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When the Biden administration approved the massive Willow oil and gas development in Alaska this month, it also announced a series of actions to protect millions of acres of land and water in the state. But the administration has very little time left to turn those commitments into meaningful and durable protections, writes Center for Western Priorities Policy Director Rachael Hamby.
The Interior department also announced it is initiating a rulemaking process to protect up to 13 million acres of land in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), the largest contiguous area of public lands in the U.S. The proposed rules, which the department says will be available in the coming months, would limit future oil and gas leasing in designated Special Areas within the NPR-A. Special Areas, such as the Teshekpuk Lake area, have been identified as “containing any significant subsistence, recreational, fish and wildlife, historical, or scenic value.” Wildlife such as caribou, grizzly and polar bears, and migratory birds all rely on these intact and undisturbed habitats which will be impossible to replace if they are disturbed and fragmented by oil and gas development.
The draft of this proposed rule, along with others, such as those to implement reforms to the oil and gas program, must be released by next month if the administration hopes to avoid having the final rule potentially overturned by Congress through the Congressional Review Act (CRA). Because the CRA deadline is based on the legislative calendar, the actual cutoff date for a rule to be subject to repeal by a new Congress is a moving target, and the final date is not known until the outgoing Congress adjourns. For the Biden administration, this means the only way to be sure a rule is safe from the CRA, in the event there is a change in administrations, is to publish the final rule by April of 2024.
The federal rulemaking process is, by design, lengthy. Working back from the 2024 deadline, Hamby explains, means that in order for the Alaska protections to last, the Biden administration must publish a draft of those rules no later than this April.
Correction: Friday’s edition of Look West mentioned the Biden administration’s goal to approve 25,000 megawatts of renewable energy on federal lands. The administration seeks to achieve this goal by 2025, not 2050.
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The retreat of Great Salt Lake is not a singular story. Death is what happened to vast stretches of the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan by the late 2010s, now seen as one of the planet’s largest environmental disasters. Pick your place anywhere in the world and Great Salt Lake is a mirror reflecting a flashing light on what is coming and what is already here. Our natural touchstones of joy will deliver us to heartbreak. Each of us will face the losses of the places that brought us to life.”
