The power of James Watt

...But the coal boom in the western states has scarcely taken off...

...On May 1, according to the schedule, Watt and his staff must begin sketching a plan governing oil shale development in Utah and Colorado...

...The potential environmental and social impacts of the oil shale programs are enormous," says a top official in the Bureau of Land Management, which leases oil shale lands...

...But environmental regulations, Haig said, have "shut off opportunities" for the mining corporations "to seek our domestic deposits of the strategic materials we need...

...Watt's background," said Russell Peterson, president of the National Audubon Society, "makes him eminently unsuited for this position of guardian of our nation's natural resources...

...But now James Watt will make the decisions: Should we continue gradual development of prototypes...

...Three months before leaving office, former Secretary Andrus announced he was canceling lease sales on half of the proposed tracts because he was worried about possible impacts on salmon fishing...

...Resource wars...

...The power of James Watt He could transform the West —and he'll probably try Daniel Zwerdliitg What is the real motive of the extreme environmentalists, who appear to be determined to accomplish their objectives at whatever cost to society...

...He badly wanted a man like James Watt precisely because of it...

...James Watt, on the other hand, noted in a suit against the Environmental Protection Agency that he is against regulations that "improperly allow a bureaucrat to control land use as far as the eye can see...

...One of the nation's first priorities in battling the Soviets in this "resource war," Haig declared, must be to "seek domestic sources" for strategic minerals on Federal wilderness lands out West...

...Environmentalists haven't even begun to think about the new issue, let alone formulate a counter-argument to it...

...Major energy companies, including Marathon, Exxon, Texaco, Phillips, and others already each possess "more than ten million leased acres" that they have not yet developed, according to an industry journal, Energy Management Report...

...mused Rafe Pomerance, president of Friends of the Earth...

...If the Soviets disrupted or took control of our mineral suppliers, Haig warned at a recent Congressional hearing, they could "snuff out the vital lifelines of commerce," causing "quick strangulation of our entire industrial complex...

...As he presides over Interior's mausoleum-shaped headquarters a few blocks from the White House, Watt will make momentous and historic decisions: what energy resources should be developed and where, what environmental effects they will wreak on the nation and whether the trade-off is worth making, which corporatipns will profit, and which communities will be transformed...

...Massive landscapes in Wyoming and Montana are ripped open...

...When you consider the stakes involved, the perfunctory two-day Senate confirmation hearing—James Watt himself attended only the first day—seemed almost ludicrous...

...This Allen-Warner Valley Energy System, as it is called, has generated enormous controversy in the West, in part because it will have major environmental and economic impacts on the region and in part because many critics charge the West doesn't even need it...

...Is it to simply protect the environment...

...The United States depends on imports from other countries, especially such Third World countries as Zaire and Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia), for nine of thirteen of the most critical minerals used by the military and major industries...

...But if the energy crisis argument doesn't work, Watt and other Reagan Administration officials are developing a new argument for "unleashing" the private corporations on Federal lands—an argument that could give Watt as much influence in Cold War military affairs as in environmental matters...

...Some minerals analysts think there may be significant reserves of cobalt and other strategic minerals in the Alaskan and western wilderness—enough to make a dent on imports...

...On May 5, according to the schedule, Watt will sell oil and gas leases for more than 600,000 acres of the Outer Continental Shelf off central and northern California—one of the first major sales in the Government's new five-year offshore leasing program...

...Watt's decisions will be worth billions to the companies that nourished and directed his Foundation— including Amax, which holds Federal leases in Wyoming, and Burlington Northern, the $4 billion resource conglomerate that owns leases on more than 100,000 Federal acres in Wyoming and Montana...

...The debate would no longer be framed simply as "the environment vs...

...News and World Report sees what has happened: The coal companies have introduced western states to the "ravages of rapid growth...

...The Wall Street Journal reported recently, "Oil and natural gas exploration is at a twenty-five-year high...

...Exxon and Watt are old allies What kinds of "conflict of interest" will Interior Secretary Watt confront in the next twelve months...

...Former Secretary Andrus rejected one small piece of the project last December, when he rejected the consortium's application to strip mine just three miles from Bryce Canyon National Park...

...Is it to delay and deny energy development...

...Oil shale operations demand massive quantities of water, in a region where agriculture, industry and cities are already battling over scarce water supplies...

...Are we caught off guard...

...Offshore oil drilling...

...As Haig argued before the committee— he was still president, then, of United Technologies, one of the nation's major military contractors and the largest consumer of cobalt—the United States must start fighting back...

