Why Ken Salazar Should Take the Fall for the Oil Spill

There is tough talk from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar since the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As oil creeps across marshes and spreads out across the Gulf coast — the  muck coating and choking mammals, birds, turtles, fish and other life — Salazar says he has his boot on BP's neck.

Maybe ... but only when the cameras are rolling.

The Mineral Management Service is the agency under Salazar that is supposed to make sure oil and gas operations comply with the Marine Mammal Protection Act, a law that prohibits harassment, hunting, capturing or killing, or other ways of "taking" marine mammals, including by interfering with behavior patterns. MMS is also supposed to follow the Endangered Species Act, which protects endangered or threatened species. These laws allow only limited interference with the wildlife they protect, and any development can occur only with approval, after careful study and precautions are in place. The Submerged Lands Act requires the Department of the Interior to stop development that threatens harm to wildlife.

Salazar has ignored these laws.

He has claimed broad powers under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to grant the oil and gas industry leases, easements, and, seemingly, the Gulf itself. Under Salazar's watch, MMS has approved leases, over 100 permits, and hundreds of plans for oil and gas development just in the Gulf of Mexico.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity (pdf), MMS did this without "a single authorization" required by the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act, including the approval of the drilling operation that resulted in what is now the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Biologists and engineers say they knew about the danger. They say they were "pressured" by MMS to alter reports that predicted an accident or harm to wildlife.

The Department of the Interior was specifically warned (pdf) of the potential catastrophe to Gulf marine life from oil drilling by BP.

MMS manager, Larry Williamson, has described the agency as: "We're all oil industry." There have long been reports that oil companies fill out their own inspection reports. There are reports of other corruption, too.

A new Office of Inspector General report (pdf) reveals Salazar's Department of the Interior has failed to make sure oil companies pay the U.S. Government in kind royalties, some of which are for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

It was Salazar who hired BP oil executive, Sylvia Baca, as Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. Baca was in charge of the Bureau of Land Management in the late 1990s when there were media reports that BLM illegally sent wild horses to slaughter. Then, through the Department of the Interior revolving door, Baca went to work for BP and, again, to return to the government.

None of this is a surprise to those who have watched Salazar run over laws that are supposed to protect wild horses and burros as free-roaming on public lands. Salazar has actually said, despite the law, wild horses and burros don't belong on public lands. A longtime rancher, Salazar has stepped up BLM's cruel round ups of these animals. The goal is to make way for more livestock grazing, the Ruby gas pipeline, mining and other development. An investigation is underway into abuse suffered by wild horses in BLM's holding facilities.

Salazar's plan for the horses and burros is to sterilize them and put them in non-reproducing herds on "preserves" (a.k.a. feedlots), where they would soon be extinct. BLM would prefer euthanasia or slaughter which is prohibited by law.

In the meantime, Salazar has fired MMS director, Elizabeth Birnbaum, and assigned BLM's director, Robert Abbey, to the job. Will Americans really believe Salazar is improving things by moving the head of one corrupt agency to another?

Our natural resources and wildlife should not be door prizes for Salazar's oil and gas, mining, livestock grazing, and other development interests. Tell President Obama: It's time to replace Ken Salazar.

Photo credit: Tom Curtis/freedigitalphotos.net