Colorado
University President Elizabeth Hoffman: We are so
pleased to have you here tonight and we are so pleased to
be hosting this wonderful series of Secretaries here at the
University of Colorado. I am particularly honored tonight
to have Secretary James Watt. A lot is said of the University
of Colorado and a lot of jokes are made about the University
of Colorado and about the city of Boulder. One of the points
I'm trying to make as I talk to our Legislature and various
other people these days, is that we are a place where all
voices get heard, where all points of view are respected.
I think that is particularly important at this time when we're
talking about academic bills of rights and questioning whether
the university is truly a place where all voices can be heard.
Through this series that Patty Limerick has put together for
us so graciously we really have an opportunity to hear all
voices.
I'm going to say just a few words about Secretary Watt and
then I know Patty Limerick has quite a few things she wants
to share with you. Let me just say that, although he's best
known for his work as Secretary of the Interior under former
President Reagan, Secretary Watt became interested in land
and natural resources long before he ventured into the Oval
Office.
He grew up on a ranch in Wyoming, so he really is a son of
the West. He went to college and law school at the University
of Wyoming and served as a legislative assistant and counsel
to a Wyoming senator. He really has had the opportunity to
experience the American West. He told me during dinner that
he is third-generation Wyomingite, so he has that sense in
his background. During the Nixon administration, he served
as undersecretary and then deputy assistant secretary of the
Interior, and then appointed three years later as director
of the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation. He also worked for the
Department of Energy and as president and legal officer for
the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a Denver-based nonprofit
public-based legal center.
He is a real proponent of controlled development, and I know
that that's an issue that many of you have a great deal of
interest in on one side or the other, and I think that we
will all welcome your questions at the end of this dialogue.
His ideas and his policies were not always popular, but he
has remained very strong in his convictions. I think we need
to remember that he has done some very positive things for
our natural resources. He committed a billion dollars to the
park restoration and improvement program, which helped preserve
our national parks system. Under his management, we acquired
1.6 million acres of new park and wildlife refuge land, and
implemented new policies designed to protect water resources
and decrease our dependency on foreign oil.
While not everyone in this room may agree with everything
he has done, I think there are many things that he has done
that stay with us today and have become much a part of our
national policy with respect to national parks and natural
resources.
I am going to turn it over now to Patty Limerick, who is director
of the Center of the American West who wants to share some
personal thoughts about her interactions with Secretary Watt
during the time that she was putting together this series.
Please welcome Patty Limerick.
James Watt: This has
been a delightful couple of days to be here on campus and
I have enjoyed it immensely. I've been in the classroom and,
particularly with the faculty, it's been a great time. It
has been extremely rewarding for me to prepare for this presentation.
I haven't focused on these issues for a long time and so to
prepare, I spent a lot of time. I was surprised at how much
time I did spend and it was extremely rewarding.
Reagan Revolution
To look back 23 years to 1981, the beginning of a major revolution
in America. We called it the Reagan revolution. We were commissioned
by the people of America in November of 1980 to bring massive
change to the way we do things in this country, including
the management of our natural resources. The richness, the
values, and our whole purpose was to bring people into the
equation. It was a phenomenal time in history. Serving Ronald
Reagan was pure joy, because this man had a vision for America
and he spoke with clarity and he had a common core. He had
core values of dignity for the individual and respect and
a love for America. He spoke with clarity and those of us
who worked for him didn't have to worry about what we were
supposed to do. We knew what the orders were and we were to
pursue them.
Special-interest groups don't see
the grandeur and the greatness
of America and the resource base that sustains us. For it
belongs to no special selfish-interest group, but it belongs
to all of us. And reasonable people can bring balance, selfish
people can't. And if we're not willing to share and honor
one another and show the dignity, the God-given dignity that
we have, then we don't deserve the greatness of this country.
I was probably the first Secretary of
Interior who ever worked for a president that understood the
Department. For Reagan had been governor of California for
eight years, and over 50 percent of California is under control
of the Secretary of Interior in one way or another, including
the entire coast. He had to work with Department of Interior
people. Not only did we have control over 50 percent of the
land and the coastal areas, but we controlled the supply of
water for California. He had a vision for the necessity to
bring about balance between the development and the preservation
of the great resources, not only of California, but of America.
He spoke with clarity and understanding. It was really a rich
time.
But like every Secretary who's ever served, and the ones you've
been hearing from, we are confronted with very, very difficult
statutory dictates. Some of the statute says you must develop,
you must build, you must dig, you must drill; and, on the
other hand, we have a set of statutory dictates from the Congress
of the United States that says you must preserve. Totally
inconsistent in their standards and yet we have stood and
took an oath before Almighty God that we would enforce the
laws of the land. It can be done. A reasonable person can
bring that balance. A selfish person, a selfish-interest group
cannot do it. And that's the struggle.
Tonight we're going to have some fun responding to the issues
you want to talk about and, as have the other Secretaries
that have come before you, we've had to handle a lot of area.
And the dimension is magnificent. A Secretary of the Interior
is responsible for managing one-third of the lands of the
United States: 750 million acres, wetlands, desert, wilderness,
timber, grazing lands, refuges.
And Congress says, "Preserve and develop." Not an
easy assignment. But men have come to take the oath of office
and dedicated their life to do it. I commend you folks for
putting on this series to let an oral history be presented
on how these men have performed and what we've done and the
eras we've gone through — starting in the '60s with
one of my role models, Secretary Udall. I was a young lawyer
working for Sen. Simpson, as you've heard, and I got to watch
this man up close and personal for six years, and he was a
role model.
Stewart Udall built dams, and he built canals and he built
power facilities. He was a builder, a digger and a driller.
It would have been a great time to be in the office of Secretary
of Interior like he was. He put on more parks that I did.
I put in a lot more land than he did. But it was a different
era. He didn't have to live under all the statutes that you
saw on the list. A different mood in the country. Yet that
needs to be understood, because he took the same oath of office
with the same commitment and love and dedication to the country.
He did his best. I thought he did well.
I worked for Hickel, who followed him. I worked, as has been
pointed out, for three-and-a-half years as a preservation
official and three-and-a-half years as a developer. I got
to know the department. All of the questions that come around
and you may want to ask a variety of questions. You may want
to ask why does the Secretary of the Interior have jurisdiction
over the Micronesian Islands in the Pacific? Guam? America
Samoa, Saipan? I've had to take trips to be there, to carry
out the responsibilities and the mandates that are under the
direction of the Secretary of Interior.