...He and Reagan agreed, he said, that one of his top missions as Interior Secretary will be to develop a "strategic minerals pol- * icy so that this nation would not suffer [for] military or national security reasons...

...military: the'big battles between the United States and the Soviet Union over the next decade may be fought not over oil but over control of such "strategic minerals" as cobalt, titanium, chromite, and zinc...

...But David Stockman, new Director of the Office of Management and Budget, has already said he would like to see the oil industry "move quickly" into the Alaskan outer-continental shelf...

...Former Secretary Cecil Andrus had planned a cautious expansion of the experimental program, perhaps adding four more prototype plants this year...

...Against this backdrop, environmental leaders talked at the Senate confirmation hearings as if Watt's nomination were some terrible mistake...

...These brief moments in Congressional testimony—one from James Watt, the other from Alexander Haig—suggested that the Reagan Administration and the energy corporations might begin trying to dismantle environmental regulations on entirely new grounds...

...We find our nose to the grindstone on all these little brush fires," says one Sierra Club lobbyist...

...One of the first decisions Watt will have to make concerns the future of a proposed $4 billion network of strip mines, coal slurry pipelines, and power plants in Nevada and Utah— sponsored, in part, by one of Mountain States' sponsors, Nevada Power Company...

...Even the conservative U.S...

...Secretary Watt will decide precisely which parcels of land should be leased and which should be protected...

...Andrus had postponed lease sales off the fragile Alaska coast, for instance, because he wasn't sure oil drilling technology was safe enough, and the Alaskan coasts nourish the richest fishing grounds in the world...

...The Foundation was created in 1977, one of six independent "affiliates" of the National Legal Center for the Public Interest, a corporate springboard for conservative campaigns against Federal regulation...

...It's difficult to document his claim...

...National security...

...By controlling precious water supplies in the West, the Bureau can nourish—or starve—agribusiness, corporate expansion, and suburban sprawl...

...local Indians depend on the salmon and other fish...

...Is it to weaken America...

...The tumultuous effects of the new western strip mine industry are already legend...

...When Interior's Water and Power Resource Service promotes or stymies new dams and irrigation projects, it affects more than a handful of farmers or a valley about to be flooded...

...Watt raised the new issue in one sentence at his confirmation hearing—and curiously, not a single Senator or witness pursued it...

...James Watt will have the power to help them...

...Watt's critics and his supporters sparred briefly about his background, debating whether a man of his past financial and philosophical allegiance could bring "balance" and "fairness" to his decisions at Interior...

...They could create severe air and water pollution, and produce virtual mountains of waste that would need to be disposed of...

...Daniel Zwerdling, a frequent contributor to The Progressive, is environmental reporter for National Public Radio...

...The offshore strategy under President Carter and Andrus was to increase offshore leasing gradually...

...One can only conclude," Haig warned, "that the era of the 'resource war' has arrived...

...Jimmy Carter, he pointed out, had named many environmental lawyers to Government posts despite their public records of working against strip mining, for instance, on behalf of "special interest" environmental groups...

...The question of conflict of interest in this case," said Brock Evans, associate director of the Sierra Club, "is more serious than [for] any other nominee for Secretary of the Interior in recent memory...

...Industry analysts predict western coal production could quadruple by 1985, generating more than half the nation's coal...

...As a Congressional report notes, "Virtually all of the coastal waters within [the lease area] support California's commercial fishing industry...

...We haven't even talked about that...

...but where...

...For the key to the Interior Department's powers is land—staggering amounts of land, more than 500 million acres across the continental United States and Alaska...

...The sale has been embroiled in controversy...

...The Bureau of Land Management controls most of it, including 70 per cent of Nevada, 42 per cent of Utah, 29 per cent of Wyoming—virtually half the land in the West (plus another billion acres of offshore continental shelf...

...And the coal companies—many of the major firms are now subsidiaries of major oil companies— are mining only a fraction of the coal they control on Federal lands, partly because, according to Business Week, the nation has been plagued by a coal surplus...

...More than 100 Indian leaders have gone on record challenging Watt's nomination, in part because Watt battled an Indian tribe on behalf of the major oil companies which wanted to drill on Indian reservation lands without Indian interference...

...And that's where James Watt and the Interior Department come in...

...Fluor Oil & Gas, another Foundation financier, through its subsidiary, Peabody Coal, reportedly has coal lease applications pending at Interior, and so does Exxon...

