Trump EPA transition insider: Trump “doesn’t owe the West a lot.”

by Andrew Kenney 

Myron Ebell, who worked for President Donald Trump to install new leadership at the Environmental Protection Agency, said that EPA haters will have to work particularly hard to reduce the federal government’s control and regulation of Western landscapes and environments. “The problem that you as Westerners in a federal-land state have is, President Trump made a lot of promises on, for example climate,” he said. “… But on federal lands, he did not make a lot of promises. And moreover, he doesn’t owe the West a lot.” He was referring to the fact that Colorado and the West are filled with land owned by the federal government, from the national parks to the Bureau of Land Management’s more-utilitarian areas. Some conservatives have long wanted that land to go either to smaller governments or to be sold. “If you agree with me that a regulatory rampage is going on, the worst part is on federal lands,” Ebell said. So, by Ebell’s thinking, anti-regulation advocates in the West might not expect the federal government to start selling off its lands. He encouraged his conservative crowd to argue for “access” to federal lands — to say that it is the right of the people to drill, drive and hunt on federal lands...more