You may want to ask how did you handle the desire of the nude
bathers on the national seashore areas? How did you handle
the concerns of those who wanted to import the parrots in
parrot parks? Because we control what comes in. When somebody
says, I want to import parrot parks and it's your decision
to deny it or accept it.
Why does the Department of Interior run the schools on the
Indian reservations? Here I am the superintendent of schools
of the Bureau of Indian Affairs schools. Guaranteed to give
one of the poorer educations in America, but that's the responsibility
of the Secretary of Interior.
How did you, Jim Watt, learn about the degradation, the polluting
of the streams and lakes in the national parks and why was
it going on without a protest in 1980, 1981. And nobody doing
anything about it? Fascinating questions.
Why were you the one, Jim Watt, to get the President of the
United States to extend jurisdiction from our coastal areas
out 200 miles? Why didn't the Secretary of State do that?
Why did the Secretary of Interior? Why did you work and commit
your USGS people to work with the CIA when the previous administration
wouldn't allow it to happen? How did you resolve the fishing
problems on the Great Lakes?
What did you do about alcoholism on the Indian reservations?
These are a few of the issues, but the breadth is tremendous.
Some of you will want to talk about, as Patty already pointed
out, my religious statements. I am a follower of Christ and
I was asked in a hearing about that and I commented that we
didn't know how soon before the Lord returned and this thing
just blew up on us. We couldn't figure out what was going
on. The five or six big environmentalist lobbyist groups in
Washington just blew it out of proportion. How do you deal
with it? It was such a personal brutal attack on a person's
religion. In America. In the '80s.
I think what best put it in context with a news hearing over
in Interior and one of the reporters asked the spokesman for
Secretary Weinberger, "Does the Secretary of Defense
Cap Weinberger believe like Watt in the return of Jesus Christ?"
And the spokesman said, "Well, of course, all Christians
believe that." The reporter was incredulous. He said,
"Cap Weinberger, the Secretary of Defense, is a Christian?
I thought he was Episcopalian." Those people are interpreting
Washington for you. That's how you get your image. I hope
we get into some of those press issues.
I think it's important to set the stage. What we were addressing
in the 1980s, as Reagan was elected and the Carter administration
was leaving. The Cold War was at a new high. Nuclear weapons
were aimed at every major city of the United States.
Our military forces had been depleted and degraded and there
was a necessity to rebuild our strength in light of the forces
of evil that were threatening our freedom. Reagan ran on that.
It was a big issue in his campaign. President Carter had declared
that America was in a malaise, unmanageable, couldn't deal
with it. We had double-digit inflation, double-digit interest
rates, high unemployment. We had an energy crisis that was
– some of you weren't aware of it. The old people here
may remember it. Sitting in lines, two and three miles long,
to get gas because of the petroleum crisis. Yet, most of the
energy yet to be developed in America will come from your
lands. The federal lands.
We have enough coal in my home state of Wyoming to last for
100 years alone, if you don't count the Colorado and New Mexico
coal. We have petroleum, oil and gas, the nuclear potential,
the wind, the air, the water. All of these have to be developed.
We're going, as a nation, to look at these federal lands,
our lands, and they are going to be developed. Period. Paragraph.
They are going to be developed. Are they going to be developed
with care and consideration and with wisdom? Or are we going
to wait and hold the feds off until the rest of America says
we're coming to get it and we'll take it, whatever, and they
destroy our culture and our environment. Those are the issues
we dealt with.
Sagebrush Rebellion
I want to read with some carefulness here because I want you
to hear. Before I took the oath of office in January of 1981,
every single governor of the Western states opposed vehemently,
aggressively, the Department of Interior policies and the
Carter administration's policies. And all of the governors
were Democrats, except two who were elected in '78, because
of the Carter administration policies, at least in part.
There was hostility brewing beyond measure, and it was called
the Sagebrush Rebellion. In some of our communities, and we
visited about this in several of the classes, in some of the
communities at that time, the federal employees of the BLM
and the Forest Service were not allowed to leave their offices
in government trucks and cars by themselves for fear of their
life. Because of the controversy. I kind of laugh when I get
introduced as controversial and confrontational. Yet a federal
employee could not go out in some counties for fear of losing
his life because of the confrontation and the controversy
that raged in those days.
Now, five states voted in the Sagebrush Rebellion to take
over the BLM lands. Gov. Dick Lamm, Democrat of Colorado,
did not declare himself to be a sagebrush rebel. In fact,
he vetoed that bill that the Legislature passed to turn the
lands, the BLM lands, over from the federal government to
the state. He vetoed it and then he signed the bill appropriating
funds to study solutions for the Sagebrush Rebellion –
as did Gov. Babbitt in Arizona, as did Gov. Matheson in Utah,
Gov. Herschler in Wyoming, all of them were Democrats.
There was hostility. Gov. Lamm — this is what I want
to read with care because I want it to be heard correctly
— never called himself a sagebrush rebel. He said in
his 1978 keynote address at the first annual meeting of the
Western Governors Policy Office, "We meet at a time when
feelings of sectionalism and regionalism are at the most intense
of any time since the Civil War. In this, the second war between
the states, the West appears to be the chief area under attack."
Gov. Lamm helps us to make the point and helps us to understand,
not since the Civil War, 120 years prior to my time, was there
such hostility, controversy, confrontation and conflict with
the states and the federal government.
Ronald Reagan was elected to change that. We never, of the
Reagan team, never thought of these battles as environmental
battles. There was the type of government we were going to
have. I was given clear charges by the president. I was to
bring about massive change in the way our federal lands and
western waters were being managed so that all of Americans
could benefit and enjoy them. All Americans. Not an elite
group, but all Americans.
Two, I was to change the policies so that the federal government
would be considered a good neighbor by the Western governors,
state legislators, county commissioners, mayors and the users
of the land.
Three, in addition, I was to significantly change the management
rules so that there would be proper protection or reclamation
of the park, refuge, the public lands, the wilderness areas,
so that everybody could enjoy all of the benefits, including
the clean water, energy, the minerals, recreation and the
quietness of life.
Finally, I was charged with improving conditions of the American
Indians living on the reservations.
