January, in brief

Key news from January

• The Biden administration protected several important ecosystems from extraction and development. First, the administration banned logging and road-building on nearly nine million acres of the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska. The new rule reverses a Trump-era decision to remove protections for the pristine Alaskan forest that were first put in place in 2001. The area is important wildlife habitat and is also a major carbon sink, storing more than 10 percent of the carbon accumulated by all national forests in the United States, according to the government. In its final determination for the Bristol Bay watershed, the EPA exercised a seldom-used authority under the Clean Water Act to protect Alaska's Bristol Bay from the proposed Pebble Mine by prohibiting the disposal of mine waste in certain waters within the watershed, finding that such activity would have "unacceptable adverse impacts" on salmon fisheries. This effectively blocks the proposed Pebble Mine as well as other future mines that would have similar or greater impacts. Finally, the Biden administration announced it's protecting 225,000 acres of federal land in Minnesota near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The mineral withdrawal will establish a 20-year moratorium on mining upstream, likely killing plans by Twin Metals Minnesota LLC to mine in the region.
   
• The Bureau of Land Management announced plans to lease nearly 21,000 acres of national public land in Montana and North Dakota to oil and gas companies. It also released an environmental review for the upcoming May 2023 sale in New Mexico. The announcements come as the Interior Department falls further behind on its obligation to write rules implementing the new leasing system created by the Inflation Reduction Act. The Bureau of Land Management is also planning lease sales in Wyoming, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah. In total, the agency has proposed leasing nearly 500,000 acres of public land across the West in 2023.
   
• The U.S. House of Representatives passed a sweeping set of rules that includes provisions aimed at easing the process of disposing of national public lands and expediting the process of passing legislation requiring the Department of Energy to plan for more leasing of public lands to oil and gas companies in order to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The land transfer provision makes it easier for members of Congress to cede federal control of public lands by directing the federal government not to consider lost revenues from giving national public lands to states, local governments, or tribal entities. The House of Representatives also passed H.R. 21, a bill that would limit drawdowns from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve until the Department of Energy develops a plan to lease more national public lands to oil and gas companies. Despite GOP rhetoric that the bill would increase oil and gas production and lower gas prices, the bill text does not incentivize or otherwise plan for more oil production. According to the Bureau of Land Management, oil and gas companies have around 8,663 approved but unused permits to drill on public land and over 37,000 oil and gas leases covering 26.6 million acres. Of that land, 13.9 million acres, or 53 percent, were not producing oil and gas as of November 2021.
   
• The Interior Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) released the findings of its investigation into former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s ethical obligations regarding Westlands Water District, a major water user and client of Bernhardt’s during his time leading the Natural Resources division of lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. The OIG found that while Bernhardt took numerous actions that were in the interest of Westlands, he did not technically violate his ethical obligations because Westlands, as a public agency, did not count as a “former client” under the Trump ethics pledge. Additionally, because the water issues that Bernhardt intervened on involved multiple water districts, his intervention did not technically violate federal ethics laws.
   
• The White House announced it is renominating Laura Daniel-Davis to serve as the Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management at the Interior Department. This marks the third time Daniel-Davis has been submitted to the Senate. In 2022, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer declined to place Daniel-Davis’s nomination on the Senate floor calendar, despite her having gone through two full confirmation hearings before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

What to watch for in February:

• Congress gets to work: will the two chambers pass permitting reform that undermines NEPA?
• The House Natural Resources Committee is expected to hold hearings on issues including energy development, critical minerals, and permitting reform.
• When will President Biden designate Avi Kwa Ame and Castner Range as national monuments?
• How will the federal government respond to states' proposals for cuts to Colorado River water use?

Winning the West: Election 2022

The Center for Western Priorities released a new report, “Winning the West: Election 2022,” detailing how public lands were a winning issue in the 2022 election and how pro-conservation positions often gave candidates a competitive edge in close races.

According to the report, candidates like new Congressman Gabe Vasquez in New Mexico highlighted their conservation agendas and records to win close elections against candidates like incumbent Yvette Herrell, who sided more often with oil and gas development. 

