Recently I mentioned plans to increase leasing in state forests that the state had spent decades to restore to a natural state.

But some things in Pennsylvania may be changing. Governor Edward Rendell has announced he will be hiring additional oil and gas inspectors, as well as proposing some new, more protective regulations for constructing natural gas wells.

Most recently, it has been reported that the Governor supports, "in concept," a moratorium on additional leasing in state forests while environmental impact studies are conducted. This came after a public announcement of a spill in Sproul State Forest of 8-12,000 gallons of drilling mud. It seems like a very reasonable thing.

These initiatives sound excellent. Here is a snapshot of what is good about the reform proposals:

1) Comprehensive reviews of parcels that are proposed for leasing: This means that agency staff will visit parcels to be leased in person to fully understand the characteristics and will identify areas of potential concern such as "air quality, watersheds, wilderness, wildlife, and nearby land uses." The agency has also committed to insuring that agency personnel with varied areas of expertise will participate in these reviews, such as widlife biologists, experts in archeological sites, and air quality experts. Believe it or not, these things were not required under the Bush administration.

2) Increased opportunities for public participation: The agency has said it will seek out interested individuals and organizations and encourage their involvement in the leasing process through review and comment on agency proposals.

3) A new emphasis on leasing in already-developed areas and careful planning of any leasing in new areas, including identification of measures such as Best Management Practices to protect the environment and mitigate negative impacts.

4) A revised policy for the use of 'categorical exclusions' from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). These exclusions basically exempt certain projects from NEPA analysis. The Bush administration used them even when there were extraordinary circumstances, such as such as impacts to protected species, historic or cultural resources, or human health and safety--even though this violated the guidelines of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. From now on, these exclusions will not be used in cases involving extraordinary circumstances.  

As stated by the Secretary, these reforms are intended to: "....help bring clarity, consistency, and public engagement to the onshore oil and gas leasing process while balancing the many resource values that the Bureau of Land Management is entrusted with protecting on behalf of the American people."

Why are these initiatives so critical?

As the Secretary explained in a press conference, during the Bush administration, oil and gas companies were "the kings of the world," who got whatever they wanted. The agency staff were directed to do the industry's bidding. Secretary Salazar also stated that America's public lands had become a "candy store" for the oil and gas industry, where companies could "walk in and take whatever they wanted" during the leasing process.

Yes, it has been that bad.

During the Bush administration, agency personnel such as wildlife biologists were re-assigned from their important work to instead rubber stamp oil and gas permit applications. Industry was given the green light to ravage some of America's most pristine lands and vital wildlife habitat. Harmful air pollution in the West skyrocketed, and wildlife populations suffered. Communities are concerned about health impacts, and private property has been polluted in split estate situations (where the federal government owns the oil or gas beneath private property).

Now Secretary Salazar is promising to right these wrongs and to give the public and a wide array of varied interests equal and balanced input into leasing decisions. The reform proposals are broad concepts, however, and many details need to be filled in before we know what their impact will be. NRDC will be watching closely over the implementation and the specifics of these proposals to hold the Secretary to his word. We also hope the administration will go farther and reverse some of the worst Bush policies still on the books. I expect there will still be agency proposals we oppose, but we are hopeful that the hostile corporate takeover of our public lands will be over.

There are additional reasons why yesterday's announcement is important.  

The Bush administration promoted resource extraction projects that were extremely controversial and generated a lot of public opposition. They opened up some the wildest lands and most valuable wildlife habitat--areas that Americans care deeply about and want protected, not exploited. In many cases, the Bush proposals also violated the law. The public challenged these offensive projects and NRDC and our partners often sued. We also often won. This meant that the Bush administration wasted millions of taxpayers dollars by having agency staff work on illegal projects, and then attempting to defend them in court.

Sadly, the Bush administration and its allies in industry tried to justify these wasteful and illegal moves by blaming the litigation on conservationists like NRDC, saying we challenged every project just for the heck of it. Of course, these statements were inaccurate.

Yesterday the Obama administration spoke the truth. The Director of the Bureau of Land Management, Bob Abbey, stated that more public participation, thorough environmental review of leasing proposals, and a balanced approach will lead to projects that are based on consensus and are much less controversial, with less litigation. Secretary Salazar pointed out that in 1998, a little over one percent of onshore leases were protested, but that number had jumped to forty percent by 2008 under the Bush policies.  What we heard today is a new emphasis on following the laws passed by Congress to protect our health and environment.

