the program decertification process.”

Start of Procedure

Maureen Lawton, an Interior Department Land and Minerals Management staff assistant under Griles, told The Times earlier that Griles’ letter and list of particulars were “the kickoff of the decertification process.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is currently making one of its periodic reviews of the Coastal Commission. In his Monday statement, Hodel made it clear that “the Interior Department did not initiate the review” but added, “I not only have a right, but an obligation to inform NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) of the Interior Department’s experience with the commission. . . . Our request is very simple: that the commission be instructed by NOAA to abide by the law and its own regulations.”