...If President Ronald Reagan really thought the Federal Government's powers should be pruned, the place he might want to begin pruning would be the Interior Department...

...The power of Exxon, Mobil, and the other Seven Sisters pales beside the potential power of Interior Secretary James Watt...

...U Strategic minerals...

...energy," but "the environment vs...

...More than the Treasury Secretary or chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, James Watt will wield the power to transform the economic social fabric of the American West...

...One of the key figures in both the parent center and the Legal Foundation is Joseph Coors, one of Reagan's advisers and campaign contributors...

...Interior's Bureau of Mines conducts the surveys that guide Government decisions on coal mining—does the nation really need more coal?—and Interior's Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement has the power to decide which corporations can or cannot strip mine coal, and where...

...And the key actors in the resource drama, Haig suggested, would include the Secretaries of "Interior, Defense, State, and others...

...Virtually every major oil conglomerate that has financed Mountain States Legal Foundation wants offshore leases...

...According to a "Critical Issues" schedule prepared for top Interior officials, the new Interior Secretary will soon make historic decisions shaping the future of: f Oil shale development...

...national security"— possibly even "the environment vs...

...And that is just the beginning of Interior's influence...

...Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico said no lawyer should be condemned just because he has served one interest group or another...

...Well, maybe...

...Today there are only four small "prototype" oil shale operations, crushing rock on Federal lands in the Rocky Mountains and squeezing out oil...

...But of course, no one really thought that Reagan was appointing Watt despite his struggle against environmental regulations, on behalf of energy conglomerates...

...The main strategy of the Foundation, as Watt explained in an annual report, is "to fight in the courts" against the "threat posed to our American way of life by those extremists with narrow special interests, and a bureaucracy which is out of control...

...Two of the major corporate leaders pushing for stepped-up oil shale programs on Interior-owned lands are Occidental Oil Shale and Exxon—both financial contributors to the Mountain States Legal Foundation...

...Extreme environmentalist groups," he declares, "have brought energy development to a halt...

...Or should Interior "unleash" the oil conglomerates to plunge into massive commercial-scale projects, as some of them have proposed...

...whether the coal companies will use cautious strip mine methods so the land can be partially restored, or "strip-and-run" tactics that desolate the region with pollution and erosion...

...whether the companies will build their power plants in areas that minimize social and environmental damage, or plant them near communities that can least absorb them...

...And James Watt will be a key force in the coal push—as his Interior Department opens Federal lands to the coal companies at lease sales scheduled for July 30 in southwest Utah, and for early 1982 in Wyoming...

...Now that he's in charge, Watt will have to give a "no" or "go" on another controversial piece of the power network—a coal-fired power plant the consortium wants to build near Zion National Park...

...The nation's greatest resource treasures lie beneath Interior's soil— perhaps 80 per cent of the oil shale deposits, half the coal, 35 per cent of the uranium, 15 per cent of the oil...

...The Foundation's financing and board of directors come from a who's who of major energy and mining conglomerates—Phillips Petroleum, Amoco, Marathon Oil Company, Chevron, Exxon, Shell, Amax, Boise Cascade, Kennecott...

...To get at those resources, industry needs permission—in the form of leases and permits—from the Interior Secretary...

...Bitter battles erupt between coal corporations and farmers for precious water...

...Precisely which tracts of land should be turned over for development...

...It all has to do with a new Cold War argument championed by Secretary of State Alexander Haig and the U.S...

...Coal strip mining...

...Such sleepy towns as Gilette, Wyoming, and Craig, Colorado, are transformed into sprawling mobile trailer parks—and hit by urban plagues, from overcrowded schools and crime waves to venereal disease...

...In addition, California fears that drilling off the fragile northern coast could create a "boom town" effect that "would transform the existing land character from rural to industrial...

...The builder: Nevada Power Company...

...But for the next four years or more, James G. Watt will have more influence than any other person, except the President, on the energy and environmental future of the United States...

...The strip mine would have scarred the vistas, he said...

...James G. Watt Iames G. Watt, the new Secretary of the Interior, won't have the words "energy" or "environment" in his title...

...Watt will play a part in 'resource wars' Watt's major battle cry for "unleashing" the energy corporations has been the nation's need for energy...

...Now James Watt could open those areas up again...

...The main issue, of course, was Watt's anti-environmentalist crusades as a founder and president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation...

...the Russians...

...Mountain vistas are clouded gray by coal dust and power plant pollution...