This Week at Interior July 5, 2024

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This Week at Interior  

President Biden, First Lady Jill Biden and Secretary Haaland visited Stonewall National Monument in New York City this week to celebrate a new Visitor Center and the 55th anniversary of the uprising there that was a catalyst for the modern LGBTQI+ movement.  

Today Stonewall helps tell the courageous story of those who stood up for their basic human rights and fought back against oppression and discrimination.

Today, I am proud to unveil a new visitor center for Stonewall National Monument, the first-ever LGBTQ+ visitor center in the national parks of America.  (Applause.)

The Stonewall Inn and nearby Christopher Park were designated a National Monument by President Obama in 2016.

Elsewhere in New York, Secretary Haaland met with Tribal leaders to underscore the Department’s continuing commitment to strengthening Indian Country. The President’s Investing in America agenda is deploying record investments to provide clean drinking water, safer roads and bridges, reliable and affordable electricity, affordable high-speed internet, good paying jobs and economic development in every Tribal community. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law alone invests more than $13 billion directly in Tribal communities across the country.

Secretary Haaland also traveled to Colorado this week, where she joined federal, state and community leaders to celebrate conservation efforts in the Thompson Divide area. In April, the Secretary signed an order withdrawing more than 220,000 acres of public lands from mining, mineral and geothermal leasing for a 20-year period. The Secretary’s action will enhance the way of life that Coloradans embrace, protecting the land for wildlife and the state's farmers, ranchers, hunters and anglers.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management this week announced the approval of the Atlantic Shores South offshore wind energy project. The project includes two wind energy facilities, located about eight miles offshore New Jersey -- once complete they're expected to generate up to 2,800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power close to one million homes. With this approval, the Department has approved more than 13 gigawatts of clean energy from offshore wind energy projects – enough to power nearly five million homes.    

The Department this week announced its decision to reject the proposed Ambler Road in Alaska, avoiding significant and irrevocable impacts to Tribal subsistence uses and permafrost. That road would have traversed 211 miles of significant wildlife habitat and pristine waters along the iconic Brooks Range in north central Alaska. An analysis by the Bureau of Land Management found that more than 60 Alaska Native communities would experience restrictions on their subsistence and, of those, more than 30 would experience significant restrictions of subsistence uses, should the road be constructed. The road also would have required over 3,000 stream crossings and would have impacted at risk wildlife populations, including sheefish and the already-declining Western Arctic caribou herd, which are critical food sources for Native communities.  

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week announced the approval of $48.4 million in grants to support land acquisition and conservation planning assistance projects, through the Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation Fund grant programs. The grants contribute to the President's America the Beautiful initiative goal to conserve, connect and restore 30 percent of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030.

And our social media Picture of the Week, the turquoise waters of the magnificent Diablo Lake in the heart of Washington's North Cascades National Park. During the summer, ice melt and mountain erosion bring glacial flour into the lake. And that fine rock flour refracts sunlight just right, turning the lake a bright shade of turquoise.  

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That's This Week at Interior! 
 

This Week: President Biden, First Lady Jill Biden and Secretary Haaland unveil the new Visitor Center at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City; Secretary Haaland meets with New York Tribal leaders to underscore the Department’s continuing commitment to strengthening Indian Country; the Secretary joins federal, state and community leaders to celebrate conservation efforts in Colorado's Thompson Divide area; the Department announces the approval of the Atlantic Shores South offshore wind energy project; Interior rejects the proposed Ambler Road in Alaska, avoiding significant and irrevocable impacts to Tribal subsistence uses and permafrost; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service awards $48.4 million in grants to help preserve endangered wildlife and their habitats; and it's a lake of a different color in our social media Picture of the Week!

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    04/11/2025

    This Week at Interior April 11, 2025

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    This Week at Interior

    President Trump this week signed Executive Orders aimed at achieving the Administration's goal of American Energy Dominance with a renewed focus on coal. One of the orders directs Interior to identify untapped coal resources on federal lands, while removing barriers to mining and leasing.

    The value of untapped coal in our country is one hundred times greater than the value of all the gold at Fort Knox, and we're going to unleash it and make America rich and powerful again.

    To advance the President Trump's order, Interior will implement a series of policy moves and regulatory reforms to position coal as a cornerstone of the nation’s energy strategy by ensuring federally managed lands remain open and accessible for responsible energy development. Secretary Burgum likened the actions to creating a new Golden Age of "Mine, Baby, Mine," saying that  

    Interior is unlocking America’s full potential in energy dominance and economic development to make life more affordable for every American family while showing the world the power of America’s natural resources and innovation.  

    Among the actions are ending the moratorium on federal coal leasing, reopening federal lands in Montana and Wyoming to coal leasing, removing regulatory burdens for coal mines, and providing royalty rate relief.  

    Interior this week announced the disbursement of more than $13 million in grants to support the reclamation of abandoned mine lands, furthering the Trump administration’s commitment to American Energy Dominance, environmental stewardship and economic renewal in coal communities. The funding is administered through the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, and it will support job creation and economic revitalization efforts in North Dakota, Tennessee and Texas.  

    Interior this week announced the release of updated oil and gas reserve estimates for the Gulf of America's Outer Continental Shelf. The new data and analysis over the last couple of years reveal an additional 1.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent since 2021, bringing the total reserve estimate to 7.04 billion barrels of oil equivalent. That figure includes 5.77 billion barrels of oil and 7.15 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Earlier this year, the Trump administration announced plans to significantly increase oil and gas leasing on the Outer Continental Shelf, and just last week Secretary Burgum directed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to hold the first Gulf of America oil and gas lease sale since its renaming in February.

    Secretary Burgum held his first All Hands meeting this week at Interior's historic Yates Auditorium. The Secretary saluted the notable accomplishments the Department has achieved in making the transition from the previous administration, and expanded on his vision that innovation, rather than regulation, is the cornerstone of American prosperity.

    The thing that has led our country for 250 years is innovation, doesn't matter whether it's the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution our ability to innovate in a way that allowed us to win World War One and World War II and lead the world and become the world leader, all of it was innovation based, and we have to get back to those roots. That's how we win. That's how America wins in this world, that's how we win again for our children and our children's children, is we win with innovation.

    U.S. Geological Survey crews were deployed late last week and this week to monitor flood impacts after storms dumped heavy rain across portions of the southeast and Midwest. Crews are still hard at work gathering flood measurements in Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois and Ohio, as well as West Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi, where as much as ten inches of rain fell causing massive flooding. The gages provide information for the National Weather Service to predict when dangerous flooding might occur and allow for warnings to vulnerable residents, as flood crests will continue into early May.

    And our social media Picture of the Week, California's Battery Point Lighthouse. Perched on California's rugged northern coast, this historic beacon stands among the rocky outcrops of the California Coastal National Monument and has guided mariners since its first lighting in 1856.

    Make sure you follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X! That's This Week at Interior!


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    News and headlines from Interior April 11, 2025

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