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US environmentalists wary of Bush's Interior pick

January 1, 2001

US environmentalists expressed concern on Friday that President-elect George W. Bush's choice to head the Interior Department had close ties to what they called enemies of land conservation, notably the controversial Reagan administration interior secretary, James Watt.

Conservation groups also worry that Bush's choice - former Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton - will support his plans for opening Alaskan wilderness to oil and natural gas drilling, a position staunchly opposed by preservationists.

"It is very important that the secretary of interior be a spokesman for land conservation, and we're hopeful that that's a task she is willing to undertake and accomplish with this administration," William Meadows, president of the Wilderness Society, said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

Bush wants to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the northeast corner of Alaska to oil drilling and build a pipeline to bring Alaskan natural gas to the lower 48 states.

Asked whether she supported Bush's call to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration and drilling, Norton declined to directly comment ahead of her confirmation, but said she supported Bush's campaign positions.

Norton's nomination stoked deeper regret from an official with the Sierra Club, the nation's largest environmental group, who called her unqualified to act as the steward for public lands and natural resources.

"We're disappointed in this choice," said Bruce Hamilton, national conservation director for the Sierra Club.

While noting that Norton's role as attorney general left little in the way of an environmental record to judge, Hamilton said her work in government and private legal practice showed her to be on the side of anti-environmental thinking.

"We see someone here who is retrograde ... time and again she has sided with the polluters, the loggers, the miners," Hamilton said.

A former Libertarian, Norton, 46, began her career as a lawyer with the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a conservative law firm headed by Watt. Norton followed Watt to Washington and served as assistant to the deputy secretary of agriculture in the Reagan administration from 1984 to 1985, then as associate solicitor for wildlife and conservation for the Department of the Interior from 1985 to 1987.

Watt was reviled by environmental groups for favoring the opening of public lands for exploration.

Watt's successor as interior secretary, Donald Hodel, lauded Norton's appointment. "Once I heard her name, I couldn't think of anyone else who would be a better selection," Hodel said by telephone from his home in Silverthorne, Colorado.

Norton was elected in 1990 as Colorado's first female attorney general before term limits forced her from office after her second term ended in 1998. If her appointment is approved by the Senate, Norton would become the first woman to serve in that Cabinet post.