Quiet Raid on Public Lands

The battle for the environment is never easy. The struggle to clean the air and water and preserve wild lands for our children and our children’s children was tested in the 1980s by the attacks of Interior Secretary James G. Watt. Fortunately, public outrage stymied Watt.

But today, from Florida to Alaska, the environment again is under assault. The Bush administration is undercutting laws and reversing regulations under the guise of “balance” and of what’s good for the nation. The beneficiary is industry.

It’s the most concerted exploitation of the public’s land, air and water since fundamental protection laws went into effect three decades ago.

Many worthy initiatives are being junked, including a Clinton administration decision to halt road building in 59 million acres of untracked national forest. Corporations itching to tear up federal lands in the West for their energy and mineral wealth are getting a sympathetic hearing in the White House.

The present reversal is smarter, broader and more threatening than the Watt actions. Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, a Watt protege, extols the parks and wild animals; behind that shield, damage is taking place.

Many Americans are familiar with the administration’s quest to drill for oil on the Arctic plain in Alaska and repeal the snowmobile ban in Yellowstone. Scores of other rollbacks never make headlines. A sampling:

* A new Environmental Protection Agency rule allows companies to dump mine waste into rivers and streams.

* The Interior Department is pushing to develop oil and gas leases off the Central California coast and new energy leasing in the Los Padres National Forest, part of it habitat for the California condor.

* The EPA ordered a 16-year delay in enforcing rules to clean emissions from dirty older electric power plants.

* The Interior Department says it will allow drilling of 51,000 methane gas wells in northeast Wyoming, threatening the area’s groundwater supply. Interior also is opening the pristine Rocky Mountain Front in Montana and the red rock country of Utah to oil exploration.

* The U.S. Forest Service is expanding logging plans in the national forests and Interior is proposing oil exploration near Florida’s Everglades.

The administration also is slashing the regulatory budgets of agencies such as the EPA. Committed professional staff members have felt ignored, sometimes driven out. Former energy and logging industry executives manage the nation’s parks and forests.

Norton talks of restoring balance between protecting the environment and the need to develop public resources. But her initiatives, far from being balanced, are a swing back toward the exploitation that ravaged the public estate in the 20th century.

Congress should be fighting these shadowy dealings, but most members are preoccupied with national security issues and some are simply cozy with the energy industry and thus happy with the Bush administration actions.

If Congress continues its passive acceptance of this environmental reversal, the courts may be the only defense left. Americans should make their voices heard before it comes to that.

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To Take Action: Contact your U.S. representative at (202) 225-3121 or www.house.gov, or senators, (202) 224-3121, www.senate.gov.