E&E News: Bureau of Land Management’s Move West Reduced NEPA Compliance Staff

In case you were wondering, this is entirely by design and intentional malfeasance.

“The Bureau of Land Management’s move West has resulted in changes to the bureau’s organization that, in some instances, reduced staff in divisions overseeing planning and compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act.

Documents obtained by E&E News reveal new details of how BLM’s move to the West has changed and rearranged staffing, while the bureau continues to obfuscate the results of its overhaul of the bureau.”

Read the full article from E&E News here.

As you all may recall, according to this September 2019 article in the Washington Post:

“The Bureau of Land Management has selected a site for its new headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo. — and it’s in a building that also serves as the home to a Chevron corporate office, a state oil and gas association and an independent natural gas exploration company….

The four-story office building with two wings is home to more than just Chevron, Laramie Energy and a branch of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. In addition, the building has offices of Shaw, a major construction firm; Moody Insurance Agency; Pro­Star Geocorp, a provider of geospatial software; and a firm providing cloud storage for school districts, according to one of the building’s tenants.

Located on the Rockies’ Western Slope, Grand Junction lies in the heart of a natural gas reservoir, and the region hosts a number of oil and gas operations. While more than 90 percent of the bureau’s employees already work in the West, Interior officials said they were moving most of the staff to the region so they could work closer to the people most affected by the agency’s decisions.”

2 thoughts on “E&E News: Bureau of Land Management’s Move West Reduced NEPA Compliance Staff”

  1. Jon, having worked with more than my share of FS WO org charts, I printed out the org charts linked in the E&E article. I compared old WO-210 and the new WO-210. It says clearly on the “old” ones that all but one of the missing positions were transferred to state offices.

    It appears to me that all those positions weren’t lost , they were reallocated to State Offices and there is one Deputy instead of two Branch Chiefs. Which makes sense since there are fewer people on the staff (12). (Well I didn’t think I could do a very good job supervising that many people but it is commonplace at least in the FS).

    I’ve been the director of a Regional and of a WO NEPA shop, and if the Regional folks are knowledgeable (and listened to by decision-makers) fewer problems arise and get to the WO. I really don’t see a problem with this as described in the documents.

    Reply

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