Lujan’s Learning Curve

So many of the decisions made so far by Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan Jr. have been poor ones that Lujan’s critics have begun comparing him to Secretaries James G. Watt and Donald P. Hodel of the Reagan Administration. That is not particularly inviting company from an environmentalist’s viewpoint. However, Lujan is proving that this black-hat criticism is not totally fair or accurate.

Not that Lujan is about to be the Sierra Club’s man of the year. He is steadfastly against any delay in offshore oil drilling and has been a vigorous Bush Administration advocate for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge wilderness in Alaska. He stiffed the Environmental Protection Agency by proceeding with renewal of 40-year Central Valley Project water contracts in California without conducting an environmental impact study. Other actions clearly favored development and resource exploitation at the expense of the environment.

But Lujan has made some decisions in recent weeks that deserve commendation and support. They illustrate at least that Lujan is not as predictably bad on environmental questions as Watt, and perhaps can be swayed on some issues.

The most recent example was Lujan’s decision to order a full environmental study on the operation of Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River in order to assess its impact on downstream environmental resources in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Grand Canyon National Park. Less formal Interior Department studies were initiated in the previous Administration, but the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Western Area Power Administration insisted that power generation had priority over other issues on the river, including river-level fluctuations that affected river rafters and eroded wildlife habitat. Contrary views of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other Interior officials clearly did not carry equal weight. The EIS process ordered by Lujan will allow public testimony and a fairer balancing of the issues.

Lujan also has indicated he may be re-thinking his decision to renew the Central Valley Project water contracts without the same sort of environmental review. He recently delayed the signing of pacts with five irrigation districts while he considers recommendations by the President’s Council on Environmental Quality.

Earlier, the secretary rejected a trust agreement established by the J.G. Boswell Co., a giant San Joaquin Valley agribusiness, that was a gimmick to get around acreage limits on the use of federal project water. And he held up the sale of more Bureau of Reclamation water pending a new environmental study.

Lujan also established an Interior Department water policy council and charged it with finding ways to better manage the nation’s water resources. One of the first actions of the Reagan Administration in 1981 was to abolish an inter-agency water council created under President Carter.

While Lujan’s council is limited to the Interior Department and does not include the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, it at least would give fish and wildlife and other environmental protection elements within the department an opportunity to participate in water- policy development. If the council indeed works that way, this is a refreshing change from the skewed exploitative policies of Watt and Hodel.

Generally, the environmental record of the Department of Interior so far is disappointing. But it is not as consistently abysmal as it was under Watt. Lujan’s recent actions at least offer some encouragement that the environment may yet get a fair shake at the Department of the Interior.