[Senate Hearing 117-]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




 
     DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES 
                  APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2023

                              ----------                              


                        WEDNESDAY, JULY 13, 2022

                                       U.S. Senate,
           Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:32 a.m. in 
room SD-124, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Jeff Merkley 
(chairman) presiding.
    Present: Senators Merkley, Feinstein, Reed, Tester, Van 
Hollen, Heinrich, Murkowski, Blunt, Hyde-Smith, and Hagerty.

                       DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

STATEMENT OF HON. DEB HAALAND, SECRETARY
ACCOMPANIED BY DENISE FLANAGAN, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF BUDGET

               OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JEFF MERKLEY

    Senator Merkley. The hearing on the Interior and the 
Subcommittee will come to order.
    And welcome, Secretary Haaland, and welcome to Denise 
Flanagan, so good to have you with us; and to our colleagues, 
and to our constituents.
    Today's hearing will review the Department of Interior's 
fiscal year 2023 Budget Request.
    And before I get started, I just wanted to highlight that 
during this session of Congress the subcommittee, after a 
conversation that I have had with Senator Murkowski, we have 
forgone the plastic water bottles that you see at hearings all 
across Capitol Hill. And I mention that simply because plastic 
is becoming an issue that the Department is dealing with, that 
America is dealing with, that the world is dealing with, 
because it is impacting our lands, our oceans, our wildlife, 
even our own bodies.
    And because, Secretary Haaland, under your leadership, the 
Interior Department is taking steps to address the issue of 
plastic pollution, and last month you signed a Secretarial 
Order to phase out single-use plastics on public lands. And 
really want to thank you for that effort; lays out a ten-year 
plan.
    I encourage you to consider whether there is a way for it 
to be a plan that takes less than a decade given the 
significance of plastics on public lands. But the fact is that 
you have taken very significant action, and I applaud that.
    Turning to the American landscape, I want to start with 
wildfires, wildfires that are absolutely devastating to many of 
our western states. Compared to this time last year, four times 
as many acres have burned in this year, 2022. And it is not 
just the fires and their impact on the forest, but it is also 
the enormous risk to our communities, and to our citizens, the 
massive amount of smoke and air pollution that they produce.
    I will never forget the 2020 Labor Day Fires in Oregon 
where I traveled some 600 miles back and forth across the 
state, never getting out of the smoke, and seeing six 
communities absolutely burned to the ground. And then meeting 
with what were--became thousands of citizens that had lost 
their homes, lost everything. And communities that were just 
absolutely obliterated, and it is so challenging to restore the 
lives, restore the communities.
    So fire is a big deal for America. It is a big deal for the 
Department of Interior. And I am very pleased that as Chair of 
this subcommittee, I was able to work with colleagues on the 
Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill that provided $20 billion of 
appropriated funds for the Department of Interior programs, for 
programs within this subcommittee's jurisdiction.
    And specifically, 2.5 billion over 10 years to invest in 
wildfire risk reduction and ecosystem restoration, including 
funds for fuel breaks, for hazardous fuels projects, reduce the 
amount of fuels in the forest, prescribed fires, and burned 
area restoration.
    Another effort that we have undertaken is to provide 
funding for the training of National Guard members to be able 
to assist and become fire crews when we are in desperate need 
of additional fire crew members. This has been an important 
undertaking, those crews have been very valuable, and it is 
something that we are working to continue.
    At this point more than a thousand personnel have been 
trained, and I know that as we continue to fund this program, 
train many more.
    I was struck a couple weeks ago in conversations, meetings 
about this fire season that there is great difficulty in 
filling out the crews that are needed, and that effort to have 
the National Guard members provide additional support makes a 
lot of sense.
    The final fiscal year 2022 Interior Bill funded five forest 
collaboratives across Oregon increased the ability to do these 
landscape restoration projects that provide trees to the mill, 
and jobs in the forest, and healthier forests, and forests that 
are more fire resilient.
    And for the first time, we created a program to 
specifically address public health impacts of wildfire smoke. 
It is critical the Department use all its resources and tools 
