Grijalva hopes to work with Haaland to 'repair' Interior

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) says his legislative priorities this year will include legislation to advance environmental justice and update the country’s laws governing public lands mining. Grijalva returns to the helm of the committee with a Democratic president and the Senate in his party’s control after becoming the panel’s lead lawmaker in 2019, after his party took the House majority. The narrow margins in the 50-50 Senate, where some Senate Democrats are cool to more progressive proposals on climate change, raise questions about how much will change for Grijalva’s agenda. Grijalva is targeting bills introduced in the last Congress that would use oceans and public lands as solutions to climate change. One measure, the Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act, aims to protect and restore ocean ecosystems that capture carbon. The bill would prohibit oil and gas leasing in the Outer Continental Shelf and promote offshore wind energy. Another measure would require the Interior Department and Forest Service to meet increasing emissions reduction targets to achieve carbon neutrality by 2040. Grijalva also wants to revive legislation that would require the consideration of how new pollution discharges would combine with existing pollution sources in an area to impact health when deciding whether to grant a permit to allow the new emissions. The bill would also require greater community involvement in construction permitting and ban environmental discrimination under the Civil Rights Act. The lawmaker stressed that environmental justice touches many other issues like systemic racism and public health, since communities of color are often subject to more pollution. He added that he thinks his bill will unify lawmakers and communities, even if it may not garner bipartisan support. He also said the committee would like to advance legislation important to indigenous groups, such as codifying the process for consultations between Native American tribes and the federal government. Grijalva also hopes to change a 19th century law that allows companies to extract minerals from public lands without paying royalties to the government and that can prevent the federal government from blocking hardrock mining. He argued that the government should have the right to refuse mining permits and that companies should have to pay to mine. Grijalva expressed optimism about his potential to work collaboratively with the Haaland on issues such as historic preservation, public lands, oceans, as well as issues pertaining to department personnel. “One of the things that I would like to work cooperatively with her, that I think is essential in the repair job, is the morale of the employee base and the plan to diversify,” he said...MORE