Overnight Energy: ‘Gutted’ Interior agency moves out West | House Dems roll out $500B green infrastructure bill | Court says EPA must update its offshore oil spill response plan

HAPPY WEDNESDAY! Welcome to Overnight Energy, The Hill’s roundup of the latest energy and environment news. Please send tips and comments to Rebecca Beitsch at rbeitsch@digital-staging.thehill.com. Follow her on Twitter: @rebeccabeitsch. Reach Rachel Frazin at rfrazin@digital-staging.thehill.com or follow her on Twitter: @RachelFrazin.

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MAKING MOVES: The Interior Department is struggling to fill top positions at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) despite assurances from officials that the agency’s relocation from Washington to Colorado is helping recruit top talent, according to an analysis by The Hill.

Interior Department leaders have told Congress that moving the public lands bureau to new headquarters out West has helped recruit more and better qualified candidates than ever before. But a review of more than 100 job postings finds the agency has failed to fill several top posts just a month before it plans to finish the relocation.

BLM has yet to hire four of the agency’s seven division directors. Each of the positions has been reposted after failing to hire a candidate.

Other top postings, like a division chief to manage the wild horse and burro program in Reno, Nev., have been reposted twice.

“If you have to re-advertise jobs, that’s a flag that either you’re not getting enough applicants or you’re not getting enough qualified applicants,” said Steve Ellis, who retired in 2016 after holding the highest career-level post at the BLM. “It generally telegraphs you have a weak list of candidates.”

The relocation plans initially aimed to move some 220 D.C.-based positions to Grand Junction, Colo., while scattering the rest across existing offices and leaving just 61 employees in the agency’s Washington office. But figures provided to The Hill show that just 68 employees have agreed to make the move.

The agency must now replace more than 100 BLM employees who have chosen to leave the agency rather than relocate.

The difficulty in finding top level candidates contrasts with what Interior officials have told Congress.

“The caliber of people and number of people applying for these positions is through the roof and phenomenal,” Interior Secretary David Bernhardt told senators in March.

BLM has said it hopes to complete the move to Colorado in July, a timeline that could be complicated by the coronavirus pandemic. And given the vacancies in the agency’s top echelons, employees who make the move may arrive without several directors in place.

The agency refused to release figures detailing how many of the 68 employees have already arrived at their new posts.

BLM also did not answer questions about how many of its new job postings have been filled. 

“At this time—unless an employee has an extenuating circumstance such as health—all of the employees who have accepted geographic reassignment are scheduled to be moved or be in the process of moving by early July,” BLM spokesman Derrick Henry told The Hill by email.

“Due to privacy concerns, we are unable to provide specifics regarding any employees who may have requested an extension due to coronavirus,” he added.

BLM’s relocation, announced in July, is meant to bring government workers closer to the lands they manage, even though the bulk of the agency’s 10,000 employees are already stationed in Western states. Critics see the relocation as a way to dismantle an agency that can sometimes stand in the way of development on public lands.

The numbers behind the move have been a moving target. The 222 positions originally slated for relocation dwindled to 155 by the time BLM sent letters in November to its employees outlining where they would be headed.

In March, The Hill learned that just 80 of the employees who received letters agreed to move. That figure has since dropped to 68.

Read more about the relocation here.

 

INFRASTRUCTURE WEAK: House Democrats rolled out a nearly $500 billion infrastructure bill Wednesday aimed at updating America’s aging transportation system.

The bill would offer significant sums of money for repairing roads and bridges — a consistent theme in several previous infrastructure bills that have failed to get much traction.

But the bill from the House Transportation Committee focuses greater funding toward public transportation and rail travel, along with investments in electric vehicle charging stations.

The legislation would also establish new greenhouse gas standards that states must meet, with increased funding flowing to states that make the most progress. States would also be required to make sure any new transportation projects will have a positive effect on climate change.

Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said the legislation, dubbed the INVEST in America Act, “will catapult our country into a new era of how we plan, build, and improve U.S. infrastructure.”

Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), supplying nearly a third of emissions.

Nearly 60 percent of that comes from cars and light duty trucks.

The bill would not only boost funding for public transit but change how it is doled out, incentivizing more frequent service — a key feature for recruiting riders — rather than low operating costs.

Cities would receive greater funding for offering public transit in low-income neighborhoods and for setting aside bus lanes that allow for expedited service on otherwise congested thoroughfares.

Amtrak funding would be tripled under the legislation, while spending on rail projects in general would hit $60 billion.

Republicans on the committee complained they were not involved in crafting the bill and criticized the environmental measures included. 

“We were not given the opportunity to address any of our priorities in this legislation.  For example, today’s partisan bill lacks critical flexibility for the states, its outsized funding increases for urban areas will leave rural America even further behind, and numerous new green mandates and extreme progressive goals are woven throughout the fabric of new and existing core programs,” ranking member Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) said in a release.

Read more on the legislation here.

 

CLEAN UP TIME: A federal judge indicated late Tuesday he believes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must update its plans for responding to offshore oil spills. 

Federal judge William Orrick, an Obama appointee, said in a court decision that the law “strongly suggests that the duty to update and revise the [plan] ‘as advisable’  is not discretionary, but required.”

His declaration came as part of his rejection of the EPA’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit aiming to compel it to revise its plan. That means the court did not order the agency to alter the plans at this time, but it could be a preview of what’s to come in a future ruling as the case plays out. 

The EPA last updated its response plans in 1994, many years prior to high profile spills such as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. Those pushing for a new plan particularly took issue with what they described as the 1994 plan’s “open-ended use” of chemical dispersants to manage spills. 

Dispersants are used in oil spills with the goal of breaking up the oil into smaller droplets, but their opponents said in court that the products are “toxic,” and claimed they are “likely do more environmental harm than good, and generally exacerbate a spill’s ecological impact.”

The suit was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity and the UC Berkeley Environmental Law Clinic, who touted Orrick’s decision as a victory on Wednesday. 

“EPA’s ongoing failure to update its plan to reflect scientific knowledge about the dangers of dispersant use — despite our clients’ years of urging — is irresponsible and unlawful,” said Claudia Polsky, who directs the Berkeley clinic. 

The biggest lesson is that offshore drilling is inherently dirty and dangerous and should be phased out,” added the Center for Biological Diversity’s Kristen Monsell “ But while it continues, we need smarter spill responses that don’t defer to the oil industry.”

Read more on the suit here. 

 

ON TAP TOMORROW:

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing on infrastructure. 

 

OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY:

Brazil lead globe in 2019 forest loss, we report

Living near oil and gas wells linked to low birthweight in babies, The Guardian reports

Flooding disproportionately harms black neighborhoods, E&E News reports

Air pollution in China back to pre-Covid levels and Europe may follow, The Guardian reports

 

ICYMI: Stories from Wednesday…

Democrats request briefing on police actions towards protesters at White House

‘Gutted’ Interior agency moves out West with top posts unfilled

Democrats call for green energy relief in next stimulus package

House Democrats roll out $500B green transportation infrastructure bill

Brazil lead globe in 2019 forest loss

Court says EPA must update its offshore oil spill response plan

 

FROM THE HILL’S OPINION PAGES:

Forget politics — America needs a realistic debate about our energy future, argues Bernard L. Weinstein, associate director of the Maguire Energy Institute and a professor of business economics at Southern Methodist University.