Norton urges cooperation with states

Thursday, Dec. 13, 2001 | 8:54 a.m.

Communication is the key to balancing environmental protection with responsible development of public land in the West, Interior Secretary Gale Norton said Wednesday.

In a speech at the 18th annual Governor's Conference on Tourism, and later in an exclusive interview with the Las Vegas Sun, Norton focused on what she calls "the four C's: consultation, cooperation and communication, all in the service of conservation."

Roundly criticized by some environmentalists as leading the Bush administration's charge to undo conservation measures launched during the Clinton presidency, Norton said she wants to restore balance to decision-making processes that too often ignored the points of view of state governments and business and recreational users of public lands.

Norton said the key to successful management of the public lands throughout the country is partnership with all affected groups.

Her department, which oversees most of the 87 percent of the state owned and managed by the federal government, has a special responsibility and relationship with the people of Nevada, she said.

"We have a responsibility to listen to the people of Nevada and involve local people in decision-making," Norton said. "That is a philosophy that I want our department employees to answer to.

"We don't have all of the answers in Washington," she said, echoing the populist manifesto that helped bring her boss to the White House.

"We're accommodating local needs because we're involving local knowledge," she said.

During the previous administration, residents of Elko bitterly resented the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's closure of a road because of a perceived danger to threatened trout. Mining companies, a huge industry in most of Nevada, also protested Clinton-era Bureau of Land Management rules that allowed the BLM to veto proposed mines.

Both are Interior agencies.

The Clinton administration, she said, did not work closely with state governments. The attitude she found when arriving in Washington was that "state governments were just another interest group," she said.

State fish and game agencies told Clinton administration officials to "not even bother to come to their meeting because they felt they were being ignored," she said.

But Norton pledged that Interior will continue to enforce environmental laws, including rules protecting endangered or threatened species. At times, protection of animal and plant species has clashed with economic development or land use desires.

But "most of the time there are ways of working out the problems" through dialogue and a creative approach to solving those issues, she said. The goal for endangered species isn't just to protect a dwindling population, but to develop "true recovery efforts that will enhance the population of a species."

"It's a question of deciding what makes sense in each particular place," Norton said.

On several key issues affecting her department:

* Norton said the ongoing work to draft a new bill handling thousands of federally managed acres in Clark County has to involve all players. The bill, promised by Sens. Harry Reid, Democratic whip, and John Ensign, a Republican, would designate some land as federal wilderness, effectively restricting intensive use that would damage the habitat.

The bill also would open up land for development. Environmentalists, recreational users and local governments are jockeying for position as talks on the bill continue. Interior agencies are part of the process, Norton said.

"We've had to sit down and figure out exactly how each piece of property should be handled," she said. "That takes a lot of work."

* Norton's overturning of Clinton administration mining regulations has been a target of environmentalist criticism, but she said the action was justified and will not mean weaker environmental protection.

One of the Clinton-era rules especially hated by the mining industry, a $4 billion a year industry in Nevada, was a provision that gave the BLM a veto over new mines that could cause "substantial irreparable harm" to the environment. The rule was in place for less than a year before the new Republican administration threw it out.

She was unapologetic about the action.

The regulation "went beyond what the law allowed," Norton said.

Other mining regulations to protect the environment are still in place or being expanded, she said, including bonding requirements that "ensure the environment will be cleaned up, and it ensures that taxpayers will not be holding the bag" for cleanups if mining companies go belly-up.

"We also said there may be a need for a change in the mining law itself" to require mining companies to pay the federal government royalties on precious metals extracted from public lands, Norton said. The largely untouched mining law, dating to 1872, does not charge royalties for gold, silver, copper or other metals taken from the mineral rich lands in the West.

* Norton said criticism directed at her for federal mismanagement of billions of dollars held in trust for American Indians is misplaced.

Norton, through department representatives, is facing trial for contempt-of-court charges for failing to follow a court order to account for the money held in trusts, some of them dating to 1887.

Tribal groups sharply rebuked the secretary for failing to reveal details of a new trust-management plan before unveiling the plan last month.

"There is a misconception that we drafted a plan behind closed doors without consulting," Norton said. The court-ordered consultation process with tribes, she said, started when the plan was released.

She said her department began working with the tribes the day after it received the plan, prepared by an outside firm. That process is continuing.

"We plan on working extensively with the tribes on this."

But the legal battle isn't all bad, Norton said. The issues are now in sharp focus because of the attention generated by the controversy.

Norton said the issue is important to resolve because it hasn't received the attention it deserved for decades.