The administration of President George W. Bush has earned a well-deserved reputation for being secretive. Particularly egregious and well known examples include limiting access to Presidential records; deliberately delaying responses to Freedom of Information Act requests; restricting the circulation of "sensitive but unclassified" documents; and refusing to disclose the true composition of the Vice President's energy policy task force.
Earthjustice has been to court numerous times to thwart the administration's attempts to circumvent environmental laws by making obscure changes in implementing regulations and by secretly negotiating settlements of industry lawsuits. These stealthy tactics, if successful, allow the administration to weaken the fundamental laws that protect our nation's water, air, and natural resources -- and, not coincidentally, to pay back the coal, oil, gas, and timber interests, which donated so generously to the Bush campaign -- with little public awareness or press scrutiny.
Now, the nomination of Utah Governor Michael Leavitt to head the EPA raises the possibility that these policies of concealment and deception will be institutionalized in the most important agency we have to protect our water, air quality, and public health.
As governor of Utah, Leavitt has a track record of making backroom deals. Here are two examples.
Governor Leavitt struck a secret deal with the Bush administration to open six million acres of wild public lands in Utah to mining, clearcutting, and bulldozing. They did this by resurrecting a moribund lawsuit that already had been largely rejected by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and disguising their deal as the "settlement" of a lawsuit that was no longer in contention. In the settlement, the federal government agreed to remove interim wilderness protections for wild, unroaded federal lands, thus opening them to oil and gas development. Stunningly, these machinations have completely excluded the public from having any input on a decision which affects not only Utah but the nearly 200 million acres of public land managed by the BLM across the country. In May, Earthjustice appealed this settlement.
In the second case, the Leavitt administration threatened to sue the federal government to make it possible for Utah to bulldoze highways over tens of thousands of miles of cow paths and hiking trails through national parks, wildlife refuges, national monuments and wilderness areas. To make this claim, Governor Leavitt relied on a Civil War-era mining law, repealed in 1976, that gave states the right to lay claim to public lands not otherwise reserved in order to build highways.
Before a suit was even filed, the Leavitt administration in Utah and the federal government entered into secret negotiations to settle the issue. Earthjustice was forced to sue the Interior Department to bring the substance of these discussions to the light of day so that ordinary citizens could learn what public lands were being negotiated away. Leavitt refused to make public any information on his plans to construct highways over public lands. The secret negotiations resulted in Utah and the Bush administration agreeing to make it easier for Utah to propose highways where none now exist through the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and wild lands adjacent to Zion National Park.
According to a 1993 National Park Service memo, these claims could affect 17 million acres of national park lands and the impacts "could be devastating." Earthjustice attorney Ted Zukoski is working to reverse the deal on the grounds Congress explicitly barred the administration from giving away public lands in this fashion.
Shutting the public out of the discussion and decision-making process in order to advance a pro-industry and anti-environmental agenda is exactly opposite the spirit in which the EPA needs to be run. For this reason Earthjustice will steadfastly oppose the nomination of Governor Leavitt and advocate for an open and environmentally friendly nominee who will protect -- and perhaps even advance -- the environmental gains we have made in the last 40 years.
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