After Shitstain Deliberately Broke The BLM, Biden Faces Task Of Trying to Rebuild The Agency
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Two years after President Donald Trump decided to move the bureau’s headquarters to Grand Junction, a small city in the mountains of Colorado with no direct flight links with D.C., Biden plans to bring it back. But the agency remains severely depleted, according to interviews with more than 20 current and former Interior Department employees, hobbling the Biden administration’s work. As it plans a multiyear shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy on public lands, employees — several of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation — say the exodus of senior leaders has drained the agency of experienced scientists and regulators. Replacements have struggled to get up to speed. Divisions that once coordinated across cubicles in the same D.C. office are now more isolated from one another after headquarters positions were scattered across about a dozen cities in the West.
Trump “destroyed the effectiveness of the agency,” said a BLM employee, one of the 41 former headquarters staffers who relocated to Western posts. “Everything’s broken down.” The move decimated the ranks of the planning staff responsible for establishing multi-decade rules for how the country’s public lands can be used, including setting the balance between fossil fuel extraction and conservation. That division had more than 20 headquarters positions during Trump’s first year in office. Just four of those people remained after the move.
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The new headquarters sits in a four-story brick-and-glass building next to a canal in Grand Junction, a town with a history of oil and gas, mining, and wine. Over the past year, it has been mostly deserted, with generally fewer than 10 people in the office, including IT personnel wandering around in masks, according to employees who have spent time there. An Interior spokesperson noted the department has a “liberal telework policy,” and employees were authorized to work from home because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Some within the bureau cringed at the building choice. The agency whose job is to regulate drilling and mining on public lands shares a space with a Chevron corporate office, a state oil and gas association and an independent natural gas exploration company. “The optics are terrible,” said one employee who spent time there. Day-to-day operations of the bureau also have suffered. The United States’ public lands accommodate many competing interests: coal mining in one area; the Burning Man festival in another. Managing these “multiple uses” is central to the bureau’s mission. When, for example, oil drilling is proposed on public lands, the agency assesses its impact on endangered species, air quality, wildlife and the cultural and historical resources in the area.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/10/29/bureau-land-management-grand-junction/
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