It required massive change and I want to emphasize the word
"massive." And whenever change is called upon, it
brings controversy. Because the elite, privileged people of
power don't want change. They like their position. We were
commissioned to initiate a Reagan revolution. We weren't confronting
anybody. We were responding to the election of 1980 when the
American people said bring about massive change.
Water law
I brought a lot of change and one of them dealt with water
rights. During previous years, the administration had changed
150 years of water law to make it read that all waters arising
on federal land belonged to the federal government and were
under the federal government instead of the 150-year history
that all waters are under state law as Gov. Lamm, Gov. Babbitt
and Gov. Herschler, and so forth, all wanted it to be. I was
challenged because the president had told these governors
that we were going to make it like it was and undo what was
done.
I was challenged by the selfish-interest groups that I hadn't
negotiated with them before changing it back to what the president
promised it would be. We changed it and we changed it quickly.
We were able to do this because of the tremendous talent within
the Department of the Interior. Dedicated, career employees.
I never allowed any of our political appointments to criticize
any of the career employees. They were dedicated, wonderful
people.
We brought about the massive change. There was a big uproar
about a lot of it and I'm reminded of the times that my sister
Judith and my brother-in-law Gene, who have been married for
over 50 years. We all come from ranching families in Wyoming
and I spent the summers as a kid on the ranch working. One
day I had loaded up the block salt on the wagon and we were
going to take it up to the summer pastures and my uncle went
to get the team of horses and he harnessed them and brought
them back. He backed them up over the wagon tongue and we
hitched them up to the doubletree. He jumped up on the seat
and started rolling the wagon out, driving the team of horses.
I heard the screen door slam and I looked around; I was on
the back of the wagon. I saw my aunt come running out and
the door slamming behind her. I paid attention as she jumped
up on the seat, because they'd had a real spiff that day.
I heard her say, "Ralph, wouldn't it be wonderful if
we could pull together like this team of horses does?"
And he looked at her, and I'm staring. He said, "Mabel,
we could if there was one tongue between us." That's
the problem I found. President Hoffman, have you ever found
that to be a problem on the campus?
One tongue. That's the battleground. Where is integrity? It
was a challenge, and it was so rewarding. I want to thank
you again for causing me to focus, to see that we were able
to put footprints on the pages of history and be pleased with
the results that continued.
I was succeeded in office by President Reagan's close friend
and adviser, Bill Clark. He was then followed by my best friend,
my number one guy while I was there and then became Secretary
of Energy and then came back to Interior. When Don Hodel went
in to see the president to get the promotion to move up to
Secretary of Interior from Secretary of Energy, he wrote in
the book celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Department
of the Interior, "I asked President Reagan was it proper
to presume that I was to proceed under the direction you gave
James Watt." And the president said, "You are."
We are a hurting country,
a hurting nation, because
of selfishness and the lack of integrity. Integrity is the
glue that holds us together, whether it's a Bruce Babbitt
or a Gale Norton. Give them dignity and the future officeholders,
give them some respect and treat them with integrity. They're
doing their best.
He was then succeeded by Lujan, who will
be with you next month. Lujan was our number one guy in the
House of Representatives that worked with us and I was delighted
at his appointment. It's fun to see that that legacy is there.
We've been favored and blessed by the passage of time, these
23 years, to look back and see the tremendous progress that
continues to go on because we had the courage to make those
massive changes. But they need to be challenged and they need
to be questioned and let's see if we can't speak with one
tongue on it now that I've been able to go at it too long,
but I've enjoyed it. Thanks for the time I've had on campus,
I've enjoyed it. The faculty particularly, the diversity was
rich. I really enjoyed the time. The students were fun to
be with. I was impressed.
Feel free to come at these issues. These are tough issues.
Decisions last for generations and are important to all of
us because it's our land. And we all have a right to it.
CW: Well, we've enjoyed your comments too, Mr. Secretary.
We'd be interested in having you comment a little more on
this. You, I think, accurately described the kind of conflict
that existed when you came to really the most important office
in the West in 1981. You said, I think I understood you, that
you felt and the administration felt that you were working
against powerful interests. A person could say that one reason
for the conflict was that the Carter administration was responding
to new imperatives for preservation, for environmental protection.
And that the opposition from the West, in fact, came from
the powerful interests: the timber companies, the water developers,
the energy companies, the large ranches, and that the real
power was on your side.
JW: We didn't feel that way. The statement can be true
that you've made. But the list is not complete. The Carter
administration was also opposed by the governors, the state
legislators, the county commissioners, the mayors of the cities
and towns. Because the people hadn't been brought into the
discussion as everything was moved to Washington for decision.
The basic battle over this wasn't the environment. It was
who's going to make the decisions that are going to be made
on resource allocation? Central powers in Washington, D.C.,
subject to the selfish-interest groups of all dimensions,
or are the decisions going to be made collectively with the
federal, state, county and city levels with people involved
at every level?
Reagan was a federalist. He believed in the role of governors
– as did Gov. Lamm, Gov. Herschler, and all these people.
But they were denied in the Carter administration, and that's
why all these governors opposed it so aggressively.
You make a valuable point that we need to underline and that
is whoever is serving as Secretary of the Interior is pounded
by the powerful interest groups of — and fill in all
the names that you've used, plus a bunch more. It is tough.
Good statement.
PL: ... (What you are saying is that) local people
were being shut out of the decisions and they had to be included.
Isn't that at some risk of romanticizing local wisdom? That
local people will be able to rise and think in longer units
of time and imagine something besides than the interest of
the moment? Which is no better or worse than the romance of
centralized expertise.
JW: The pendulum swings too far. It goes back and forth.
Through the ages of history you see this continuing battle,
back and forth, and frankly we found ... that in many instances,
the states weren't prepared or capable of doing what we wanted
them to do. There was a — I was going to say crippled
but that's not the right word — There was an incapacity,
an inability of the state governments to respond. We had to
give block grants to the states to do what they should have
been doing. So some things weren't done right. There will
be an ebb and flow as time goes, it was just too extreme.
It's kind of pleasing as I've met with several professors
to learn that in their different disciplines that most of
the harsh swings that we brought are still basically in place.
I was encouraged with what I learned from the professors here
on campus about that.
