Interior plans merger of lands, coal mining agencies

[Dover]

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who has overhauled the structure of the department’s offshore energy branch, is now looking inland with plans to merge Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) into its larger Bureau of Land Management.
Salazar said merging the OSM, which oversees coal mining regulation, into the larger lands agency will allow for more effective management.

..//..


Interior, in announcing the move, said it would be undertaken with input from employees, members of Congress and other parties. But it drew swift attack from House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.).

He called it part of an Obama administration effort to snuff out the U.S. coal industry and said he fears it will hurt the economy and jobs.

“The fact remains that the BLM and OSM have distinctly different missions – nowhere is this more evidenced than the dissimilarity between federal and private coal mining issues,” Hastings said...cont'd


http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/189983-interior-plans-merger-of-lands-coal-mining-agencies

[Motown_Johnny]

1. If Hastings is against it, then I guess I am for it

but I will admit that I am not so knowledgeable as to form an educated opinion on this other than that knee jerk reaction

[Staph]

2. My first thought

is to worry about Interior's actions once an administration friendlier to the extraction industries is in the White House. How would, say, a Rick Perry administration or a Herman Cain administration direct the Department of Interior to treat the lands currently being eyed for mountaintop removal or natural gas fracking? And would federal lands be invisibly moved into those categories, with minimal public notice?

[Dover]

3. After reading/posting the story about the Arizona copper mines being swapped w/foreign companies

and then reading how some of the countries, like Italy, who must cough up assets to keep the Euro afloat are
having to consider selling off land and other national resources...well I'm thinking this is all part of the general
plan for global redistribution of assets among the big boys. Like mergers, two gov. departments coming together can make such
wheeling and dealing more streamlined or easier to package.

I'm also aware of the argument for more efficiency of government, but this other motive did cross my mind. We know that
many of the conservatives have discussed and plotted to put public lands/resources up for auction in order to move toward privatization and ownership by the few. I'm thinking that goal hasn't gone away, and may also be in the minds of privatization zealots among the Dems. This is something we will need to keep a close watch on.