Editorial: Gale Norton’s mixed legacy

Tuesday, March 14, 2006 | 7:13 a.m.

Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton announced Friday that she is returning to private life after five years in the Bush administration. In a letter to President Bush, she said she was leaving at the end of this month, and that she hoped she and her husband "will end up close to the mountains we love in the West."

We hope the mountains survive the Bush administration's intertwined environmental and energy policies, which Norton has championed with a passion.

Central to Bush's energy policy is deriving more oil and natural gas from domestic sources. On its own, that is not necessarily a flawed policy, as this country indeed should strive to be more energy independent. Bush, however, from Day One of his administration, showed that the thoughtful, deliberate and environmentally sensitive approach was not his style.

Norton was the perfect choice, in his eyes, to carry out his vision for dispensing with the thorough processes that companies in the past were required to undergo as part of their applications for oil or gas drilling permits. Right out of law school in the late 1970s, Norton went to work in Denver for the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a libertarian organization that offers free legal services for property owners in dispute with the government over land-use cases.

Norton went on to work for the Interior Department in the Reagan administration, part of the time under then-Secretary James Watt, who was the founding president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation and is remembered for his belligerence toward the environment. She later served as Colorado's attorney general and then worked for a Denver-based law firm before accepting Bush's nomination.

With regulations greatly eased under Norton, the pace of approvals for drilling permits issued by the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management increased by 70 percent in her first three years. Even today, complaints are being heard by the BLM's wildlife and land managers that the pace of drilling-permit work is so rapid that they have been pressed into it nearly full time, keeping them at their desks instead of on patrol.

Norton was also the Bush administration's most outspoken proponent of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an act that we believe would lead to unspeakable environmental damage in one of the Earth's most pristine areas. Norton was universally criticized by environmental groups for so aggressively carrying out Bush's "drill first, ask questions later" philosophy.

We are among her critics in that respect. We do, however, recognize Norton's positive role in creating the "Water 2025" program that infused federal money and expertise into the critical issue of the drought that has been plaguing Western states for the past six years. And it was Norton who pressured Nevada and the other six states that share Colorado River water to forge an agreement among themselves about future allocations.

Despite this accomplishment, Norton's overall legacy is one of being a patron of Bush rather than a protector of the environment.