Monday, Aug. 15, 2005 | 11:27 a.m.
The man pegged to be the new Nevada director for the Bureau of Land Management said last week that he recognizes the challenge in balancing the competing interests of industry, the environment and a rapidly growing urban population.
Ron Wenker, who will take over in October after serving since December 2002 as the BLM's Colorado state director, will be closely scrutinized by environmental and industrial interests as he seeks to strike that balance.
But it will not be a new task for him.
Wenker worked for several years as the Winnemucca office field manager. He also has been district manager in Medford, Ore., and area manager in Kemmerer, Wyo.
Wenker will manage 48 million acres in Nevada, 87 percent of which is controlled by the federal government.
"I really love the state," Wenker said. "I started my career working as a seasonal employee in Ely.I have some fond memories."
Some natural resource issues he will face are familiar to him. Controlling wildfires is a huge issue both for Nevada and Colorado. Livestock grazing is a controversial issue in both states.
Colorado had issues with wild horse and burro populations, but not on the scale of Nevada, which has the largest population in the West of the animals and a continuing controversy on how best to manage the herds.
"Recreation obviously is a huge interest for us, and that is similar to Nevada," he said.
Wenker noted that a unique thing about Nevada is the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act, a federal law which takes money from land sales in Clark County and puts most of it back towards conservation and recreational uses throughout the state.
Mining and energy development, including the emerging industry of oil and gas development on thousands of acres newly leased by the BLM to speculators, will be major issues, Wenker said.
Wenker will bring with him controversies about the land use for energy development from Colorado. Some conservationists were critical of what they saw as the BLM's rush to allow oil and gas development, sometimes at the cost of wildlife habitat and watershed protection.
"The issue (that Nevada has) most in common with Colorado is the booming oil and gas industry," said Steve Smith, assistant regional director of the Wilderness Society, a national conservation group. "We've found the BLM under Mr. Wenker's state direction to be very accommodating to the energy industry and reluctant to give protections to lands that we think have higher value in their natural condition.
"We're hoping that since Nevada has so much public land, there is room to have responsible oil and gas development but not overrun the special natural lands and watersheds and habitats that also are of value to people there, and to all Americans."
Smith and Shaaron Netherton, executive director of the affiliated group Friends of Nevada Wilderness, were both critical of BLM policies that allow companies to hire contractors to do required environmental assessments for proposed projects on federal lands. At times, the companies' employees actually work as "host workers" in BLM offices under the direction of agency officials.
The latter practice, which has extended to oil and gas development proposals in Utah and to private water development projects in Nevada, has particularly gained the enmity of environmentalists as well as elected leaders from both parties.
"There is a huge potential for problems. I have a huge problem with that whole coziness," Netherton said. "The potential for a conflict, the perception of a conflict, is huge there."
Netherton, a 22-year veteran of the BLM in Nevada, said the issue is not with Wenker but with federal funding for the staff's needed to do the work in-house.
If that funding is not provided, then the second-best arrangement is for the BLM to hire an independent contractor to guide the environmental analysis for a project, as the agency did with the application to build wells and pipelines to pump water from rural Nevada to Las Vegas by the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
Wenker said the BLM does not have the resources to finish needed analyses in a timely manner unless it farms some of the work to contractors or host workers, but he said that doesn't mean the process produces flawed results.
"One thing everybody needs to recognize is that for quite some time the BLM has required industry, whatever the industry, that is proposing an action to help pay for our processing costs," Wenker said. Whether contractor or host workers, those doing the work are "under direct control of our managers."
Netherton, with the Friends of Nevada Wilderness, gave high marks to Wenker's predecessor, Bob Abbey, who is retiring as Nevada state director, after eight years. Abbey navigated the difficult course of balancing the state's competing interests well, mostly by listening to all sides of issues, she said.
Abbey "will be a hard act to follow," she said. "Bob was a really rare southern gentleman who had a grasp of all the resources."
Netherton said she did not know Wenker well during his tenure in Nevada, but believes he also "has a good grasp of resource issues."
"I always give people the benefit of the doubt when they take a new position," she said. "I'm very hopeful that he will be a good, fair, unbiased manager."
Jonathan Brown, director of environmental and regulatory affairs for the Nevada Mining Association, might disagree with Netherton on issues, but echoed her comment.
"We're looking forward to the arrival of and working with the new state director," Brown said.
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