Jewell defends climate 'deniers' remark, fracking regs in House budget hearing

E&E News
By Phil Taylor
April 4, 2014

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell yesterday said agency employees face no "litmus test" for their views on global warming but argued that anyone who has visited federal lands will see that climate change is real.

Jewell defended a speech she delivered last July to Interior employees in which she said, "I hope there are no climate change deniers in the Department of Interior" and invited any skeptics to view the impacts of droughts, wildfires, storms and coastal erosion on federal lands (E&ENews PM, July 31, 2013).

She testified yesterday at a House Natural Resources Committee budget hearing, where her previous remarks were criticized by Rep. John Fleming (R-La.).

"Is that a purity test for someone to work for you?" asked Fleming, who in 2012 wrote on Facebook that warming, to the "extent that it ever existed, halted 16 years ago."

Jewell said her remarks were taken out of context and that she also said in the speech that her visits to Interior lands and waters make it "very difficult" to "deny that climate change is going on."

"As a large land manager, it is important we open our eyes to the challenges our lands are facing and that we address those challenges head on," she said.

Climate change was among a spectrum of issues Jewell tackled at yesterday's hearing, where she defended Interior's $11.9 billion fiscal 2015 budget proposal, a 3 percent bump over current levels. The budget invests heavily in conservation and national parks and includes controversial bids to increase fees on energy producers.

Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) blasted the budget's proposal to fully fund at $900 million the Land and Water Conservation Fund while the National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service face mounting maintenance backlogs.

"With a budget proposal that is higher than last year's enacted levels, I'm afraid the Interior Department's budget misses the mark and doesn't do enough to prioritize and reduce spending," he said.

Jewell said the LWCF request seeks to "fulfill the intent of Congress 49 years ago" when it established the program. In addition to land acquisitions, the money would be spent on conserving working ranchlands, urban ballfields and Civil War battlefields, she said.

Ranking member Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said the Republican critique of federal spending was misguided considering the government is doing too little to raise a fair return from energy companies, specifically hardrock miners.

"We are the only nation on Earth, the only landowner on Earth, that gives away its mineral resources for free," DeFazio said. Interior's budget asks again for Congress to establish royalties for hardrock minerals.

DeFazio did take aim at the budget's proposal to reduce funding for the O&C forests in western Oregon, where the Bureau of Land Management oversees timber sales that benefit DeFazio's district. Jewell said much of those planned reductions are a result of the scheduled completion of BLM's resource management plan revisions, though DeFazio said it's unclear whether they'll be finished on time.

Little more was said of the budget, as members pressed Jewell on a panoply of natural resource issues important to their districts -- including hydraulic fracturing, California's drought, county payments and offshore drilling safety.

She defended BLM's update to decades-old regulations governing hydraulic fracturing on federal lands as she faced criticism from both sides of the aisle.

She reiterated the need for BLM to be a regulatory backstop when states fail to do so and said she's still evaluating the best platforms to promote disclosure of fracking chemicals.

"It absolutely can be done safely and responsibly and has been done safely and responsibly," Jewell said of fracking, which takes place at 90 percent of wells on BLM land.

"I can't say that I have seen any studies that suggest a direct link between hydraulic fracking and groundwater contamination," she added, though she argued there has been groundwater contamination from injected fluids such as wastewater.

Jewell also told Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) she's hopeful he will support the budget's proposal to charge new fees for onshore oil and gas inspections on public lands, a proposal aimed at helping defray BLM's costs and which is already in effect for drillers in the Gulf of Mexico.

She said BLM approved 4,472 drilling permits in 2013, up slightly from 4,256 approved the previous year, but that "the number we're able to process is a function of the number of people we have" and the budget BLM receives.

To Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), Jewell said Interior would be looking "very seriously" at including the Atlantic Ocean in the agency's 2017 to 2022 offshore leasing plan.

"We have no intention of closing off that area" as the agency crafts its National Environmental Policy Act review, Jewell said.

DeFazio report pushes emergency wildfire funding

DeFazio yesterday also released a report arguing that budget cuts have forced Interior and the Forest Service to borrow significant funds from other accounts such as construction, land restoration and brush removal.

It was a sales pitch for a proposal in the Obama budget and from a bipartisan cadre of lawmakers to fight some wildfires using emergency funds similar to hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters, rather than dipping into other accounts.

The report provides new details on the projects the Forest Service said were disrupted in fiscal 2013 when it was forced to borrow $500 million to fight wildfires.

They include a project in the Dakota Prairie Grasslands to gauge the habitat needs of sensitive grassland birds; reduction of aquatic restoration, weed control and monitoring as well as the decommissioning of less miles of roads and the deferral of thousands of acres of fuels treatments; and the deferral of an award of a contract to repair cracks in an air tanker base taxiway in Southern California.

"This report shows that over the past few years, these incredibly stupid cuts have forced the agencies to pay to fight massive fires by raiding funds that should go towards fire prevention," DeFazio said in a statement. "Congress needs to treat extreme wildfires as true disasters -- with full funding before, during, and in the aftermath."