Interior Department Permitted Deep Horizon Without Impact Study
May 6th, 2010Interior Secretary Salazar Responds for the First Time
Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior, addresses the media at Gator Lake and Little Lagoon in the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge in South Alabama. On his left is state Rep. Steve McMillan, a Bay Minette Republican. On his right is Robert Craft, mayor of Gulf Shores. Photo Essay
by Glynn Wilson
BON SECOUR NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Ala. — Ken Salazar, a former Senator and Attorney General of Colorado, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the 50th Secretary of the Interior on Jan. 20, 2009 after being appointed by President Barack Obama. Less than three months later, on April 6, 2009, the British Petroleum company was granted a permit for the Deepwater Horizon, one of the deepest oil wells ever dug in the Gulf of Mexico or anywhere — without an Environmental Impact Study as required by the National Environmental Policy Act.
The Minerals Management Service, an agency of the Department of the Interior charged with regulating the oil and gas industry, has been ensconced in a ethics scandal in recent months for cozying up to the oil and gas industry. Allegations include financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct. The agency granted BP a “categorical exclusion” to NEPA on the basis of three reviews of the area, which concluded that a massive oil spill was “unlikely,” according to government documents and the Washington Post.
Just 11 days before the explosion on April 20 that released 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the Gulf, creating one of the worse economic and environmental disasters ever, records show BP’s lobbying efforts were successful in expanding the legal exemption even more.
When faced with the question from me about that decision for the first time Wednesday in the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge in South Alabama, during a photo op and press conference designed to show the Obama administration on the ground doing everything possible to contain the spill and its impact, Salazar talked around the fact that it is his signature on the legal exemption that caused this spill.
“There were a number of environmental studies done over a long period of time,” he said, knowing full well as a lawyer that an environmental study of one drilling area or another has nothing do with a full Environmental Impact Study, a legal requirement, for another.
“What happened here was not an issue of the environmental impact from the permitting that was given,” he claimed.
Watch the video with me asking the question at this link.
“What happened here was a huge, defective problem with the fail-safe measures that were supposed to be put into place,” he said. Multiple investigations already launched into the explosion and spill “will give us the answer to exactly what happened.”