One of the core concepts of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is that transparency, accountability and opportunities for meaningful public participation during project consideration will increase consensus-based decisions and reduce controversy. Today's announcements were true to the spirit of NEPA, known as the magna carta of our environmental laws.

We have not yet seen the details of the reform proposals announced today, but we look forward to working with the Obama administration to further the goals of balance and responsible management of our public lands and natural resources .

Under new leadership, the U.S. Department of the Interior has already made some significant improvements in how our public lands are managed. Now we are calling on Interior Secretary Salazar to ensure the protection of wilderness-quality lands until Congress acts to formally designate their protection by rescinding the Bush "no more wilderness" policy. This would restore the BLM's ability to designate new wilderness study areas in the West and protect our wildest lands and vital wildlife habitat.

You can add your voice by sending a letter to Secretary Salazar from our BioGems website.

For these reasons, the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency that manages this national treasure, as well as citizen groups have identified important wild lands on the Roan Plateau as eligible for wilderness designation.

Although about half of the Roan Plateau is already either owned or leased by the oil and gas industry, the top and cliffs of the plateau remain an oasis of natural beauty. But before it left office, the Bush administration leased 55,000 acres of this public land for natural gas development. Drilling, along with roads, pipelines and other associated development activities, would forever alter the Roan Plateau landscape and foreclose the possibility of wilderness designation.

NRDC is making it easy for you to send a message urging Interior Secretary Salazar to cancel the gas drilling leases on the Roan Plateau. Just visit our Action Center to see how. If you would like additional information, check out these recent articles in The New York Times and Men's Journal magazine.

During the Bush administration, Interior Secretary Gale Norton signed a decision that prohibits the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from protecting lands possessing wilderness characteristics as wilderness study areas. NRDC has strongly opposed this give-away to industry, which allows development such as oil and gas drilling on some of America's most pristine western wildlands before Congress has an opportunity to protect them.

Last week, almost 90 Members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to the new Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, asking him to rescind this decision. Legislation to permanently protect over nine million acres of the wildest lands in Utah is pending in Congress; these spectacular lands in Utah's Redrock country are now threatened by a range of harmful activities, including oil and gas production. In their recent letter, Members of Congress urged Secretary Salazar to protect the wilderness qualities of these lands until Congress sees to their protection. We hope Secretary Salazar will act swiftly to restore longstanding policies that will protect these lands.

These studies, if taken at face value, leave us with this question: should Americans fear that protecting their health will come at the expense of their neighbor's job?

It turns out, these studies present us with an either/or scenario that's fundamentally false. A new economic critique of the publications  has detailed their fundamental flaws:

• First, they fail to consider the wide range of alternatives for implementing the proposed regulations, including ways that could reduce costs and increase benefits.
• Second, they completely ignore the economic benefits of the proposed regulations (one of the first principles I learned in graduate school, over 25 years ago, is that good policy analysis always includes looking at both the costs and benefits of any proposal).
• And third, they grossly exaggerate the economic costs of the proposed regulations.

The critique was conducted by ECONorthwest, which specializes in the economic and financial analysis of public policy. It can be found in NRDC's Document Bank. The authors concluded: "The errors contained in the three reports are serious enough to render their findings untenable from an economic perspective."

This situation sounds similar to a dialogue recently heard at a hearing in the U.S. Senate regarding the repeal of tax benefits for the oil and gas industry. An industry CEO claimed that repeal of these tax benefits would, among other things, "slow the economic recovery," and "jeopardize the jobs of millions of industry workers." The U.S. Treasury Department, however, estimates that repeal "would have little adverse impact on oil and gas prices, production, and employment...."

Developing energy and protecting the environment is not an either/or scenario. We do not believe new environmental protections, such as the proposed FRAC Act, will harm the industry or its employees--and that is not our intention. Quite the contrary, actually - we strongly believe clean solutions are readily available, economical, and sometimes even profitable for industry. 

Consider the alternative---an alternative we're witnessing and experiencing right now across the country---poisoned water, dead livestock, and destroyed landscapes, as I've mentioned in other blog posts. There needs to be a balance - which is why we're working to pass the FRAC Act. It's a common sense approach, especially when drinking water and human health are at risk.