Oil Was Central in Decision to Shrink Bears Ears Monument, Emails Show
Source: nytimes
Eric Lipton and Lisa Friedman
March 2 2018
Comb Wash, a valley in Bears Ears National Monument near Blanding, Utah. Andrew Cullen/Reuters
WASHINGTON ............................
The debate started as early as March 2017, when an aide to Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, asked a senior Interior Department official to consider shrinking Bears Ears National Monument in the southeastern corner of the state. Under a longstanding program in Utah, oil and natural gas deposits within the boundaries of the monument could have been used to raise revenue for public schools had the land not been under federal protection...............................
The map that Mr. Hatch’s office provided, which was transmitted about a month before Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke publicly initiated his review of national monuments, was incorporated almost exactly into the much larger reductions President Trump announced in December, shrinking Bears Ears by 85 percent.
Since taking office, Mr. Trump has been focused on expanding oil, gas and coal development and sweeping away Obama-era environmental initiatives that the administration contends hurt America’s energy industry. The debate over shrinking national monuments sparked a fierce political battle, now being fought in the courts, over how much land needs federal protection.
Mr. Zinke has said that the agency review process made no presumptions about the outcomes. “We want to make sure that everyone’s voice is heard,” Mr. Zinke said at a news conference in May during a visit to Bears Ears. He has also disputed that the review of Bears Ears was related to the potential for energy production, suggesting that the agency’s own surveys showed there was not a great deal of potential there.
“We also have a pretty good idea of, certainly, the oil and gas potential — not much!” Mr. Zinke said last year. “So Bears Ears isn’t really about oil and gas.”
Most of the deliberations took place behind closed doors. .................
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/02/climate/bears-ears-national-monument.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
Long article. Worth ready. NOTHING but Corruption with Trump and his minions. damn!
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