May 16, 2001

Friends of the Earth is a national environmental advocacy organization with affiliates in 69 countries. On their behalf, and on behalf of our thousands of members throughout the United States, I appreciate the opportunity to submit testimony on the nomination of J. Steven Griles as Deputy Secretary of the United States Department of Interior. Friends of the Earth strongly opposes the nomination of Mr. Griles. His background and stances on the key issue of environmental stewardship signal that his policy initiatives would be a giant step away from recent progress and a downturn from a balanced approach toward natural resource conservation.

The Department of the Interior is our nation's principal conservation agency with jurisdiction over roughly 450 million acres of federal lands and about 3 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf. Its responsibilities include stewardship of 80 million acres of national parks, monuments and historical sites, over 264 million acres of public lands home to over 3,000 species of wildlife, and the 92 million acre National Wildlife Refuge System, which includes 509 national wildlife refuges and 37 wetland management districts. Based on his past affiliations and policy stances, Mr. Griles as a manager of these priceless natural treasures would be a direct affront to the goal of environmental protection.

Mr. Griles was a central figure in President Ronald Reagan's Department of Interior, headed by the infamous James Watt. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management 1985-89, as Deputy Assistant Secretary to the same department between 1983-85, and as Deputy Director of the Office Surface Mining under James Watt from 1981-83. During this tenure he earned a reputation as an enemy of environmental protections. In fact, during a hearing on Griles' promotion to Assistant Secretary for Lands and Minerals Management, Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum of Ohio told him, "There's considerable evidence that under your stewardship the Office of Surface Mining carried out a campaign to gut Federal strip mining laws."

The following are among the more significant issues and actions with which Mr. Griles was involved during his tenure in the federal government:

· Mr. Griles was closely involved with the gutting of the Office of Surface Mining in his first few years in the Interior Department-led at the time by James Watt. The office's budget was slashed, its staff cut and reorganized, and staff morale plummeted. Enforcement actions by the office fell sharply. Mr. Griles himself told the Washington Post, "We tore this agency to hell. Now we have to build it back up." (Washington Post, June 6, 1982) When questioned about his work at OSM during his 1985 confirmation hearings, he denied responsibility for the damage done to the agency, which was extensively described in-and condemned by a bipartisan report from the House Government Operations Committee.

· Mr. Griles aggressively promoted offshore oil leasing, especially in California and Florida. In 1987, he described those states' congressional delegations' efforts to obtain moratoria on drilling off their coasts as "misguided," adding that they were "cutting their own throats" by doing so. And, most notably, in 1989 it surfaced that Mr. Griles was the central figure in a Reagan Administration effort to downplay the risk of oil spills associated with proposed drilling off the California coast. Several California legislators, led by Rep. Mel Levine (D-CA), uncovered internal Interior Department documents that showed that Mr. Griles forced Minerals Management Service officials to delete oil-spill risk warnings from a report on several proposed offshore lease sales.

· Mr. Griles exhibited an extraordinarily combative attitude toward congressional oversight. He once went so far as to try to use the Freedom of Information Act to find out how much money and time the GAO expended to investigate his actions related to some coal leases in western Colorado. He did so in error, as the GAO-an arm of Congress-is exempt from FOIA. (Associated Press, October 9, 1987).

· Mr. Griles strongly supported the Interior Department's 1986 virtual giveaway of 82,000 acres of oil-shale lands for $2.50 per acre. The department did so by choosing not to appeal a court decision allowing patenting of the lands in question under the 1872 mining law. A House Appropriations Committee investigation found that the government might have received as much as $250 billion in revenue in the event the lands were developed under a leasing arrangement, as is customary for oil resources on federal lands, rather than allowing the land to be patented. One of the claimholders patented 17,000 acres of the land in question for $42,500, and then sold the same land for $37 million. (Inside Energy, July 27, 1987).

In the private sector, Mr. Griles continued to pronounce his outspoken objection to environmental safeguards through a number of occupations, most notably as Vice President for National Environmental Strategies, a DC-based lobbying firm. Among his clients at National Environmental Strategies were oil, coal and utility interests. According to the most recently available lobbying registrations posted by the Center for Responsive Politics, Griles¹ clients include Sun Co, Pennsylvania Power and Light, Occidental Petroleum, National Mining Association, Edison Electric, and the Aluminum Association. Past clients have included Integrated Waste Services Association, National Food Processors Association, The Southern Company, Air Implementation Reform Coalition, National Association of Metal Finishers, and Shell Oil.

Mr. Griles's nomination is particularly disheartening in light of recent reports that John Turner, former Wyoming lawmaker, friend of Vice President Cheney, and noted conservationist was also under consideration for the position. We have no doubt that Teddy Roosevelt would have cast a smile over the administration had it chosen to nominate a proven conservationist such as John Turner as second-in-command at the Department of Interior. However, the nomination of Mr. Griles serves only to deepen public concern over the fate of our public lands.

The United States Department of Interior will be faced with a series of key decisions on critical environmental protection issues in the coming years, ranging from oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to enforcement and reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act. As such, the Deputy Secretary of the U. S. Department of Interior should have a proven record of working with all involved parties to reach balanced environmental protection solutions.

Unfortunately, Mr. Griles's track record leads us to believe that he will be a staunch advocate of quashing essential information in an intensive effort to encourage more mining, offshore oil drilling and fossil fuel production. His recent and past affiliations show a consistent pattern of efforts to undermine and roll back the very environmental laws and protections he will be sworn to uphold. In light of these significant conflicts of interest, Friends of the Earth urges you to oppose Mr. Griles's nomination as Deputy Secretary of the United States Department of Interior.