at its disposal, including tribal co-management, interagency 
agreements, like the Western Oregon Operating Plan, and Forest 
and Rangeland collaboratives to get this funding on the ground, 
and put it to work protecting our communities.
    While I am pleased with these accomplishments, I recognize 
that the fiscal year 2022 Budget deal did not address all the 
urgent challenges that your Department faces, urgent challenges 
and climate chaos, and loss of biodiversity, significant 
staffing shortages, to mention a few.
    And I am disappointed that the final deal continued to 
include some legacy policy writers that harm the environment, 
like the sage grouse writer that prevents U.S. Fish and 
Wildlife Service from employing the best possible science in 
terms of the survival of that species.
    But the final fiscal year 2022 Bill included a lot to be 
proud of. In addition to wildfire risk reduction, we increased 
funding for national monuments planning. We secured 10 million 
to construct a voting rights center, the Selma Interpretive 
Center, to honor the legacy of civil rights leaders, including 
the late Representative John Lewis.
    We funded $7 million for the Indian Boarding School 
Initiative that I will be asking more about, and really 
applauding today. And we stopped the bleeding by halting the 
backslide of staffing levels for programs that promote clean 
water, protect our public lands, and conduct critical 
environmental research.
    And I want to thank you, Secretary Haaland, for the 
Department's efforts to push completion of a resource 
management plan for the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, a 
plan that is really needed for the expanded monument. I know 
you are making very significant process on that, and I am just 
encouraging you to keep that process going forward with all due 
momentum. It will be a day to celebrate when we have that final 
resource management plan.
    And I want to thank you and the Department for the 
wonderful success of the Monarch Summit that we held together 
last month. I have got my Monarch pin on, and I will be getting 
you one as well. And bringing experts together for two days to 
really address this enormous collapse of the Monarch population 
and all its implications was really--generated so much energy 
that you could just sense the excitement in the room that that 
effort was highlighting some very significant issues that need 
to be highlighted.
    We are going to have a set of proposals that come out of 
that, but I just wanted to put up this chart for the Decline of 
the western monarch, we see that in the year 2020 we had less 
than 2,000 monarchs, that is less than five-thousandths of a 
percent of the numbers that we had back in the 1990s. This is 
catastrophic.
    We have had a slight rebound, a very good year, last year, 
a slight rebound to where--but we are still less than 1 percent 
of the western monarchs. And I have been to Pismo Beach, I have 
seen the overwintering grounds in California, that actually it 
is a whole several hundred sites along the coast where they 
gather to avoid freezing over the winter.
    We discovered some very important things in the summit, for 
example, that climate change is affecting survival because it 
is upsetting the timing of when the overwintering monarchs 
leave the coast, and the time that the milkweed comes out of 
the ground on which they lay their eggs. And we found out that 
the challenge with the milkweed that we might acquire in our 
nurseries; is that it is contaminated with pesticides that can 
actually kill monarchs, and so we have to have a pesticide-free 
milkweed production.
    There is a tremendous amount that came out of that. We have 
to address this, and this actually isn't just about the 
monarchs, it is about pollinators in general, that play such an 
essential role in our ecosystem.
    So thank you so much for collaborating on that, and I will 
look forward to maintaining the momentum on the ideas that come 
out of that meeting.
    So let me switch to a broader question of climate change. I 
know that President Biden has publicly advocated for a paradigm 
shift on how we manage our public lands and waters for energy 
development, but in practice what we have been seeing is an 
all-of-the-above approach; an approach that will not boldly 
address our climate challenge, and that involves both 
addressing the demand and the supply of fossil fuels.
    And we are definitely at a point where business as usual 
doesn't work. Now, we have just talked about the fires, but 
there is so much more going on in my home state: The loss of 
the snowpack, the acidification of the oceans, just everywhere 
we look we are being impacted by these changes in a very, very 
harmful way. It is affecting our fishing, it is affecting our 
farming, it is affecting our forests.
    And so I want to encourage the Department to do all in its 
power to boldly address climate. And so just to express some of 
my concerns, the Department's long-awaited analysis of Federal 
oil and gas leasing did not incorporate or address climate 
