A Review of Department of Interior Pertaining to Environmental Law

Jannah Ayo

ENSC 458

4/30/15

Journal #7

        Towards the beginning of this quarter we talked a lot about the NEPA and Environmental Impact Statements. However, after reading an article online about Shell trying once again to drill in the Arctic Ocean, I really started to question the effectiveness of an EIS. Earlier this month, the Department of Interior announced that it was re-affirming the 2008 Bush-era leases. This would open thirty million acres of the Chukchi Sea up to drilling oil (ecowatch). I can’t believe this, how could the DOI consider drilling oil in this environment? Especially, when the federal district court ruled against the leases only a year ago. The court had found that the EIS was inadequate and that the DOI looked for the best case scenario. Now only after a year of the federal courts ruling, the DOI is trying again. This is why I am really questioning the effectiveness of an EIS. I wonder, should the DOI even be in charge of issuing and releasing the impact statements? Earthjustice, the group that brought the lawsuit against the leases to court a year ago, stated “the interior rushed the process of reconsidering the leases, issuing a flawed final EIS” (ecowatch). How can the DOI push for drilling again only a year after getting out of federal district court? I’m guessing that the federal district court’s ruling last year wasn’t to prevent this from happening again in the future.

        Something else really shocked me was that the EIS noted a 75 percent chance of a large oil spill and a 100 percent chance of environmental degradation from drilling activities. I’ve learned in my ecology and soil science class that the environment located in the North tend to have harsher climates which, take an extremely long time to restore after disturbances. An oil spill would be so much more devastating in the Arctic than what the country experienced in the Gulf. Ironically, on the day that the Obama administration approved drilling in the Arctic, President Obama also pledged that the U.S. would cut greenhouse gas emissions by a third. Yet, he is approving to drill in the Arctic which would release carbon into the atmosphere increasing the rate of climate changes and sea level rise. This problem of drilling in the Arctic has so many broad outcomes that it would affect not only the Clean Air Act but also the Endangered Species Act by displacing many species such as polar bears. In my Environmental Crime book, I read that the DOI is generally charged with the protection of all lands under its supervision and also has primary jurisdiction in the implementation and enforcement of federal legislation such as the Endangered Species Act. How can this department of the government, who has jurisdiction of protecting the endangered species, engage an activity that will subsequently place a variety of species in harm’s way? So, why would this same department re-affirm leases that would allow drilling and risk creating problems for the department to deal with later?  I believe there should be a better government regulation that fully looks into the EIS and has multiple departments deciding whether the land can be used and what natural resources can be retained from that land. What is the point of an EIS if the DOI is just going to ignore the dangers or even manipulate what the EIS says to get their way and their money from the oil companies?