WASHINGTON — It was one of those few moments these days when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had time to linger in his plushly appointed office on the top floor of the Interior Department, with its bust of Teddy Roosevelt and enormous buffalo-head chandeliers.
Taking a moment to reflect on his first 100 days as manager of more than 500 million acres of public lands (a milestone passed Thursday), he suddenly appeared a little flustered about his schedule, turning to an aide for help: “Where am I going to be tonight again?”
North Dakota, it turned out — to meet with American Indian leaders; and then Montana, for an announcement on stimulus funding. He’d recently returned from a listening tour on off-shore drilling that took him to Louisiana, Alaska, New Jersey and California.
Indeed, he could easily be forgiven for not quite knowing the next stop on the “Ken Salazar tour,” a march that in just over three months as the head of Interior has taken him to 14 states and included a rapid-fire fusillade of decisions and announcements that touch almost every aspect of the way the country’s vast public lands are managed.
“My style has always been to be a problem-fixer,” Salazar said, outfitted in a crisp white shirt and bolo tie.
Or, as Charles Wilkinson, a University of Colorado professor and expert on the history of Western public lands, put it: Salazar “has been more active than any secretary in history in this early period.”
Focus on renewables
In his frenzied opening act, Salazar has peeled back many of the Bush administration’s most controversial land-use decisions: slowing the commercial leasing of oil shale; revisiting the question of drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf; requiring more scientific review of decisions that could impact endangered species; and just last week telling coal miners in Appalachia that they can no longer dump mining rubble into stream beds.
More broadly, Salazar has launched a sweeping reorientation of energy development on public lands toward renewable energy, sources that had gotten scant attention in previous administrations and on which he now says he spends “30 to 40 percent of my time.”
“The issues are serious, the work is hard,” Salazar said. But “I’m having a lot of fun.”
Indeed, to a man who has attained success in a number of jobs — from director of Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources, to state attorney general, to a rising star in the U.S. Senate — head of Interior may be the best fit yet for someone who friends and colleagues describe as the preternatural CEO.
He’s famous for calling meetings at 10 or 11 p.m. and working through weekends. At 54, he often outpaces his much younger staff — and will quickly show off photos of himself going head-to-head with President Barack Obama in basketball.
“It’s been a really, really heavy schedule,” said Stewart Bliss, a former chief of staff for Roy Romer and one of Salazar’s closest friends. But “if you’re a hands-on individual who cares as much about his agenda as he does, you’re going to try to be where you need to be to make a difference.”
The lingering question over all this is whether Salazar can successfully forge a center in a public-lands debate that has long been polarized by extremes.
Or put another way, whether his centrist instincts will survive his role as point man for a liberal president and a powerful set of energy advisers that include energy czar Carol Browner, known as a strong ally of the environmental movement.
In fact, for a man who prides himself on bringing disparate sides together, Salazar has found himself the target of a growing circle of critics. Those include a Republican Party looking for political toehold in the West as well as oil and gas officials worried about increased regulation.
Marc Smith, executive director of the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States, called the department’s policies under Salazar “muddled by inconsistency.”
And Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs, said it looked like “the new administration and the new Interior secretary aren’t serious about developing our nation’s energy resources.”
The confirmation of two of Salazar’s key lieutenants, including David Hayes, the department’s No. 2, is being held up by a former colleague on the Natural Resources Committee, Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah.
Bennett vowed Friday to keep a hold on both nominees until Salazar justifies the withdrawal of oil and gas leases in southern Utah that were close to two national parks.
“It’s one thing to say we’re going to put more emphasis on renewable energy. It’s another thing to say you played by the rules, you complied with all the requirements of the law and regulations, but we don’t like you, so we’re going to switch it,” Bennett said.
For the moment Salazar seems unfazed, confidently suggesting that the result of last year’s election is all the justification he needs to pursue a sweeping new direction.
“We are here because we have a change agenda, and we are doing things differently than the previous administration,” Salazar said.
Aiming for the middle
Yet there are still signs that he will try to forge the middle road that has eluded his predecessors, including Interior Secretaries Gale Norton and Bruce Babbitt, both of whose tenures were marred by bitter fights with powerful stakeholders in land-use debates. (Environmentalists in the case of Norton, who was George W. Bush’s first Interior secretary; and ranchers in the case of Babbitt, who served under Bill Clinton.)
Salazar recently reinstated a requirement rescinded by Bush that all land-use decisions be run by scientists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife to ensure they didn’t violate the Endangered Species Act — a move cheered by environmentalists.
In turn, it was ranchers who cheered the secretary’s recent decision to remove the gray wolf from the endangered list in Montana and Idaho.
The question is whether those kinds of actions will leave stakeholders with a sense of Salazar’s even-handedness — or simply eventually anger all sides.
“We thought it was wrong on the science and the law. And we thought it was a decision made without any prior consultation with stakeholders in the conservation community,” Robert Irvin, vice president of Defenders of Wildlife, said of the wolf decision, which was widely maligned by environmental groups.
“I think the jury is still out on how the department will handle wildlife issues,” he said.
