Colorado senator tapped to inherit Interior woes

[December 18, 2008]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- As the nation's 50th Interior secretary, Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar would face a backlog of rare species awaiting protection, maintenance backlogs at national parks and an agency often too cozy with oil companies.

President-elect Barack Obama said Wednesday he wants the Interior Department to clean up its act, naming Salazar as his choice to do it.

Balancing the harnessing of the nation's energy, land and water resources while protecting its environment won't be easy. And Interior is inherently an agency in conflict, charged with both developing energy resources on and under government land while also protecting that land -- including tribal reservations, national parks and wildlife refuges -- from being exploited.

"We've had an Interior Department that was deeply troubled," Obama said as he announced his plan to nominate Salazar as well as his choice of Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack for secretary of Agriculture.

"What I want to put an end to is an Interior Department that sees its job as simply sitting back waiting for whoever has most access in Washington to extract what they want," Obama said.

In Salazar's four years in the Senate, he has sided more with protectionist than development aspects of the department's mission. He opposed Bush administration efforts to develop oil shale resources in the West and open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and natural gas exploration.

But he also helped broker a deal to allow more offshore drilling, while arguing that oil companies should be made to renegotiate offshore Gulf of Mexico leases by the Clinton administration that enabled them to escape making billions of dollars in royalty payments to the government.

Salazar has also been a vocal advocate of renewable energy, and the public lands he will oversee include some of the nation's largest sources of wind, solar and geothermal energy.

Accepting his nomination in a cowboy hat and a bolo tie, Salazar, the first Hispanic elected to statewide office in Colorado, said he would work to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil and take "the moon shot" on energy independence.

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chair of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said Salazar will remove "the `For Sale' sign the Bush administration has placed on public lands."

Many environmental groups also hailed the decision on Wednesday.

But at least one -- the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity -- said Salazar was not the man to overhaul the agency. Kieran Suckling, the executive director of the group that does a lot of work on endangered species, called Salazar's record mixed, saying he shouldn't have supported Bush's choice of fellow Coloradan Gale Norton to be his first Interior secretary.

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On the Net:

Sen. Ken Salazar: http://salazar.senate.gov/

Obama transition: http://www.change.gov/

[Associated Press; By DINA CAPPIELLO]

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