In the race for Colorado’s U.S. Senate seat, Senator Michael Bennet used recent public lands victories, including President Biden’s designation of Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument, to connect with voters and handily win an election that was expected to be much closer. 

Other Western contests saw anti-conservation candidates win by much smaller margins than expected, such as former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who narrowly defeated environmental attorney Monica Tranel for Montana’s open House seat in a race that ended up taking several days to call. 

“Looking ahead, the election outcomes serve as clear guidance for President Biden and for members of Congress as they set their respective agendas for the next two years," said Jennifer Rokala, Executive Director of the Center for Western Priorities. “With dysfunction all but certain to paralyze Congress, the president can use the next two years to build a solid conservation legacy using executive action, which remains overwhelmingly popular with the public. And members of Congress can know that voters see and appreciate their conservation efforts despite gridlock in Congress.”

With a growing outdoor voting bloc and high-profile competitive U.S. Senate races in Arizona, Nevada, and Montana on the ballot in 2024, the Center for Western Priorities will continue tracking the connection between public lands issues and electoral success.

Land transfer is not the solution to the West's housing challenges

Hiding behind a guise of concern for Westerners, U.S. Senator Mike Lee of Utah, an advocate for land transfer, has a bill ready to go to answer these misguided calls. In the last Congress, Lee introduced a bill that would allow for the nomination of unlimited tracts of unprotected national public land to be transferred by the Interior Department to state and local governments, which could then sell the lands to private buyers to develop with minimal—and temporary—restrictions. The bill lacks meaningful affordability or density requirements to ensure that housing built on transferred public lands actually addresses the West's housing affordability challenges and includes commercial allowances that would encourage the construction of hotels and short-term rentals.

A one-pager from the Center for Western Priorities provides a full account of the bill's shortcomings and highlights policy solutions that already exist for state and local governments that are serious about addressing housing affordability.

On this episode of The Landscape, Kate and Aaron are joined by Grand Canyon Trust staff attorney Michael Toll to discuss a plan to mine hundreds of thousands of barrels of waxy crude oil in Utah near Dinosaur National Monument, using billions of gallons of Colorado River water. A loophole in Utah law enabled an Estonian state-owned company called Enefit to buy 3.2 billion gallons of Colorado River water for just $10 in 2015. Now, Enefit wants to use that water to extract oil in the Uinta Basin using a novel method that is around 75 percent more carbon-intensive than traditional fossil fuel drilling. Toll discusses how Enefit acquired its massive water right and how the Grand Canyon Trust is fighting Enefit’s plan.

Mining expert Ian Lange joins Kate and Aaron to talk about critical minerals and mining in the West. Lange directs the mineral and energy economics program at the Colorado School of Mines and is an expert in mining economics. He discusses what’s going on in the world of critical minerals—specifically those used in electric vehicle batteries. These include cobalt, copper, lithium, and nickel and are mostly mined overseas, but we do have some of them here in the U.S. And we could see a big increase in domestic mining for them thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which included subsidies aimed at stimulating mining at home. This episode is the first in a two-part series on mining in the West. The next episode will feature mining reform advocates.

Opinion: Biden set an ambitious goal for nature—can he meet it?

New York Times
 

The West’s salt lakes are turning to dust. Can Congress help?

High Country News
 

Proposed Range of Light National Monument would link Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks

Outside
 

America's top museums and universities fail to return Native American human remains

ProPublica
 

Exxon's climate change models were spot on—40 years ago

Grist
 

Connecting national parks could help generations of wildlife thrive

Popular Science
 

How dark money groups led Ohio to redefine gas as ‘green energy’

Washington Post
 

‘The place where shamans dream’: safeguarding Spirit Mountain

New York Times

“Providing public access for a multitude of recreational users and applying restoration principles to enhance wildlife habitat is paramount to the BLM’s mission. This acquisition also helps to advance President Biden’s America the Beautiful initiative, which seeks to use partnerships and voluntary actions like this one to conserve, connect, and restore 30 percent of America’s lands and waters by 2030.”

—BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning, Great Falls Tribune