With the release of the 2018 White House Budget proposal, environmentalists and public lands advocates are worried over a $1.4 billion (10.9 percent) cut to the Interior Department. The proposal targets federal lands, opens oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), and cancels money set aside to bring economic opportunities to Appalachia — often in the form of farming ventures.
The budget calls for increasing energy development on public lands by $13 million (about 9 percent), with some of that development happening in ANWR by 2022. According to the budget documents, “The environmentally responsible development of a small portion of ANWR would be part of a broader effort to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign energy sources. Production will take time, so it is imperative to authorize ANWR leasing now.”
Welcoming energy companies to ANWR would earn $1.8 billion by 2027, says the White House. Before leaving office, Obama banned and gas drilling in federal waters off Alaska and in the Atlantic ocean, but Trump promised to reverse his predecessor’s order.
Pointing out that the federal government already owns roughly 500 million acres, the White House wants to decrease DOI’s land acquisition funding by $129 million, “so that the Agency can instead focus limited resources to more effectively manage existing assets and lands.”
The budget also calls for slashing grant-funding meant to bring economic alternatives to former coal mine areas in Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Arguing that the grants “exceed the mission and expertise of the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE),” the budget suggests canceling the $90 million program. In 2016, the first year the grants were offered, some of that money went towards farming ventures, like a West Virginia project that hired displaced coal miners and veterans to plant 100,000 golden delicious apple trees in two counties where the variety was first developed.
Instead, the White House “plans to help coal country by streamlining permit approvals and eliminating unnecessary regulations, such as lifting the moratorium on coal leasing on public lands, rolling back the Clean Power Plan, and helping to nullify the Stream Protection Rule,” according to the budget documents. However, the budget does recommend “funding increases for the Appalachian region, including $80 million as part of a new Department of Agriculture Rural Economic Infrastructure Grant account …” says the proposal.