change. The Department has defended environmental impact 
statements that do not contemplate climate change, statements 
that have been rejected by the courts, subsequently, as 
inadequate.
    The administration put forward the largest lease of 
drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico in U.S. history, a sale 
that was also halted by a court challenge, challenging the 
environmental impact statement.
    The Department may have been legally required to offer a 
sale but it wasn't legally required to offer a massive sale. 
And I know you and I have spoken about other aspects of where I 
think the Department can really, really work to try to boldly 
address climate as we look at energy resources. And earlier 
this month the Department released a five-year plan for 
offshore drilling, it highlights a range of leasing options, 
including the no-leasing option. There is nothing in the Outer 
Continental Shelf Lands Act that requires offering these 
leases, and I urge you to choose the no-lease option in your 
final plan.
    In Oregon, we are terrified of the impact on our ocean 
resources. Our salmon, our crabbing, our shrimp, just a whole 
range of critical ocean resources, and we are very, very 
concerned about the potential impacts of a disaster on our 
shoreline, our coastal communities. Just oil washing up on the 
shores would be absolutely devastating, and we simply must 
adopt more of a keep-it-in-the-ground perspective since we are 
at this tipping point of the devastating impacts of climate 
change on our states.
    The Intergovernmental Panel on climate change in its 2021 
Report used the term--or issued it, they called it A Code Red 
for Humanity, and amassing evidence of the catastrophic changes 
that we are experiencing. In American lingo we would call this 
``a five-alarm fire''.
    Record-setting global temperatures year after year, 
catastrophic wildfires, increasing frequency and severity of 
storms causing devastating impacts on lands and people, large-
scale flooding that heavily damaged Yellowstone National Park 
is an example, cost millions to repair, oceans' 30 percent more 
acidic impacting our sea life, the fishing industry, and our 
fishing communities; droughts devastating the livelihoods of 
our farmers and our ranchers.
    And we have, in addition to carbon dioxide that is all 
talked about, we have the challenge of fossil gas, methane, we 
refer to it in public as natural gas. It is methane gas, it is 
fossil gas.
    And this chart shows what the eye sees when it looks at a 
facility which you can't see any visible emissions, and then 
when you have I think it is infrared photography you see there 
is a massive plume of methane being admitted.
    And I will put into the record, if there is no objection a 
chart that shows satellite data, massive number of examples 
like this from across the country that are being observed.
    Senator Merkley. And as we get better satellite data we are 
getting a far better understanding of the massive leaks. The 
estimate right now in the Permian Basin is 10 percent of the 
fossil gases leaked in the atmosphere, making it worse than 
coal in terms of the impact on climate.
    So thank you for hearing me out on my concerns about the 
bold pivot we need to make. The administration can do a lot, 
and I encourage bold action.
    Now, we may hear something today about the high gas prices 
and the need for more drilling. So I just wanted to share a few 
comments about that. It is like a heroin addict saying that the 
solution to heroin addiction is more heroin.
    Let us recognize several basic facts: The prices we 
experience are extremely painful to Americans, they are 
devastating, they are primarily the result of disruption from 
Putin's war on Ukraine, and the resulting embargo on Russian 
energy, in combination with the rising demand as the economy 
rebounds from COVID. And these prices are also the result of 
gouging by the oil companies which have tripled their profit 
margins from refining.
    Let us also recognized the oil companies' own leases that 
would allow them to drill on 20 million additional acres of 
Federal land and water that they are not using, if oil 
companies want to drill more they already can.
    Next, that the timeline for building out new infrastructure 
will not have any impact on the current cost of gas because of 
that long timeline that it takes, and that the answer in the 
long term to the high cost of petroleum at the pump is an end 
to our addiction to that petroleum by building, rapidly 
building a renewable energy economy.
    We want to stop enriching Russia and Iran, if we want to 
reduce the price we suffer at the pump then we need to end our 
addiction to fossil fuels.
    Madam Secretary, you have enormous responsibilities that 
are so important to our lands and the future of this country. I 
know you are absolutely dedicated to that effort, we will 
explore many of that through the questions today. And I really 
appreciate your service.
    With that, let me turn this over to Senator Murkowski.