Yes, we always need to be vigilant; power is an all-consuming
thing. It can go either way too far really easy. There was
a need to centralize that stuff. It's the balance that you're
always in. My pitch always is: reasonable people can bring
about a balance, selfish interests can't. Your point's a good
one.
PL: You didn't go very far down the privatization road
and you certainly didn't go anywhere down the return-it-to-the-states
road. ... You said you were a Sagebrush Rebel. You used that
phrase and the president also used that phrase for himself,
but then you didn't do the key thing that was to get federal
land out of federal holdings and get it back to the states
and individuals. Could you tell us about that?
JW: That deserves some development. The Nevada Legislature
and the other four states were asking that the BLM lands —
and my dear state of Wyoming not only wanted the BLM lands
they wanted the Forest Service lands, too — to go back
under state control and management. Gov. Lamm and Gov. Babbitt
vetoed their state Legislatures. Had I been their adviser,
I would have said, "Veto it." My interests on this
was very selfish.
The states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, etc., can't afford
to manage these lands; 50 percent of Wyoming, 50 percent of
California is in federal ownership, and we don't have the
money in our little tax base to manage these lands the way
we ought to. For selfish reasons we want to keep the subsidies
of the federal government taking care of our lands. I felt
it was a misdirected policy, as did Gov. Lamm and Gov. Babbitt.
As did Gov. Reagan, President-elect and then President Reagan,
so my orders were "Jim, be a good neighbor."
I met with the governors in September 1981. It was kind of
a delightful experience. I went into the room with all of
the governors in Jackson Hole, now my home, and I said, "Whatever
you guys want, you get. We were going to be good neighbors."
They didn't know how to handle that. They had been fighting
so long. They couldn't cope with a Secretary of the Interior
who said, "Take it."
PL: By which you meant?
JW: Take back control of the water law. We're going
to give that back where it should be. It should never have
been taken from you. Gov. Lamm was delighted. If I go into
too much detail, cut me off. The Carter administration had
adopted regulations for reclaiming surface mine lands. They
hired a guy that was a professional guy from Pennsylvania
who had done a great job in the state of Pennsylvania putting
in the regulations and they said come and do it federally.
So he became the chief guru on that and did it. All of our
governors of the West were violently upset. Because there
was this uniform standard as if everything should be done
as it was done in Pennsylvania. I don't know the waterfall
in Pennsylvania but it's a lot more than 11 to 17 inches,
like we get in the antelope country of Wyoming. We couldn't
sustain Kentucky bluegrass and oak trees and maple trees in
the prairies of Wyoming, and the requirements of the Carter
administration said the mine lands shall be returned to the
same contours of the lands before they were mined.
The West Virginia governor came to me and said, "Mr.
Secretary, this is killing us. We want to improve the conditions
of West Virginia. We need flat land for a hospital. We need
flat land for a school, a ball field, a football field, a
soccer field. For housing developments and yet, your Department
of Interior is making the mining companies contour the land
as it was before the mining took place." That's stupid.
Patty doesn't like me to use the word "stupid" but
some things are just stupid. I said, "We'll do that."
And the governor said, "You will?" No fight. I didn't
need to negotiate with him. Of course. You can't expect oak
trees to grow between Rock Springs and Rawlins. That's just
not going to happen. I don't care how much water you deliver
to it.
Then I was criticized, Charles, because these five or six
major environmental groups said Watt has lowered the standards
for mine land reclamation. Is that true or not? Well, it's
cheaper to restore land with sagebrush and bunchgrass in Campbell
County, Wyo., than it is to plant oak trees and maple trees.
But I wasn't as worried as much about the cost as I was the
restoration of the land. Did the mining company make a little
bit more money on it? I don't know. Probably. But it always
felt so unfair that I would be subjected to the charge of
lowering the environmental standards for reclamation of mine
lands. Let me tell you that Gov. Lamm, Gov. Babbitt, Gov.
Herschler, etc., cheered with enthusiasm that the federal
government would recognize that maybe there isn't 40 inches
of rain on the lands in Campbell County and outside of Rock
Springs that would sustain the requirements that the then-Carter
administration were requiring. The governors were ecstatic.
We didn't have to negotiate it.
We didn't call in the special interest groups in Washington,
D.C. and get their advice and counsel. We just did it and
worked with the governors doing it.
The Wilderness Act
CW: The Wilderness Act was passed in 1964. It left
the wilderness areas open for 20 years for mineral leasing
and entry for hardrock discoveries. In '81, you put forth
a proposal that there should be some leases in three wilderness
areas in Montana. The Bob Marshall, the Scapegoat and the
Great Bear. Speaking of going into detail, a set of conflicts
that we don't want to go into because it is too detailed maybe
but the proposal did not go forward. Later you made a proposal
which was interesting. I'm not sure it was a formal proposal
but it was an idea you had. That at the turn of the century
we should by then know more about our wilderness areas and
see if there are some places that we should do some mineral
leasing. Looking back on your proposal in '81, how do you
feel about that now? And now that we're in the new century,
how do you feel about mineral leasing in wilderness areas
today?
JW: Good presentation of facts, very good. Mixed emotions
as I look back. I was maybe misled a little bit. I thought
when you took the oath of office to enforce the law, you ought
to enforce the law. And I proceeded to do that as you've outlined.
There was just a 20-year open window to explore and inventory
the mineral resources in these lands that had been properly
and rightfully designated for wilderness, which we supported
and time was running out. Because of the Cold War and those
problems, I thought we needed to follow the law of the land
and inventory the issue. The lands. That was a hot-button
issue. The law was disregarded by the members of Congress
and the special-interest groups and, boy, it was a hot issue.
We had to make some compromises to get through that. We just
turned our back on what the law said. So today, we don't know.
We don't have an inventory. We have no knowledge of what potential
might be in these hundreds of millions of acres. That's a
fault and could be extremely detrimental, but the politics
of it made it impossible.
On the wilderness issue itself, I was pleased to know that
in my three years I supported and proposed to the United States
Congress more acreage for adoption into the wilderness system
than the Carter administration had put in for four years.
We support the concept of preserving in its natural state
certain segments of our nation. The high-altitude wilderness
areas. I think we ought to take wetlands. I think don't think
we take wetlands as seriously as we should. That's delicate
ecosystem that I think we don't protect well enough. I couldn't
get through the selfish interest groups on that, either, though
we tried with the Wetlands Restoration Act. We need to preserve
some of these areas in their natural state and that's why
I proposed to Congress that more acreage be put into the wilderness
system than the Carter administration had done in their full
four years. A little-known fact but still a fact.
