Today, the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held an oversight hearing on the “Culture of Corruption” at the Department of the Interior (DOI). During the hearing, Mary Kendall, DOI Deputy Inspector General (IG), acknowledged that Jonathan Jarvis, Director of the National Park Service, purposely lied to the Secretary of the Interior about a book deal he improperly obtained for… Read more »
Today, the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a hearing on “Local and State Perspectives on BLM’s Draft Planning 2.0 Rule.”
As proposed, the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Planning 2.0 rule would significantly diminish local input and shift most public land use planning decisions to bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.
“Instead of keeping most planning activity at the… Read more »
Today, the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a hearing on impediments imposed by federal land management regimes in securing the international borders of the United States.
Federal land management regulations create obstacles for the United States Border Patrol in effectively securing the border. This leaves borderland communities both environmentally degraded and… Read more »
Today, the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held an oversight hearing raising bipartisan concerns about the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) waste, abuse and incompetence concerning its law enforcement records system. Since 2003, DOI has spent over $50 million in federal funds on a database that is still not fully functional.
DOI began the process of implementing the… Read more »
BY: Ryan Flynn
The bright yellow water that gushed from Colorado’s Gold King mine and into the Animas River last summer has dissipated, but the environmental disaster continues downstream. An estimated 880,000 pounds of lead and other metals poured out of the Gold King in August when the Environmental Protection Agency fumbled a construction project and blew out the mine’s plug.
This… Read more »
Today, the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held an oversight hearing to review the Presidential Memoranda on mitigation issued on November 3rd, 2015 to five federal agencies. The memoranda creates sweeping new statutory authority and new requirements that agencies must use when evaluating and approving projects on federal lands and waters.
“This Administration hasn’t shown… Read more »
Yesterday evening, House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) issued subpoenas to the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) for documents related to the USACE’s peer review of DOI’s Technical Evaluation of the August 2015 Gold King Mine spill.
Republicans and Democrats on the Committee have raised numerous… Read more »
Today, the House Committee on Natural Resources released a Majority staff report detailing information uncovered during the Committee’s ongoing investigation of the EPA’s Gold King Mine blowout near Silverton, Colorado in August 2015.
The 73-page report documents the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) and the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) inaccurate and misleading accounts of… Read more »
Today, House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) and Oversight & Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) in a letter to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Inspector General Arthur Elkins Jr., strongly questioned the timing and substance of interviews conducted two weeks ago by EPA officials with material witnesses that could compromise… Read more »
TO: Inspector General Arthur Elkins Jr.
FROM: Rob Bishop, Chairman House Committee on Natural Resources
Louie Gohmert, Chairman Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Dear Inspector General Elkins:
On August 17, 2015, your office, the Environmental Protection Agency's ("EPA") Office of Inspector General ("OIG"), sent a memorandum to EPA Region 8 Administrator Shaun… Read more »
