- DENVER -- Utah Governor Mike
Leavitt, a Republican who has actively worked to undermine federal environmental
protections, has been tapped by President Bush as the next administrator
of the Environmental Protection Agency, the agency responsible for enforcing
many federal environmental laws.
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- Earthjustice has had close dealings with the Leavitt
administration in a number of legal cases, three of which are examined
below. These experiences speak volumes about the new EPA administrator
nomineeís environmental record. Two of the cases show Leavittís
clear preference for secrecy and keeping the public out of decisions relating
to the environment. This despite the governorís lip service to the
idea of using "balanced, open and inclusive approaches at the ground
level" to solve conflicts over environmental issues.
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- "Governor Leavitt's appointment to head the EPA
puts an anti-environmental politician in charge of regulating industries
that pollute the nation's air and water," said Earthjustice Denver
attorney Jim Angell. "We know from his history on environmental issues
in Utah that his preferred method is to exclude the broader public from
the process when he wants to make decisions that could harm the environment."
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- Leavitt's Secret Deal to Kill Future Wilderness Protection
on Millions of Acres of Americaís Public Lands
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- In the first case, Leavitt excluded the public when he
struck a secret deal with the Bush administration to open six million acres
of wild public lands in Utah to mining, clearcutting, and bulldozing. The
state of Utah and the Bush administration agreed to resurrect a moribund
lawsuit that already had been largely rejected by the Tenth Circuit Court
of Appeals and then promptly settled it. In the settlement, the federal
government agreed to Governor Leavitt's demand that the Bureau of Land
Management remove interim wilderness protections for wild, unroaded federal
lands, thus opening them to oil and gas development. In May Earthjustice
appealed this settlement, which affects not only Utah, but the nearly 200
million acres of public land managed by the BLM across the country.
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- Federally designated wilderness areas are off limits
to oil and gas development, road building, logging, mining, and off-road
vehicle use. Congress designates such wilderness areas, usually after the
BLM or Forest Service brings them to its attention. The sweetheart settlement
between the Bush and Leavitt administrations wiped out the process whereby
the BLM identifies which lands deserve wilderness protections.
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- The settlement also removed interim wilderness study
area protections for areas identified by the BLM as deserving wilderness
protection while they await permanent protection as congressionally designated
wilderness areas. The Bush/Leavitt settlement removes all such interim
protections applied since 1991 on hundreds of thousands of acres nationwide,
thus opening them to industrial development.
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- Denver Earthjustice attorneys Jim Angell and Ted Zukoski
have filed an appeal of the Leavitt/Bush wilderness protections settlement.
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- "In the wilderness case, Governor Leavitt cut the
public out of the process while gutting federal environmental law behind
closed doors," said Angell. "This is hardly the attitude we should
be looking for in an EPA head."
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- Leavittís Secret Deal to Pave National Monuments
and Open Space
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- In the second case, the Leavitt administration threatened
to sue the federal government in an attempt to make it possible for Utah
to bulldoze highways over tens of thousands of miles cow paths and hiking
trails through national parks, wildlife refuges, national monuments and
wilderness areas. To make this claim, Governor Leavitt relied on a civil
war era mining law, repealed in 1976, that gave states the right to lay
claim to public lands, not otherwise reserved, for the use of highway building.
This case, therefore, is a prime example of the Governor using obscure
legal tactics to undermine the protection of the public's lands.
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- Before a suit was even filed, the federal government
submitted to the state's legal threat and entered into secret negotiations
to settle the issue. Earthjustice was forced to sue the Interior Department
to bring the substance of these discussions to the light of day where ordinary
citizens could learn what public lands were being negotiated away. Leavitt
refused to make public any information on his plans to construct highways
over public lands. The secret negotiations resulted in Utah and the Bush
administration agreeing to make it easier for Utah to propose highways
where none now exist through the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument
and wild lands adjacent to Zion National Park. Earthjustice attorney Ted
Zukoski is working to reverse the deal on the grounds Congress explicitly
barred the administration from giving away public lands in this fashion.
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- For images of some of the places likely to get bulldozed
and paved, visit: http://www.suwa.org/page.php?page_id=95.
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- "Mike Leavitt is no friend of the environment, national
parks, or open space," said Zukoski. "In Utah, Governor Leavitt
has been consistent in moving to pave, drill, pump, bulldoze, log, and
drain many of Americaís most pristine and awe-inspiring natural
lands through secret, back-room deals. His idea of open, inclusive government
is one that is open to polluters and doesnít include the public."
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- Leavitt Claims Trails as Constructed Highways to Thwart
Wilderness Protection
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- In the third case, citizen groups sued the federal government
to enforce off-road vehicle use restrictions on Utah's wilderness quality
lands. The Leavitt administration intervened in the case and argued that
neither the court nor the federal government could limit off-road vehicle
use in many of these wild areas because the state believed that it had
rights-of-way in the areas that could only be regulated by the state citing
the same civil war era law described above.
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- In addition to invoking the ancient highway law, the
state tried to preserve the environmentally destructive status quo by joining
in the Bush administration's argument that the public has no right to ask
the courts to force BLM to protect wilderness quality lands from unregulated
off-road vehicle use. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals soundly rejected
these arguments. In a remarkable move, the federal government has asked
the US Supreme Court to reverse the Tenth Circuit's decision and deny citizens
the right to bring enforcement actions when the government fails to carry
out land protections required by law. If the Supreme Court takes the case,
Earthjustice will continue its defense of citizen enforcement actions and
the protection of these interim wilderness areas from destruction by off
road vehicles.
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- "Governor Leavitt has consistently acted to open
Utah's most spectacular wild public lands to development, especially oil
and gas," said Angell. "He's also consistently acted on behalf
of offroad vehicle interests which have degraded thousands of square miles
of Utah's once pristine wild lands. Finally, he's consistently acted to
degrade Utah's environment out of the public eye with a heavy emphasis
on secret dealings that exclude public participation."
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- Contact Info: Jim Angell, Earthjustice, 303-996-9621
John McManus, Earthjustice, 510-550-6707
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- http://www.earthjustice.org/news/display.html?ID=661
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