CW: But Alaska's in the United States and the Carter
administration had the largest wilderness set aside in history
with the Alaska Lands Bill.
JW: They shuffled lands around between the different
agencies. They didn't add it to the wilderness system. It
was already there. They shifted it from refuge to BLM and
it was a shuffle. They weren't added to the system. In the
acreage there. That's the way they defined it. The Alaska
Lands Act –
CW: No, I think it was new wilderness. Those acres
were just not moved from agency to agency.
JW: Well, they were moved from agency to agency but
you're saying in addition there might be new wilderness.
CW: Right.
JW: It doesn't show up in the — maybe, I need
to back off. Maybe I am talking about the lower 48. I ought
to look at my chart. Maybe you're right. I guess I am talking
about the lower 48. I think I stand corrected. In the lower
48, I did more than. Thanks for pushing me on that. It was
in the lower 48, I did more and Alaska had its own unique
handling in the late fall of 1980, didn't it?
CW: Yes.
JW: Thanks for pushing me because you're right. In
the lower 48, I did more than the Carter Administration. Thank
you.
PL: Ladies and gentlemen, you have heard James Watt
thank an opponent for pushing him.
JW: Don't be divisive. He's not an opponent. I didn't
sense any opposition. Did you feel anger in your heart?
CW: No.
PL: Well, then I'll be oppositional for a moment or
two here –
JW: Now remember –
PL: The question about energy vulnerability and the
United States' dependence on foreign energy supplies, oil
imports. ... your energy policy would have a duration if the
development went on full speed 20 years ago, where would we
be now? ...
I have one other question. Traveling around the developing
Front Range in our Volvo, you and I have shared commentary
about the scale of houses. You've talked about Jackson and
the wealthy coming in and their big houses. It seems to me
that you have a pretty high sensitivity toward waste. Toward
profligate use of resources. So, to (what) degree do we keep
our energy production high in order to keep people into these
odd habits or maybe even amenable habits? ...
JW: Your question frames the issue properly and fairly.
Our Reagan policies did accelerate the depletion of the resources
and so we did everything we could to draw down the petroleum
resources as best we could in an accelerated rate which does
have long-term consequences. But in the long run, we're all
going to be dead.
PL: That's not quite posterity's position on that.
JW: You have to live through the short term. And at
that time when we came in, roughly half of our petroleum needs
were being supplied by the Persian Gulf Arab nations. The
most volatile, explosive area in the world. And they'd already
really hammered us hard in '73 and '78 with cutting back delivery
of petroleum because we supported the nation of Israel. We
were vulnerable and were easily damaged and hurt. We had to
shift to get through the short term and we shifted by trying
to increase domestic production, off-shore production. We
shifted and brought in much more oil from Venezuela and Mexico,
and fortuitously, the North Sea came in the end of the '70s
and we were able to bring that in. We shifted our dependence
from the Persian Gulf areas and were able to meet that short-term
gap.
What about the long term? The long term has not yet been addressed
and has got to be addressed, 25 years, 20 years later. It
has not been addressed adequately. The facts continue to be
that we must increase conservation. We must increase renewable
energy resources, wind, water and solar. We must continue
coal mining on private and federal lands. We must drill for
oil and gas on public and private lands, and we must bring
about nuclear development in the foreseeable future. If we
do not, we will starve our people from energy requirements
in the military, commercial, industrial and consumer levels.
And we cannot do that if we are going to be a strong and free
nation.
Your first responsibility as a governing administration is
to protect the safety and welfare and the security of people,
and that's why we were willing to accelerate the depletion
that has long-term impacts and hopefully America will move
in conservation and development of these multi-purposes to
meet our needs in the years ahead. We have not faced up with
integrity on that issue yet.
PL: The waste issue?
JW: The waste issue. There's too much of it. We're
a wasteful nation, so it's contrary to our ethic of conservation.
We need to conserve.
CW: You had some difficult siting-issue proposals come
before you, and one of them was to put an open-pit coal mine
near Bryce Canyon National Park. Not in it, but near it. Another
was to put a nuclear waste disposal facility right at the
mouth of Lavender and Davis canyons over in Canyonlands National
Park, but again a bit away from the border. What are your
thoughts on those?
JW: Difficult issues, because Congress has said that
the public lands of the BLM are to be managed for multiple
purpose uses. Somebody asked me about selling park lands.
That came out in the paper today and we need to address that.
These borders mean something because Congress says you may
not sell, touch or dispose of any national park lands. You
are to take care of the public lands for multiple use, for
surface mining, mining pits, for the multiple uses there,
and the boundaries mean something.
Nuclear Waste
There's a legal right there and I have to smile at the hypocrisy
of the American people with regard to nuclear wastes. ...
For several decades have we been trying to find a place to
locate nuclear waste. Every group opposes it. Well, not every
group but a lot of these selfish groups oppose it. Therefore,
the nuclear wastes of America are located where? All around
in the big cities. All around us, where the people are. That
is the stupidest decision I can imagine. We ought to get that
nuclear waste and put it some safe place.
We've tried several locations and ... the previous administration
designated the mountain in Nevada as a location. There's a
lot of places where it can be safely stored. But it ought
to be moved away from populations. Now because of the opposition,
we're paralyzed. The nuclear waste, friends, is resident with
you. I think that's not good public policy. Because of the
selfish interests, not in my back yard, you continue to live
with it rather than shift it. I just think that's foolish.
I think their position is indefensible. I think we need a
nuclear waste depository, and pushed for it in several different
locations and we were unsuccessful there because of what I
call selfish-interest groups that don't concern — if
it is a danger, that can be debated in the scientific community.
But if it is a danger, it should be moved from the population
centers to a — what's the name of the mountain?
PL: Yucca Mountain.
JW: Should be moved to a Yucca Mountain, literally
or figuratively, and we don't allow it to be in the public
policy arena. The issue that you raise, the Bryce Canyon.
