Questionable Appointments

The James Watt legacy lives on in spite of George Bush’s campaign promise to put the very best people to work on his environmental agenda. Bush has made one outstanding appointment in William K. Reilly as chief of the Environmental Protection Agency. But his selections for other critical natural-resource jobs raise serious questions about the Administration’s pledge to safeguard the nation’s parks, wilderness and coastline.

Two former aides to one-time Interior Secretary Watt have been chosen to positions overseeing 70% of the public lands. James Cason has been nominated as assistant secretary of agriculture in charge of the U.S. Forest Service and Cy Jamison has been selected to be director of the Bureau of Land Management in the Department of the Interior. Cason is a former Oregon real estate developer who constantly ran afoul of the nation’s environmental organizations as deputy assistant secretary of the interior. Jamison was a legislative liaison for Watt and for the past eight years has been an aide to Rep. Ron Marlenee (R-Mont.) assigned to the House Interior Committee staff. Marlenee has a reputation as one of the most anti-wilderness members of Congress.

Other critical Interior Department appointments include two Midland, Tex., men who are close to the oil industry--one of them a friend of President Bush going back to his oil days--and two Indiana political supporters of Vice President J. Danforth Quayle. None of these appointments reflects any distinguished environmental credentials.

Bush’s friend is Martin L. Allday, a member of a prominent Midland law firm and past chairman of the Oil, Gas and Mineral Section of the State Bar of Texas. He was a young attorney in Midland when Bush moved there following World War II. Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan has announced Bush’s plan to name Allday as department solicitor, the secretary’s chief legal adviser.

Also from Midland is Barry A. Williamson, former owner of an independent oil and gas development company. He had worked since February, 1988, at the Department of Energy before being chosen by Lujan to run Interior’s Minerals Management Service, which is in charge of the department’s offshore oil program. In the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill, Williamson issued a press release announcing offshore drilling rigs could expect “a stepped-up series of surprise visits” from department inspectors. There’s nothing like having advance notice of a surprise visit.

The Quayle supporters are Frank A. Bracken, chairman of the board of Ball-InCon Glass Packaging Corp. in Muncie, who was chosen to be undersecretary of the Interior, and James M. Ridenour, head of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources 1981-88, to be director of the National Park Service, replacing California’s William Penn Mott. Bracken’s previous resource experience was service during 1969-72 as a legislative counsel at Interior. Ridenour was an executive of Great Lakes Chemical Corp. before taking the Indiana resources job, where he clashed repeatedly with environmental groups over commercial developments on state lands.

Reilly, at the Environmental Protection Agency, is an important anchor for the Bush environmental policy. But Bush’s determination to build a strong environmental record will be severely undermined--or doomed--unless he also has managers at Interior and the Forest Service who are willing to put conservation and protection of the nation’s dwindling natural estate ahead of the business-as-usual practice of commercial exploitation. The new appointees should be given a chance to demonstrate such a commitment, but so far, the record is not encouraging.