Comments of Secretary Salazar at All-Employee Meeting
to Celebrate Accomplishments of First 100 Days in Office
April 28, 2009
[Applause]
Secretary Salazar:
So thank you. The voice of God announces the Secretary of Interior, Ken Salazar. Thank you all for being here today. Tomorrow marks the 100th day since President Obama took the oath of office.
[Applause]
Since that day, the temperatures have warmed up here in Washington, DC. The cherry blossoms have bloomed, and a new season has arrived in America.
Here, at the Department of the Interior, we have led the change; the change promised to the American people.
Today, I want to briefly talk to you about what this department has accomplished over the last 100 days; about the new energy frontier, about our agenda for the treasured landscapes of America, about expanding opportunities for youth.
More than anything, however, I just want to say to the employees of this great department, thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the hard work you have done. Thank you to each and every one of you who has welcomed me to this proud Department of Interior.
Everywhere I have traveled in this first 100 days, I have learned from you. I have learned of the places that you protect on behalf of the American people. Of the people and the communities whose lives you make better through your constant service. And I have met many of you in places where you work.
In New York, at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, in Denver and Rocky Mountain National Park, and Dillingham, Alaska, in Albuquerque and in Atlantic City, in New Orleans and North 1Dakota, in Maryland and Montana, Sacramento and San Francisco, Anchorage, Alaska, and right here in Washington, DC. The Department of the Interior is truly the department of all America.
It is so because our work touches the land and the water and the people in every corner of our country; from sea to shining sea and out into the oceans. Everywhere I go, I have heard from Interior employees about how we can better serve the people of America; about how we can be better stewards of the treasures that we have responsibility over.
For example, based on the meeting that I had with our employees at Lakewood, or Department of Interior employees in Lakewood, a woman in the audience, one of our employees, made a suggestion that we create a suggestion box. And so we will make it easier for all 67,000 employees to provide suggestions to me.
We’ll have more meetings like this one today because when I first met with you some days ago, you asked that I do more of these kinds of meetings.
But we also will make use of the new media tools so that I can hear directly from you and you can hear directly from me.
Now, I know that transitions and changes are never easy. But thanks to your professionalism, thanks to your expertise and to your commitment to serving the people of this country, we are off to a fast start in this first 100 days. Thank you.
Our first task has been to show the American people that the Department of the Interior is their department. From the parents of the junior ranger I met at Ellis Island, to the tribal leaders I met in Alaska, and the oilrig workers I met in Louisiana, every American must know that the doors are always open and that we are responsibly managing their resources.
That is why I hosted meetings around the country. To talk about the future of the 1.7 billion acres the Department of the Interior oversees in the outer continental shelf. When we listen and learn, we are better able to find a common ground in the best interest of the American citizen. Openness and accountability are also why we have new ethics standards and training for all employees of this department. Americans need to know that we are keeping their trust.
Science, too, is returning to the rightful place in this department
[Applause].
Science must be the foundation of the decisions we make from the management of the great wolf, to the response to our flooding in places like North Dakota. Returning science to its rightful role is one of the key reasons that President Obama, on the 160th anniversary of the Department of the Interior, came right here to this stage to announce that he had restored the scientific consultation process under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act to our work here in the Department of Interior.
We are making progress in other important areas as well. First, the department is leading the way in President Obama’s vision for our clean energy future.
The lands and the oceans we manage with their vast, unexplored and unbridled renewable resource potential are at the heart of the new energy frontier for America.
Last week, with the help of many of you who are here today, we finalized the offshore renewable energy rules which will open the gateways for renewable energy in the outer continental shelf. This department oversees oceans that have staggering, unbridled potential for renewable energy including wind power. In pursuing this energy source, we have the possibility of surpassing Denmark and other countries as the world’s leader in offshore wind production. But it doesn’t stop in the offshore because we are working on renewable energy on the onshore as well. We are opening new BLM, renewable energy permitting offices to process application for solar, for wind, for biomass and geothermal development.
It is my view that we can, in fact, harness the power of the sun, the power of the wind, the power of biomass, the power of geothermal to help us move forward to cease the moment of a new energy frontier for America.
And as we do, as we move forward with this agenda, we are working with the states, with stakeholders, with local communities and other federal agencies to map out the renewable energy zones for the nation. But we will give priority to large scale renewable energy projects that will help us arrive at this new energy frontier.
