WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary-designate Ken Salazar vowed Thursday to remake one of the government’s most deeply troubled departments, sketching a “21st century” vision for what’s often seen as a dysfunctional backwater of the federal bureaucracy.
Over a two-hour Senate hearing – the prelude to what’s expected to be an easy confirmation vote as soon as next week — the Colorado Senator described a hip new Interior Department, conjuring visions of wind farms and geothermal energy projects sprouting across thousands of acres of public lands.
And he gravely vowed to repair the scarred ethical reputation of a department buffeted by some of the worst scandals and investigations of the Bush administration.
“Our first and foremost task will be to restore the integrity of the Department of Interior and to bring the highest level of ethics back to the functions of this critical department,” Salazar told members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, most of whom he knew well as a current member.
Speaking substantively about his agenda for the first time since his introduction by Barack Obama in December, Salazar emphasized the broad break he would make from the last eight years of the Bush administration.
Interior will slow the commercial leasing of oil shale; reshape relations with American Indian tribes; and shift the department’s almost exclusive focus on fossil fuels when it comes to fulfilling the nation’s energy needs, Salazar said.
“I want to move the department to a whole new level of activity for the 21st century,” Salazar, wearing cowboy boots and a Western cut suit, told the reporters after the hearing.
The Denver Democrat’s easy confirmation is considered a forgone conclusion, in part because he’s viewed as a pragmatist on many of the department’s hot-button issues, including energy development.
Only a handful of Republican members attended the hearing, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., joked at one point that it was turning into “a full-fledged bouquet tossing festival.”
Still, Salazar did face some pointed questions about oil shale development and off-shore drilling, two issues that the energy industry is watching carefully to judge how far Salazar and Obama plan to pull back on eight years of aggressive development of the the nation’s fossil fuel reserves.
“My question is why do we have to move head long to commercial oil shale leasing at this point?” Salazar said after he was asked under what circumstances he would see commercial leasing going forward. “We don’t have the answers to some very important questions, including how much water is this going to take, which is a very important issue to the West.”
But Salazar also said he saw energy as a homeland security issue and vowed to make the Interior Department a key driver of the “moon shot to energy independence” that would be a hallmark of Obama’s domestic agenda.
Drilling and other activity would continue at a substantial clip; but Interior would also focus on renewable energy, Salazar said, including development of transmission lines and smart grids that would take energy from wind farms and solar fields across the West to market.
“Instead of transferring huge amounts of wealth to places like Saudi Arabia and other places in the Middle East , we can have that invested here in our country,” in the new energy economy, Salazar said.
The state’s senior Senator was introduced to the committee by Sen. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs, and by his brother, Rep. John Salazar, D-Manassa, both of whom cast his qualifications partly in terms of the strength of character and ethical standards he would bring to the job.
“We often hear the phrase, ‘the law of the land.’ Sen. Salazar is the embodiment of that phrase,” said John Salazar, emphasizing how his brother would bring his experience as Colorado Attorney General, the state’s highest law enforcement official, to cleaning up Interior.
The extent of that task was emphasized by Wyden, who ticked off a list of the department’s scandals, including Jack Abramoff and the Mineral Management Service, where employees have been accused of taking gifts from energy companies, on the job cocaine use, and sexual misconduct.
“You now have to go in there and drain the swamp, and America has now heard you say to your credit that that is priority number one,” Wyden told Salazar.
Although offering detailed answers on some issues, Salazar was vague about many.
On an off-shore drilling moratorium, on streamlined regulations for oil and gas leasing, and on royalty reform, Salazar gave the same kind of answer he gave Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso, who asked about the federal government’s refusal to de-list wolves in Wyoming because of that state’s controversial management plan.
“We will take a look at it, we will study it and we will make the appropriate decisions,” Salazar said.
None of that seemed to bother either Republicans or Democrats on the panel.
Mel Martinez, the Republican Senator from Florida, said he didn’t have any questions for Salazar at all.
“I was so proud to come to the Senate with you, to become your friend and I just wish you all the best,” Martinez said.
