Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 16, 2001

Contact
Mark Helm, Press Office
(202) 783-7400 x102

Environmentalists Fight Mining Industry Lobbyist Confirmation for Deputy Secretary of Interior:
Friends of the Earth calls J. Steven Griles
"Coal and Oil Industry's Mike Tyson"

Washington, DC-Friends of the Earth vigorously opposes the confirmation of mining industry lobbyist J. Steven Griles as deputy secretary of the Interior because of his past affiliations and record of hostility toward environmental protection. The group charged that Griles could pose an even greater risk to the environment than Gale Norton because he is knowledgeable, aggressive and would stop at nothing to encourage more mining, offshore oil drilling and fossil fuel production.

"Steven Griles is the Mike Tyson of the coal and oil industry operatives," said Friends of the Earth president Brent Blackwelder. "Gale Norton's anti-environmental actions and attitudes pale in comparison. This confirmation must not move forward."

Griles served in the Reagan Administration Interior Department as Assistant Secretary of Interior for Land and Minerals Management (1985-89), Deputy Assistant Secretary (1983-85), and as Deputy Director of the Office of Surface Mining (1981-83). His tenure at Interior was marked by controversy and conflict with Congress, environmental groups and others.

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

· 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 Secretary James Watt. The office's budget was slashed, its staff cut and reorganized, and staff morale plummeted. Enforcement actions by the office fell sharply. 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, Griles 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.

· 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. Most notably, in 1989 it surfaced that 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 Griles forced Minerals Management Service officials to delete oil-spill risk warnings from a report on several proposed offshore lease sales.

· 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).

· 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).

"The Bush Administration continues to assemble its anti-environmental hit squad on behalf of the polluting industries," said Blackwelder. "It's time for Congress to stand up for the American people and say no to the Griles nomination."

Research provided by: Clearinghouse on Environmental Advocacy and Research 2100 "L" Street NW Suite 210 Washington, DC 20037

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