Frankly, I don't remember the specifics of it but let's handle
the general issue. Boundaries are important. That's why we
have them. If Congress says this is going to be a national
park, that's what's to be a national park. You've taken an
oath of office to protect it in the most strenuous way you
can. Then people say, "Well, I need a buffer." Then
they say on our flat land in Wyoming, "Well, gee, I can
see," and they want a visual buffer. That gets into a
real interesting legal area. How much land can you take without
paying for it under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution
of the United States?
On a general issue, and I'm not responding to that specific
one because I don't seem to remember it, I would follow the
law of the land. If there's to be an open-pit mine and Congress
has said that, there's a right to do it and we need whatever
is going to be mined, coal or whatever. There are legal rights
established by the Congress and I think the Secretary of Interior
has a duty and obligation to do what he swore to do. If it's
not right, Congress has the right to change it. But to put
yourself above the dictates of Congress, is autocratic, authoritative
positions that a federalist like myself couldn't live with.
Have I responded to that?
CW: Yes, you have. Your point on borders is important.
It needs to be said, too, that you're very proud of your record
on the national parks and rightly so, of increasing the funding
really in a historic way. But let me just see how you react
to this on the borders issue. Let's take two examples. Suppose
that that open-pit mine, and they are noisy operations, and
suppose that really for people in the national park that there
really was a constant noise that they were hearing during
their hike, or out with their kids, or picnicking or whatever
they were doing. Then to take another example, the Grand Canyon
and the visibility problems that we've had there, largely
because of coal-fired power plants that are beyond the boundaries.
How do you think those issues through?
JW: They need to be addressed. In the first instance
where you've got an obnoxious, offensive violation of park
values it needs to be addressed and Congress should include
it in the park. Buy them out. Some years ago, I don't keep
up with these things but – that very issue was presented
in a gold mine in Montana and the government came in and bought
them out, did they not? Bought the present-day value of future
gold mining activities were paid and they terminated that
gold mine for that value. That's the way to do it under market
conditions. I don't know who to give credit for that, maybe
Babbitt, but it was the wise way to do it. Under market conditions.
CW: Clinton took the credit.
JW: I tend to give secretaries credit. I'd give Bruce
credit. That's the way to do that. If this Bryce Canyon thing
is offensive, go in and buy out the interest. It puts it to
the market test. The people benefiting from the action should
pay for it. If it's the national park that's the 275 million
people, they should pay for it. There is a remedy and it needs
to be addressed in that way instead of rules and regulations
taking away your private property rights. Was there another
dimension on that?
CW: I asked about the Grand Canyon visibility.
JW: Those are interesting issues. I was criticized
because I allowed commercial airplanes to fly over the Grand
Canyon and it violated some hikers' right that they wanted
to be able to hike down the Grand Canyon and not see a jet
trail going across. Well, surely there's a boundary somewhere.
Do you want electricity or not?
The most offensive thing to me, and this is very personal
to me, I have a tremendous reaction to automobile exhaust
but I'm not asking the government to buy up all the automobiles
and make you walk home tonight in this cold snow. I have to
adjust for the common good of everybody so that if electricity
is needed from a coal-fired plant that is meeting standards,
if the standards are judged to be right, we just have to accommodate
them. We live in a community. We have to tolerate one another
whether we like it or not.
A society is of civil behavior and we don't see enough civility.
It needs to be addressed that way and we need to accommodate
some things. You don't have the right to expect every commercial
plane to shut down whenever you want to go on a hike, or if
there's noise that's offensive, you might need to wear earplugs.
Because we can't accommodate everybody's selfish interests.
PL: You were a pro-development kind of secretary? Were
you not?
JW: Not as much as Secretary Udall was. I feel badly
about that.
PL: He left you in the dust, did he?
JW: Every Secretary, if he takes his oath seriously,
does develop and does preserve. And thank you for correcting
me, I added more to the wilderness system of the lower 48
than did my predecessor in four years, I did it in three.
Does that make me a preservationist? Because I beat the Carter
administration? I added more – I wrote this letter and
the newspaper picked it up today. In 1982 or '83, I added
more land to the national park and wildlife refuge system
than has been added to the federal estate since 1867, when
we bought Alaska. Think of that. Now does that make me a preservationist
or a pro-developer?
In that one year, we added more — I'm repeating because
I'd like somebody to hear this — I added more to the
national parks system and the national wildlife refuge system
than had been added in any other single year, greater than
the Carter administration, greater than the Johnson administration,
greater than Teddy Roosevelt's administration, greater than
the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration, greater than
Stewart Udall. You have to go back to 1867 when we acquired
Seward's Folly, the great state of Alaska, and then we added
more to the federal estate. Does that make me a preservationist?
Why don't you accuse me of being a preservationist? I presented
the facts. Those are facts. I did more than Secretary Udall.
Come on. Accuse me of being a preservationist.
PL: I'd like you to say a little bit about your putting
people back into the equation. Your thoughts about conservationism,
and –
JW: As you'll see in the letter that's been handed
out to you, I told President Reagan that we'd been so powerfully
successful because we put people in the environmental equation.
We pumped more money into the national park system than had
been put in ever for capital investment. Because the parks
are preserved for people and the people portion had been ignored.
We rebuilt roads and we did things to benefit people and in
doing that you preserve the resource base. We are trampling
our national park system and refuge system with just too many
visitations.
If you don't keep the people on the boardwalks in Yellowstone,
they fall in geyser holes and ruin our system, not to mention
the meat falls off the bones — so I built boardwalks
and was accused from some selfish interests that, "well,
you're not investing in the land." I'm investing for
people.
I leased more oil lands, twice as much as the Carter administration.
On shore, I think, three-and-a-half times. Offshore, my figures
might be wrong there but the magnitude is about right. I tried
to lease more coal than anybody else, but Stewart Udall beat
me there by a huge portion. I did that because I'm people-oriented.
People need energy. People need electricity; you have to dig
coal.
Always the core value that I had, and President Reagan had,
was people are important and we're going to do what's right
for the people of America under the constraints that the Congress
sets out in the statutory thing. Thanks for letting me get
to that.
Question and Answer:
Q. Mr. Secretary, what elements of the American
environmental movement do you feel are productive and worthwhile?
