Senators call out BLM director on pace of work, policies seen as detrimental to fossil fuels

Bureau of Land Management Director Tracy Stone-Manning took heat from both sides of the aisle during a June 13 congressional hearing, with Democrats concerned with the pace of the agency's work and Republicans asserting an effort to drive domestic fossil fuel production off public lands.

During a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat-Nevada, pointed to the 12 resource management plans (RMPs) in effect in her state, which she said are out of date – with some over 36 years old – and interfering with the multiple-use management mission across Nevada.

Cortez Masto threw her support behind BLM's effort to create a first-of-its-kind statewide RMP that would take a science-based approach to land management, incorporating entire ecoregions, competing land use needs, and varied stakeholders. However, that effort is ongoing with no targeted date for completion.

"Just keep in mind all of the clean energy projects, the economic development, the environmental protection, all of the above is put on hold at times waiting for BLM to respond in this resource management guide," Cortez Masto said.

Stone-Manning acknowledged that the agency is behind, blaming the delay on the planning backlog she inherited. "But it's in the mix, and it's a priority so it will be moving forward."

Stone-Manning contended that new and growing challenges have made it harder for the BLM to balance the many resources and uses of public lands, while climate change has brought extreme drought, elevated and longer fire seasons, greater disruption to sensitive species and other negative impacts.

To address this, she said the BLM has prioritized landscape health, with a focus on restoring public lands and waters and facilitating the transition to a clean energy economy.

As such, she defended final rules recently issued by the agency that she said reflect that mission.

The renewable energy rule, for instance, "lists priority criteria for helping to drive where development goes and incentivizes that development by dropping fees by 80%. That, coupled with the public lands rule that ups our game on using science and data ..., makes those decisions more durable, as those then would be driven by a resource management plan that allocates uses across the landscape," she said.

'Grid reliability at risk'

Responding to concerns from Senator John Hickenlooper, Democrat-Colorado, that the US is falling behind on critical minerals, Stone-Manning said five critical mineral mines have been permitted under the Biden administration but the BLM's role was limited by the 1872 Mining Law.

"We don't get to drive what kind of minerals we're going for and where. We react to the proposals that come in the door," she said.

But Committee Chairman Joe Manchin, Independent-West Virginia, criticized the agency's failure to adequately produce a report on how to meet critical mineral demand, which is expected to at least double by 2040, and how to improve and expedite the permitting around a domestic critical mineral supply chain.

The report "barely contained any concrete recommendations to actually accelerate mine permitting," Manchin said. "Instead, it calls for more regulations, more staff, more funding, less mining wherever BLM believes permitting will take longer and a multi-year effort to completely overhaul the entire mining regulatory system. The report was so bad in fact that Interior's own inspector general found the department failed to meet Congress' direction and instructed Interior to provide the additional legally required information."

Manchin also argued that the BLM's actions are "putting our grid reliability at risk right now, and the problems aren't limited to fossil fuels." He cited a Stanford study that found that solar is the most frequently litigated and canceled project type, with wind a close second.

"It's astonishing, and I think people don't realize we all need a permitting reform," Manchin said. "Some people think it helps one group more than the other, and it really doesn't. It basically levels the playing field so we can have reliable energy and a grid system that works."

'A lot of hyperbole'

Republicans at the hearing blasted the BLM's work that they considered detrimental to the coal, oil or gas produced on public lands within their state.

Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the top Republican on the panel, said the pending Rock Springs RMP would devastate southwest Wyoming as it proposes to lock up more than 2 million acres of federal land from productive use, including future energy and mineral development, grazing and recreation. He accused the BLM of ignoring broad opposition to the plan from the governor, state legislature, congressional delegation and county commissioners.

"There was a lot of hyperbole about facts that were not true about the plan," Stone-Manning told the senator. "We've done a lot of education work with your constituents about what's in the plan. More importantly, we extended the public comment period and worked with the governor."

That effort, she said, resulted in a task force that was able to provide recommendations for the final plan. "We're digging in, looking at those recommendations, and I'm certain that Wyomingites will see their voices reflected in the final [RMP]."

Others attacked the BLM's finalized rule that puts conservation on par with other uses of public lands.

Senator Mike Lee, Republican-Utah, asserted that nothing in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act authorizes the BLM to elevate "deliberate, long-term, non-use" of public lands "either on par with or arguably above" the multiple use and sustained yield standard.

To that, Stone-Manning said FLPMA Title One, Section 103 makes explicitly clear that managing for fish and wildlife habitat, for conservation, and for natural and scenic values are the BLM's responsibility.

"FLPMA tells us to do these things and for the first time we're going to put some consistency to how we deliver the conservation part of FLPMA's charge to us," she said.