We will need to move this clean power from the new energy frontier to areas of high demand. So we are planning new transmission quarters that can be part of a national electrical rig system. And as we build a comprehensive energy plan for our country, we in this department know that we must also continue to responsibly develop America’s oil and gas and coal resources.
I was in New Orleans for a Lease Sale 208 with our employees from MMS in the Central Gulf of Mexico. That auction attracted over $700 million in high bids over 1.9 million acres in the offshore of the Gulf.
Onshore, we’ve held 11 oil and gas leases, 11 oil and gas leases, in the last 100 days offering 1.5 million acres of land for oil and gas exploration and development. We are also working to develop strategies to address climate change impacts from fossil fuel use.
USGS, for example, recently developed a framework for assessing the best underground locations in the US for storing carbon emissions from coal. That is just one of the many ways that Interior will be a leader in finding climate change solutions for our country.
Beyond the energy agenda, we are also working another major priority for this department. We have been busy, very busy, in protecting our nation’s treasured landscapes. In moments when our national character is most tested, in times like the civil war and the great depression, we in this department and our predecessors and this nation rightly sat to protect that, which most fuels our spirit. And that is what we have been working on.
First, President Obama’s Economic Recovery Plan included landmark legislation that has made major investments in our national parks, public lands, and wildlife refuges. With more than $3 billion that Interior is investing through the Recovery Act, we will create jobs and make a down payment in restoring America’s timeless treasures.
Secondly, President Obama has signed a historic Lands Bill that was many decades in the making that will create into law the 26 million acre National Landscape Conservation System within the Bureau of Land Management that will create 2 million acres of wilderness, that has designated more than 1,000 miles of wild and scenic rivers, and that protects treasures from Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park to Oregon’s Mount Hood.
Third, President Obama has also made a commitment to restore the Land and Water Conservation Fund; $420 million is in the budget for next year, rising to $900 million by the year 2014. That is a tremendous step in achieving the vision that President Kennedy had when he first formed the Land and Water Conservation Fund, now nearly 50 years ago.
Finally, we have also moved forward in pulling back from several late actions from the previous administration so that we can restore the balance to the management of our responsibilities.
We revisited, for example, the decision to offer areas in Utah, near Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, for oil and gas drilling. And I’m proud of that decision. And we are asking the courts to remand a rule from the previous administration that allowed mountaintop coal mining operations to dump debris in the streambed of our treasured rivers and streams.
In addition to our work in America’s treasured landscapes, we also have a bold agenda for expanding opportunities for youth in the outdoors. Today, I am announcing that we will be creating the Office of Youth in the Department of Interior. The purpose of the office will be to build our programs, expand opportunities for young people, teach them to hunt and fish, and coordinate our efforts across the bureaus.
In Colorado, we created a similar program called The Youth and Natural Resources Program. So today, often when I travel around the state, I hear from the kids who went through that program. Many of them tell me that they never would have gone to college, let alone land a job in a natural resource agency, if it were not for that program. That is why the youth programs in this department are so important for America’s future.
We can and we must do more to use our great landscapes as classrooms and as pathways for opportunity for America’s children of all backgrounds. And it is my hope that this summer [Applause].
It is my hope that this summer we will have as many as 15,000 young people working in our department all across our services and bureaus this summer of 2009.
Our agenda also focuses on the most vulnerable of Americans and that is our vision to empower America’s Native American communities. This weekend, I was on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota where we announced the $500 million investment in economic recovery we are making in Indian country. These investments will make a real difference in Native American communities.
We will use that money to fix schools. We will use that money to upgrade housing. We will invest in new roads, and we will create new jobs in Indian country. And finally, we will help strengthen law enforcement around the country on reservations.
The budget we will be releasing next week will put more officers on the streets, bolster tribal courts, and help fight violent crime and drug abuse. We are also taking action to improve water infrastructure in Indian country.
Last month, for example, President Obama signed milestone legislation that settles longstanding Indian water rights dispute. Because of that legislation, 80,000 members of the Navajo Nation will have access to clean running water for the very first time. [Applause]
For those of you who have been on the Navajo Reservation that expands across the three states, who have been into the places where people live on that reservation, you know how the quality of lives of those tens of thousands of people would be positively affected by that settlement on the Navajo pipeline.