A. I think that is a good question. We're
a healthier nation today than we were in 1960 when Secretary
Udall, my role model, commenced office, because we always
need to have checks and balances. You should never trust government
power. I never trust the government and that's why we have
checks and balances in the American form of government. We
need special-interest groups that will focus attention on
science, not on just emotion, but on science that will help
the government make good public policy. I think since the
'60s we've had this conservation movement. I prefer to use
the word conservation movement in the traditions of Teddy
Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot because they defined conservationists
as the proper conserving and use of the resources for the
benefit of people. I think it has been very healthy and I
can say with total confidence that every type of land for
which I was responsible, 750 million acres, was in better
condition when I left than when I inherited it. That's because
of these hosts of laws that have been passed and I think for
the benefit of America.
I make this emphatic statement that every type of land was
in better condition when I left after three years than it
was when I inherited it, and I talked about the sewers and
all the terrible stuff that wasn't attended to. For 12 years,
we had a Republican administration and then Bruce Babbitt
took over the Department of Interior and I have every confidence
that when Bruce Babbitt is here, that he has the right to
say that these same lands are in better condition when he
left than when he inherited the responsibility, and it all
goes back to this ethic that was put into statute that you
were trying to make in your presentation, or John Whitaker
did, that most were passed during the Nixon administration.
So this is not a partisan issue, Republican-Democrat. Too
often it is framed that way, but the genesis of the EPA, the
Wilderness Society, was Lyndon Johnson, wasn't it? Then in
the '70s it was Richard Nixon and most of those laws came
in under Republican administrations so it's unfair and unkind
to label Republican and Democrat, but I think it's a valuable
element of our society that has reason to take great credit
for a lot of things.
Q. Would you suggest a change in how Interior
is structured in order to bring a more consistent, long-term
focus to our public lands?
A. Yes. I'm picking this up from one of the
professors I enjoyed being with today. We talked about the
role and integration of science and management and you'll
want to pursue this with the Secretaries that have yet to
be here. I think you need to get good, pure sciences integrated
into the management stream, not isolated and put aside. I
think BLM state directors need to have access to a scientist.
I think the Fish and Wildlife Services ought to have scientists
in the field, not in a centralized office. I think the management
structure as I understood it from Professor Morgan, Ann Morgan,
I thought she made a telling point and I certainly supported
that. Put scientists shoulder-to-shoulder with line managers
and you get better administration of the land. I realize that
this past administration, what I learned today, had taken
another point of view and had taken all the science out and
put it under USGS, is that right? I think that's a wrong decision
so I'd reorganize the department that way.
PL: Would you move the Forest Service into Interior?
A. If I were Secretary, I wouldn't want to
suffer the hassle.
Q. Mr. Secretary, please describe how you
tried to improve conditions on the Indian reservations and
what were your major accomplishments and major frustrations?
A. Good. Good question. I thank somebody
for asking that. I'm going to rephrase the question. What
was my greatest failure and disappointment in my three years?
Reagan had commissioned me to address the American Indian
reservation problems and they are huge. They are improving,
I'm understanding from Charles and others. But they are huge
problems. I was totally unsuccessful in getting the chairman
of the House Interior Committee, Mo Udall, to even hold a
hearing to address these generic problems. I could not get
the Congress of the United States to even focus on them.
I received tremendous wrath because I dared to repeat what
I had learned as I visited the Indian Reservations. By the
way, I was the first Secretary of the Interior to visit the
largest Indian reservation in America, the Navajo Indian Reservation
in Arizona. As I went to these Indian reservations, the Indians
taught me, the leadership taught me that socialism is a failure.
I put it in my terminology and I said – this came from
many chairmen, many tribes in the country – and I said,
Are you telling me that I don't need to go to the Soviet Union
to see the failures of socialism? I can go to an American
Indian reservation?" And they said, "Yes, Mr. Secretary,
you've got it. Help us get out of these circumstances. Help
us."
I went ... back to Washington with that on my heart and couldn't
even get the Congress of the United States to address the
pathetic plight. I was a failure. Twenty years later, Congress
still has not addressed the issues. Charles has been teaching
me that some of the things that we did have had some incremental
improvement. Is incremental a good word or would you say a
huge improvement?
CW: I'd say both.
JW: We gave block grants to tribal governments to develop
and things like that. You know if you're a bleeding-heart
conservative like me you'd like to do something for them,
and we didn't do anything.
Q. Mr. Secretary, given your stated beliefs
on selfish-interest groups, how do you respond to Secretary
Norton's belief that industry self-regulation is the best
way to implement such acts such as clean air and clean water?
A. When I was in office I had a high, intense
dislike of past Secretaries of Interior telling me what to
do and I've faithfully honored the vow that I took never to
give counsel or advice. I've been consistently faithful since
and I'm not going to comment on what she might be doing.
Q. Mr. Secretary, my U.S. history textbook
says that James Watt joined the Reagan Cabinet committed to
dismantling much of the environmental regulation of the previous
two decades. How do you think historians will write about
you a hundred years from now?
A. Well, first of all, whoever wrote that
book should be fired and destroyed for printing such a false
statement. There are a lot of college textbooks that just
have that kind of thing. We honored them. I added more wilderness
system, I added more park lands. I added more refuge lands.
I reclaimed the whole surface mining thing to the cheering
applause of Gov. Babbitt and Gov. Lamm. I changed all of those
things. The Bureau of Land Management became a respected entity.
We defused the Sagebrush Rebellion like that. Because we cared.
We were good neighbors and for anybody, was that a professor
who wrote that? Not a CU professor, of course. Who wrote that?
PL: That's not discoverable.
JW: There's no protecting the family here, is there?
That's despicable writing. I'm mad at the author of the textbook.
That person lacks professional integrity because it's just
not a true statement. Has that issue came across? That such
an allegation is irresponsible. Look at the facts. The facts
show that we didn't, we enhanced every type — every
type of land in America is being managed better today because
of what we did. We didn't dismantle anything. I don't know
how to handle that. President Hoffman, have you ever had a
problem you didn't know how to handle?
Q. Mr. Secretary, at the very least, your
administration was considered polarizing and controversial
by some.
A. Yes. The losers of the 1980 election.
Q. You have referred to your opponents as
special-interest groups. Did you ever engage with what you
would consider reasonable opponents and how did you engage
with them?
