Interior nominee: Let’s all get along

Matt Kelley

Thursday, Sept. 16, 1999 | 10:28 a.m.

WASHINGTON - The man nominated to be the No. 2 official in the Interior Department said contentious Western issues of water and land use should be solved through communication, not confrontation.

"The best way to resolve the situation is not by confrontation, not by court action, but by getting both sides to sit down and negotiate," said environmental lawyer David Hayes.

He spoke Wednesday at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on his appointment to be chief deputy to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. The panel also is considering the nomination of New Mexico native Sylvia Baca, a former acting director of the Bureau of Land Management, to head the department's land management programs.

A committee vote on the nominations could come later this month.

Hayes has been acting as Babbitt's deputy since May and has been deeply involved in such contentious issues as preservation of the Headwaters Forest in California, the allocation of water from the Colorado River and the water rights of the Chippewa-Cree tribe in Montana.

An example of an issue that can be solved by compromise is the Animas-LaPlata water project in southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico, Hayes said. Wrangling over the project has stalled it for decades, he said.

"I think we have an opportunity to break through in the next 12 months and get it done," Hayes said.

He also vowed to work more closely with the Energy Committee and other congressional panels, saying he regretted the Interior Department's frosty relationship with committees such as Energy and Natural Resources.

"You have someone at the Department of Interior to talk to and to bring these issues to," Hayes told committee chairman Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska.

Baca said she also wanted to build consensus on land issues in the West. If confirmed, Baca would oversee the Bureau of Land Management, the Minerals Management Service and the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. The BLM oversees 264 million acres in the West, while MMS oversees mineral development in the 1.4 billion-acre Outer Continental Shelf.

"We simply cannot manage the public's land and mineral resources, and do it well, without public participation," Baca said.