We have also been busy on other fronts. We’ve been busy moving forward with the water agenda that is so central to this department. In California, all hands are on deck today to stretch the limit of water supplies and help farmers weather one of the worst droughts in the history of California. We are reengaging once again with the state of California as full partners in the task of modernizing a water system that was built half a century ago for population half as large as it is today.
And in that endeavor, we have invested $260 million through the Recovery Act in California’s water infrastructure. It is a down payment on a secure water future for that state. It is one of the many areas in this country in which we are working to help rebuild the water infrastructure of this country and tackle the longstanding water challenges that we face in the United States.
Now, that isn’t a full list of all that this department has set off to do and accomplish in the first 100 days of the Obama administration. Sometimes it feels like a hundred years. But I think it shows that we are off to a fast start and that we are moving in the right direction. And next week, we will announce a budget that has investments in targeted priorities that will make you across this department very proud of the future of the Department of Interior.
This budget, which I believe is central to the President’s vision for our country, will be a landmark budget for this department. To be sure, the path ahead will be difficult. We will suffer setbacks from time to time. We will face hard choices and we will face criticism. We won’t make everyone happy, neither development interest nor environmentalist, but we will keep our doors open and make sure that we’re doing the right thing for the American people.
If we listen, if we gather the best ideas no matter where they come from, and if we base our decisions on sound science and what is in the public interest, then Americans will know that you and I together are serving them well here at the Department of Interior.
They will know that we are managing their resources wisely. That we are full partners with Indian nations. And that the lands, water, and wildlife and resources that we manage are in fact theirs. And that Americans all have a stake in the stewardship of the great landscapes of this great nation.
Thank you, the employees of the Department of Interior, for your service.
Thank you for being part of the Department of Interior family. And thank you for helping us to bring about the change promised to the American people. Together, you and I, and the people of America, will change the world. Thank you very, very much.
[Applause]
We’re not yet at a hundred days, so we’re running past the finish line here; even faster than we took on the first hundred days. So in the days ahead, beside the budget which we will unveil here at this place next week which Pam Haze and others have been working on, we will also have the opportunity to be in Utah on this Friday to celebrate some of the major investments that we are making in Utah including the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks.
The investments that we’re making within the Central Utah project there in Utah, and dealing with other issues in the state of Utah. And then we’ll be in Nevada where we will make the announcement on the decision that we have made with respect to the $500 million investment with the Bureau of Land Management.
And we will be visiting with the solar power opportunities within the state of Nevada. And then we’ll be back into Washington, DC then off to Delaware where we will be looking at the possibility of creating a national park in the only state where we don’t have a national park. Being in that state where we also know that there is tremendous interest on the part of the governor and the leadership of that state Senator Carper and Vice President Biden and others on wind energy projects. And in between, we’ll be in Pennsylvania where in Philadelphia we will celebrate at Independence Hall the investments that we have made through the national parks there at Independence Hall. And along the way, a few other stops along the celebration trail of the great things that this department does.
Let me also say I am thankful to each and every one of you for the work that you have done. But I also want to say that these things don’t happen by themselves. They happen with the work and with the leadership of a lot of people. And I want to say thank you in particular to my Chief of Staff and the Assistant Secretary for Parks, Fish and Wildlife Tom Strickland. Tom, if you will stand.
[Applause]
And I also want to say thank you to David Hayes, the Deputy Secretary Designee because almost every day, he is hitting the ball over the highest mark as he recently did with breaking through the Log Jam on the Renewable Energy rule in the offshore or implementing the one-stop shopping decision with Bob Middleton and Laura Davis and others, and that’s David Hayes. David.
[Applause]
And just to give you a personnel update, I think we’re getting very close to having the presidential nominations with respect to most of the positions within the Department of Interior. We probably are 10 days away from finishing that job. Then, of course, you go through a very extensive vetting process and ultimately through senate confirmations. So hopefully, you will have the leadership of the department in this new administration in place here over the next month.
We’re very hopeful that that will happen. And I think what you will find is in the people that we have recruited to take these positions here in the Department of Interior, you will find the best and the brightest in America. They all meet the gold standard that we have for the employees here in this department.
We’ll advance efforts to fight violent crime and drug abuse. The comprehensive initiative addresses the three major components of a successful justice system. We will put more officers on the streets. We will expand our detention facilities and we will improve the effectiveness of our tribal courts. Working together, we will increase safety and bring back the rule of law throughout Indian country.
