DuBois column - BLM’s westward trek and enviros losing water battle

BLM’s westward trek and enviros losing water battle

Move’em out

The Department of Interior is moving forward with their plan to relocate the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to Grand Junction, Colorado. The reorganization would have the top twenty-seven BLM positions make the move to Grand Junction while three hundred or so will be assigned to various positions in the West. Sixty-one positions will remain in D.C.

The plan to move BLM headquarters is vehemently opposed by the environmental lobby groups, which means, guess what, it is opposed by the Democrats in Congress. Leading the pack is Senator Tom Udall (D-NM). Udall, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Subcommittee on Interior Appropriations, has said the relocation “is not based on rigorous financial and organizational analysis, nor is it intended to increase the Bureau’s accountability and improve the management of our nation’s public lands.” Udall further stated. “…in light of the recent appointment of an acting Bureau Director with a long-established record of attacks on public lands, the actions of the Department suggest something far more damaging: a deliberate effort to dismantle and weaken the Bureau.” Apparently supporting the multiple use concept of managing federal lands is an “attack” in the eyes of Udall.

Udall and his counterpart in the House of Representatives, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn), have demanded the Department “immediately suspend its efforts to relocate.” In response, Interior released a statement saying, "It's troubling that Sen. Udall and Rep. McCollum seem to have missed the numerous detailed reports, Committee and staff briefings, and written responses to every single question asked by the Congress during the past few months. All of these briefings and communications have explained the advantages, efficiencies, and other savings of such a relocation to the Department, our stakeholders, and the public. We have stressed from early in this process that it was consistent with and responsive to the feedback received from a broad range of partners, including members of Congress, Governors, local officials and the public.  In addition, we have provided office-level, state by state breakdowns of the benefits of this effort."

Another issue being raised by the opponents is a federal statute that says, “all offices attached to the seat of government shall be exercised in the District of Columbia, and not elsewhere, except as otherwise provided by law.” In response, Interior wrote, “all offices attached to the seat of government” should be interpreted as “an executive department, a term defined elsewhere in the U.S. Code to include the Department of the Interior, but not its component parts.” Interior also pointed to other entities, such as the Food and Drug Administration, which are located outside of D.C.

The Public Lands Foundation, a group of retired BLM employees, is opposing the reorganization and have written to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources requesting they hold a hearing on the matter. In their letter, they say the headquarters should stay in D.C. where decisions are made that “affect all Americans.” The relocation, they say, would benefit the “short-term” interests of local stakeholders to the “detriment of all other constituents and the long-term needs of the public lands.” They also say the breakup of the D.C. structure “will promote local, parochial interests over the national interests.”

Did you ever wonder what BLM employees thought about the comments you make on the local level concerning resource management plans, allotment management plans, draft EISs, etc.? Then just look up the synonyms of “parochial”, and there you will finds words like:  narrow-minded, limited, close-minded, petty, blinkered and myopic. Now you know how they view your comments, thanks to this insight from an organization of six hundred retired BLM employees. 

POTUS & WOTUS

The U. S. Congress passed the Clean Water Act (CWA) in 1972 to restore and maintain the integrity of our nation’s waters. In general, the CWA prohibits the discharge of materials into navigable waters without a permit.  Navigable waters are defined as “waters of the United States”. And just what are the “waters of the United States”? That is the big question.

In 2015, the Obama administration, through the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, issued an expansive definition of the term. That rule, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, “creates confusion and risk by giving the agencies almost unlimited authority to regulate, at their discretion, any low spot where rainwater collects, including common farm ditches, ephemeral drainages, agricultural ponds and isolated wetlands found in and near farms and ranches across the nation, no matter how small or seemingly unconnected they may be to true ‘navigable waters’.”

There have now been two Federal District Courts that have found the Obama WOTUS rule to be substantively and procedurally invalid. The first, issued in May of this year, is Texas vs. the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The second, and most recent was issued in August by a Federal District Court in Georgia. Judge Lisa Godbey Wood found the Obama WOTUS rule, “extends the Agencies’ delegated authority beyond the limits of the CWA, and thus is not a permissible construction of the phrase ‘waters of the United States’.” She also found the rule with its “significant increase in jurisdiction takes land and water falling traditionally under the states’ authority and transfers them to federal authority” and thus is unlawful. I think I have fallen smack dab in love with a federal judge. Judge Wood also found that the rule was procedurally invalid under the Administrative Procedure Act because, among other things, the final rule was not a logical outgrowth of the proposed rule published in the Federal Register. My heartstrings are singing.

Next, we wait on the Trump administration, who is preparing a new rule to define “waters of the United States.” Whatever they come up with, we can be assured that it too will wind up in court. Meanwhile, the 2015 enviro-inspired rule is drowning in federal court.

 Until next time, be a nuisance to the devil and don’t forget to check that cinch.

Frank DuBois was the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003, is the author of a blog: The Westerner (www.thewesterner.blogspot.com) and is the founder of The DuBois Rodeo Scholarship and The DuBois Western Heritage Foundation

 This column originally appeared in the September editions of the New Mexico Stockman and the Livestock Market Digest. 

Also availible on line at:https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/2019/09/dubois-column-blms-westward-trek-and.html