Jan. 20, 2001: Bush may make changes

Bush may make changes

This story was published Jan. 20, 2001

By Herald news services

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration will consider altering national monuments created by President Clinton, Interior Secretary nominee Gale A. Norton told a Senate committee Friday.

"We will be looking at what needs to be changed," she said under questioning by members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

In the second and final day of her confirmation hearings, she said the new administration:

-- Will consider revoking special government protections to 18 new national monuments, including the Hanford Reach Monument, established by Clinton.

-- Will seek opportunities to turn over maintenance or management of some public lands to private groups or companies.

-- Will pursue new legislation or programs to "offer compensation or help in some other way" to landowners whose property is affected by federal environmental regulations.

Norton, a former two-term attorney general in Colorado, outlined an agenda closer to the views of Western conservatives than to the policies of Clinton Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

Westerners are "angry," she said, "because the current Secretary of the Interior has not listened." If she is confirmed, Norton said, "the voices of ranchers, the voices of environmentalists, the voices of everyone who is concerned in the decisions will be heard as part of the process."

Meanwhile, she reassured Democratic senators that although she has in the past challenged the constitutionality of the Endangered Species Act and other federal laws, she will "enforce the laws as written and as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court."