A. Yes. Whoever asked that question, thank
you. I hope that it's come across that I'm hard-line against
the high-paid Washington lobbyists of some of these four,
five, six big groups, called environmentalist groups. I never
found them constructive. I found tremendous cooperation with
people in the states and in the regions and the local groups
that had their eye on the resource. You can always reach a
meaningful answer if your value is the resource rather than
the political power position. I found a lot of people that
were called opponents, I think the word is in your question,
and they voted against Reagan probably, and they'd read the
newspaper and hated me as I would if I believed the newspapers.
Nobody's asked me about journalism yet. But once we could
sit down with the values focused on the resources and not
on the personalities and partisan politics, we made tremendous
progress. Working with some of these local chapters was fabulously
successful, but there I found people dedicated in the heart
to the resource. And we had great success. It was the highly
paid, chauffeur-driven lobbyists in Washington that made their
money on agitation, and as you pointed out, I made a lot of
money for these people. And they started driving chauffeur-driven
limousines, bigger than my black car.
Q. Mr. Secretary, what's your position on
the issue of privatization of our parks?
A. That should be the easiest question in
the world to handle and if I've handled it once, I've handled
it a thousand times and I can't penetrate. In the local newspaper,
there's a quote about that very thing. I can't imagine the
ignorance that prevails today.
That is a prohibition. I've never proposed it. No Secretary
of Interior has ever proposed it. It cannot exist. I've added
more lands to the park and wildlife refuge in one year than
any other Secretary has added. I've never sold a single acre.
And no other Secretary ever has either. That maliciously spread
lie cannot be killed. Truth has no relevance. Integrity doesn't
exist for those who repeat it or else they're lazier than
–
PL: Most journalists, you're about to say.
JW: Well, this even wasn't a journalist. But that's
inexcusable to proceed that way. Thanks for asking the question
because for the umpteenth zillionth time I've had to address
that mean-spirited – You're not supposed to say mean-spirited
but how else do you categorize it? It's either mean-spirited
or ignorant. I'm not sure which. I've been outspoken on this
issue for 20 years and to have to face it again here in Boulder,
Colorado, and it wasn't university people.
PL: Perhaps responding diplomatically might be an experiment
to try the next time.
JW: I've tried that for years. And money drives. I've
tried that over and over again and I don't know how to beat
it. Sometimes you get tired of taking it on the chin. Such
irresponsibility – I guess I could say the source of
that quote must be misinformed.
Q. Mr. Secretary, in your opinion did the
Eastern-based news media understand Western issues during
your tenure? What media did the best job?
A. Thanks for a journalism question. I meant
to pursue this with the journalism class. I'm called the most
controversial, and the big conflict and was introduced that
way. I wonder if it's, for the journalists here, I wonder
if this is another instance where news flows east to west
in America, never west to east.
The biggest conflict with these issues was the Sagebrush Rebellion
and the opposition of all the Democrats to the Democrat administration
as evidenced by Gov. Lamm's comment and that didn't get picked
up. Why? I was not the most controversial — our period
in the department has not been the most controversial time.
Gov. Lamm, it was in the late '70s during the Carter administration
and he's correct.
There wasn't a lot of money poured in to demean and degrade
the previous administration. There were millions and millions
of dollars to degrade our administration by these special
interest groups spreading lies like I'm selling the parks.
So yes, the Eastern media dominated and really you saw an
image of Jim Watt painted by only five or six writers. The
AP, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, wire
services spread it out and it's printed in the Post and the
Rocky Mountain News so you're seeing an image of a government
official through the eyes of four or five people that may
or may not have their agenda.
We don't seem successful in forcing news from the West to
the East. It's a frustration but the facts are quite evident.
I loved quoting Gov. Lamm on it. I found him a delightful
guy to work with and totally supportive of everything I did
here in the state of Colorado. We had a good working relationship.
Q. Mr. Secretary, a two-part question: One
of them is: If you had it to do again, what would you do differently;
and then what is your favorite recreational activity on public
lands?
A. That changes from year to year. I'm into
canoeing now on flat water. I have my canoe and I go out to
the Oxbow in Grand Teton National Park, my favorite park.
I was telling earlier this morning, I'm not politically correct
on most things. I was coached and told when you go into these
beautiful parks, never tell which one's your favorite. We
all have struggled with trying to get the truth out and the
enemies of truth are strong. All of us who serve in public
office experience abuse that shouldn't be leveled on anybody
willing to serve in the public arena.
Patty hasn't shown you a fraction of the cartoons and the
writings. And America will not be free if we avoid freedom,
and freedom is based upon integrity. And there's not a lot
of integrity in the public arena now, as I've talked about
selling park lands. It's inexcusable and it's not ignorance.
But what's at stake is our very liberty and our freedom and
the type of government that we're going to have. I spoke to
the group before supper and we did about, I understand, a
three-hour filming for oral history at the Nature Conservancy
today. Molly came up to me afterwards and complimented me
on the free-flowing exchange that we had, and it was great.
She said, "I've just loved hearing this. It was so inspiring.
I've heard the four of you and it was just thrilling to see
that each of you" – and that's Udall, Hickel, John
Whitaker for Morton and myself – "have spoken with
such commitment of loyalty and dedication to America"
that it had inspired Molly. I was so satisfied. I didn't realize
that that was going to come out. But I couldn't have received
a higher compliment, Molly.
I hope that all of you sensed that. That all of us who are
willing to take the oath of office do our best, and we are
all confronted by interest groups that think we're not doing
it quite right. But we shouldn't try to destroy the character
of human beings. I hope that through this series put on by
the Center of the American West, and I commend you two founders
for doing what you're doing, and the university for supporting
it. I hope that you can start building bridges and restore
some of the reputation that this university has by those of
us who have been treated as we have in the last many years
by special-interest groups that don't see the grandeur and
the greatness of America and the resource base that sustains
us. For it belongs to no special selfish-interest group, but
it belongs to all of us. And reasonable people can bring balance,
selfish people can't. And if we're not willing to share and
honor one another and show the dignity, the God-given dignity
that we have, then we don't deserve the greatness of this
country.
Thank you for what you folks are doing here at this university
to try to pick up that spirit and make it happen. I ask God's
blessings on the university to do that because it needs to
be done. We are a hurting country, a hurting nation, because
of selfishness and the lack of integrity. Integrity is the
glue that holds us together, whether it's a Bruce Babbitt
or a Gale Norton. Give them dignity and the future officeholders,
give them some respect and treat them with integrity. They're
doing their best. Thank you. |
