Dear Secretary Salazar and Director Ashe:
The Committee on Natural Resources (“Committee”) has jurisdiction over matters involving fisheries and wildlife, including the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (“ESA”), 16 U.S.C. §§ 1531-1599. The goal of the ESA was to preserve, protect and recover key domestic species. However, today the law is failing to achieve its primary purpose of species… Read more »
Dear Ms. Kendall:
According to the Inspector General Act of 1978 ("IG Act"), each Inspector General is responsible for conducting, supervising, and coordinating audits and investigations relating to the programs and operations of their respective agency or department. Although intended to be an independent watchdog against waste, fraud, and abuse, an Inspector General is also expected to… Read more »
House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (WA-04) yesterday sent a letter to the Department of the Interior’s Acting Inspector General (IG) Mary Kendall to question her about discrepancies between her testimony before the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources and documents recently provided to the Committee that suggest she was involved in the process of producing the… Read more »
Interior inspector defends impartiality in report probe
By: Gregory Korte
USA Today
May 23, 2012
When questions came up about how the White House edited an Interior Department report to justify a moratorium on offshore drilling, acting Inspector General Mary Kendall investigated and reported back to Congress only that the report "could have been more clearly worded."
Now documents… Read more »
Dear Ms. Kendall:
As you know, the Committee on Natural Resources ("Committee") has for almost two years been seeking information about how a May 27, 2010 Department of the Interior ("Department") report entitled "Increased Safety Measures for Energy Development on the Outer Continental Shelf" ("Drilling Moratorium Report") was drafted and then edited in a manner that misrepresented… Read more »
Today, the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands held an oversight field hearing in Longview, Washington on, “Failed Federal Forest Policies: Endangering Jobs, Forests and Species.” The hearing examined how federal implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan and Endangered Species Act has affected local economies, forest health and the Northern Spotted Owl.
“To put it… Read more »
House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (WA-04) today released internal documents and audio recordings obtained by the Committee through outside sources, which raise further questions into the highly unusual manner in which the Obama Administration is rewriting a coal production regulation, the 2008 Stream Buffer Zone Rule. The documents detail “catastrophic” impacts to… Read more »
As part of the more than year-long investigation into the Obama Administration’s rewrite of a 2008 coal regulation, House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (WA-04) today sent a final request letter to the Obama Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and threatened a subpoena for information and documents regarding EPA’s involvement in the rewrite of the… Read more »
Today, the House Subcommittees on Water and Power and National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands held a joint oversight field hearing in Montrose, Colorado entitled, “Logs in the Road: Eliminating Federal Red Tape and Excessive Litigation to Create Healthy Forests, Jobs and Abundant Water and Power Supplies.” At the hearing, Subcommittee Chairmen Rob Bishop (UT-01) and Tom McClintock… Read more »