Safety, however, is just one of the building blocks to a strong and stable Native American community. Education is another and it is a key stone. Education is critical to ensuring a viable and prosperous future for tribal communities.
Our 2010 budget enhances the Department’s ongoing commitment to advancing Indian education with an increase of $72 million for several key initiatives. There is a $10 million program increase for school formula funds; the primary source of funding for the Bureaus’ 183 schools and dorms. This funding goes directly into the classroom and equates to an additional $236 per student.
We will also invest in our tribal colleges and universities. They will receive a $55 million increase in 2010; both the fund, core operations and forward fund, the 26 tribal colleges for the 2010-2011 school year. This one time increase of $50 million to forward fund the tribal colleges will provide them greater financial security to plan for an entire academic year. There are many challenges facing Indian country. But working together, we will empower these communities to thrive and flourish.
The challenges before us are vast. The work that awaits us will not be easy. Yet history has shown us that Americans are at best when we are in these times of crisis. Opportunity often rises from the depths of our most difficult times. And now in my view, and in this President’s view, is that time.
Interior’s 2010 budget is a vital component of the President’s bold vision for a renewed America. We are creating a new energy frontier and we are positioning ourselves as leaders in tackling climate change. We are protecting our legacy of stewardship while also promoting a new generation of conservation leaders. We are supporting Indian self-determination and investing in strong tribal communities.
Our mission is woven into the very fabric of America providing jobs and opportunities that can only be found here at home. I look forward to working with the United States Congress, the states, the tribes, and all Americans to cease the opportunity of change presented to us as we began the Obama era for our nation.
I am confident. I am confident that together, you and I, we together, we will change the world. Thank you very much for listening to our 2010 budget. We are on the way. Thank you.
[Applause]
You know, it has been a busy day; not only a busy day but a busy first couple of months. I’m just writing a note to the President where I wrote out the names of the states that we have been in. There were 17 in number that we visited in the first hundred-plus days. But in addition to that, if you just think about what we have done; first, the Economic Recovery Act. Interior was at the table. They received priority; $3.5 billion total will go, frankly, not only through our programs but through transportation programs in our facilities. Those are big deal. It is a big amount of money and a big responsibility for all of us.
Secondly, the passage of the Lands Bill that I just spoke about. And third, this budget, for the first time in almost a decade, puts us back on track to making sure that we are able to do the job that we need to do, and that we cease the challenges and opportunities of these times.
But these things don’t happen just because they happen. They happen because a lot of people work on them. It is the Bureau Chiefs, it is the people in the Secretary’s Office, and there are some people who work, frankly, day and night to make some of these opportunities happen. But I tell you, there is one champion for this budget and for this department who should receive the Golden Gloves and that is Pamela Haze. We’ll give her a round of applause.
[Applause]
All right, get on your feet for Pam. Come on! Let’s get on your feet for Pam. Let’s wake up, come on. All right, Pamela Haze.
[Applause]
Pamela Haze: Thank you very much. I’m only one piece of this whole machine, so I want to thank all of the hardworking budget people throughout the Department and all of the Acting Bureau Directors and Assistant Secretaries who helped us with the budget, and with the transition, and with the new leadership that helped us get this budget from OMB. There were a lot of late night arguments that really got us here. So I want to thank everybody. Thanks.
[Applause]
Ken Salazar: I would say I’d take questions but I have to catch a train because I’m on the way to New York. So Pam is going to, I think, take over and she will be able to answer a lot more questions. This is a budget. We are moving forward. It’s what the President and I support. You see our priorities. We laid them out both in picture form as well as in written word.
But there’s still a lot of ground between here and there before we get to having a budget for the Department. It is our hope, it is our Congress’ hope that we actually are able to move forward with a regular budget process so that we don’t have to go through the omnibus kind of continuing resolutions and legislation on appropriations that we’ve had to do in the past.
And so we’ll put our shoulder to the wheel and try to make that happen with the US Congress in the days and months ahead. So, thank you all for all your great work and I’m going to bring Pam back up here so she can answer all the tough questions. So thank you very much.
[Applause]
Pamela Haze: Okay. Now, does anybody have any questions? No. I’m going to make one up. You want to go? [Laughter] Okay, I guess that’s it.
Audience: Thank you, Pam.
Pamela Haze: Thank you.
[Applause]