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able to prevent development that harms wildlife and other natural features, and corporate logos will spring up like daisies.
These rules also require newly hired staff to take what amounts to a loyalty oath to the policies of the current administration. A loyalty oath may be the solution to the sticky problem of science that Norton kept running into. When her agency biologists reported that drilling in the Arctic Refuge would harm caribou, Norton rewrote the report before submitting it to Congress. She also suppressed a finding by the US Fish & Wildlife Service that new Army Corps rules for permitting development would devastate wetlands.
In fact, Norton created a climate of intimidation at the Interior Department that functions almost as effectively as an unconstitutional loyalty oath would: Last year the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility took a survey of Fish & Wildlife Service biologists and found that more than half of the respondents said agency officials had reversed or withdrawn the biologists' scientific conclusions under pressure from industry groups.
Lying to Congress and suppressing scientific findings. How is it that these are not prosecutable offenses?
In 2001, Oregon potato farmers in the upper portion of the Klamath River suffering from a prolonged drought demanded that the Interior Department give them water dedicated to fish. Gale Norton complied, and in 2002, at least 35,000 salmon died at the mouth of the Klamath. The Klamath runs are now so low that the Fisheries Service is preparing to close the salmon fishing season, ruining a $150 million dollar industry. Gale Norton is responsible. Why can't she be indicted for ruining a precious and irreplaceable natural resource?
Norton's supporters, like the National Association of Manufacturers, praise her primarily for her role in opening up the West to massive amounts of new energy development. Interior Department staff began referring to Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico as the "OPEC states," as the drilling permits multiplied and flew through the bureaucracy with minimal review and consultation with local citizens.
Norton's own proudest accomplishment, she says, was implementing her "four C's" program - a supposedly new approach to public involvement that included "communication, consultation and cooperation, all in the service of conservation."
Unfortunately, the four C's seem only to apply to industry and not to local people. Take for instance the town of Grand Junction, Colorado. Last September the BLM informed the city that a few hundred acres in the town's watershed used for drinking water supplies would be offered for oil and gas drilling. Then in December, at the end of the public comment period, the BLM told the town that actually several thousand acres would be leased for drilling. The agency withheld the information because it would otherwise "taint" the competitive bidding process. The town does not want any drilling at all in their watershed. Why can't Gale Norton be indicted for destroying a town's water supply?
I can testify that the same process is happening in BLM's western forest lands where, on orders from Gale Norton, the BLM is tossing the Northwest Forest Plan out the window and preparing to log every last old growth forest that they manage in Washington, Oregon and California. Many public meetings are held, but they are all a waste of time because the communication, consultation and cooperation are not intended for local people but only for the timber industry.
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