                    STATEMENT OF HON. LISA MURKOWSKI

    Senator Murkowski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning 
Madam Secretary, welcome back to the committee. I look forward 
to the opportunity to discuss the President's budget request 
this morning, and a number of specific activities that the 
budget proposes to support.
    I appreciate my colleague and the chairman leading off with 
a discussion about fire. It is pretty tough in Alaska right 
now. We are up to about 2.8 million acres burned already. We 
had 13 new fires just in the past 24 hours. The smoke issues, 
particularly in the Interior, have been a real challenge this 
summer that we have seen now in other parts of the state as 
well. It is dry. And the good news for us right now is that the 
rains are coming, and that is a positive, but we need to make 
sure that we are not just praying for rain as the policy here. 
To make sure that the fire threat doesn't bring about further 
damage.
    Obviously, some differing views on the committee here in 
terms of our energy resources, and how we utilize them to the 
benefit of our country, certainly to the benefit of places like 
Alaska which is, of course, a producing state. So I would like 
to talk about a few of the issues, and I will be a little 
parochial here just to start off.
    But on Friday the Bureau of Land Management released a 
draft supplemental EIS for the Willow Project within the NPRA, 
and I think you saw the press release on that. I welcomed that 
step. I can't stress enough the need for the Department to move 
forward with final approval for the Willow Project. It is my 
very sincere hope that the Department will soon be able to 
issue permits so work can begin on this project during the 
upcoming winter season '22/'23.
    We have had the conversation, Madam Secretary, I have had 
the conversation with the President, I have had the 
conversation with just about everybody in the administration 
that will listen to me on Willow, because I firmly believe that 
we need to have a realistic plan for the future of our energy 
supply, and I think that Alaska definitely fits within that 
plan.
    The chairman mentioned the near-record high gas prices that 
families are seeing. It is bad all over the country. But if you 
are in a community like Yakutat, I follow the weekly gas prices 
in various communities around the state Yakutat is paying about 
$7.25 a gallon for fuel. It is just tough.
    And so they are asking me: What are the tools that are 
available? What can the administration be doing? What can 
Congress be doing to help dampen these price increases that we 
are seeing? And for me it comes down to the basics of 
economics, supply and demand.
    And I am one who believes very strongly that the 
administration, and here in this country, we need to use those 
tools at our disposal to increase domestic production, to 
improve our energy security, particularly as we are seeing the 
global disruptions, and the unrest.
    And I have I have said it before, and I will say it again, 
Alaska stands ready, willing, and certainly able to be a big 
part of that solution, all while we insist on meeting the 
highest environmental standards in the world.
    The chairman has mentioned the five-year plan for the 
offshore oil and gas that the Department recently proposed. And 
again, given what we are seeing here at home, over in Europe, I 
truly, truly believe that our national security interests 
require that we increase our domestic supply of these 
resources, including from our offshore areas.
    You know, I have heard the reference before that oil is an 
addiction. I recognize that we have a reliance on it, but when 
I think of an addiction like a heroin addiction, I think about 
it as something that there is no--there is no upside to heroin 
addiction. Our reality as a country is that we have a resource 
that not only we need right now, but the world needs right now, 
and it is not just to fuel our vehicles.
    I think we are moving to different transportation fuels, 
but that is a transition. But everything that we use, 
practically, has some aspect of petroleum in it. And so until 
we can figure out what that substitute is, this petroleum base 
that really powers, and moves, and allows us to function as a 
modern society is something--is something that is in demand. 
And again, we can choose to look to others to meet that demand 
and make ourselves more vulnerable, more reliant on others, and 
particularly others that don't even like us, or whose 
environmental track record is awful, or whose human rights 
track record is awful.
    So I have said, as we transition from a fossil-based 
society, a transition requires that there be a path forward 
that is sensible for your economy, and sensible, really, 
technologically. And so we got a lot of work to do there.
    I feel strongly when it comes to the five-year plan that 
the administration has to move, and move quickly to finalize a 
plan that keeps at least the current acreage available for 
offshore leasing, including in my state, that your proposed 
plan included the option of holding no-lease sale at all, which 
I think that that is unacceptable, for the Department to even 
consider a five-year plan that would include no-lease sales. I 
just don't think makes sense. And I think it is actually 
harmful to our economy and our national security.
    The national interest demands the administration avoid a 
costly gap in leasing, and that it conducts offshore sales. So 
I want to see annual sales in Cook Inlet, not one sale every 5 
years. Failure to have meaningful oil and gas programs, 
including in the 1002 area where the administration is 
illegally disregarding the law, will reduce domestic investment 
at the worst possible time for our country, and for our global 
allies.
    I think the President needs to focus on places like Alaska, 
not Saudi Arabia, not Venezuela, not Iran, and then work with 
us to achieve just that.
    So I have said before, Madam Secretary, Alaska is willing, 
and able, and ready to increase our Nation's and our allies 
energy security. All we really need is permission from the 
Federal Government to get moving, get those permits, and we are 
there.
    Another area where I am hoping to see progress with the 
administration is in its commitment to mineral development. I 
do appreciate the President's invocation of the Defense 
Production Act, and the Department's budget request to support 
critical mineral efforts.
    I think, again, making sure that we are focusing on supply, 
where we have the supply, and we certainly have that in this 
country, matters. Domestic supply matters to our energy 
security, it also matters to our mineral security. And like oil 
and gas one of the keys here to meeting this challenge is for 
the Department to actually make mine permit determinations in a 
timely manner.
    We have heard, not only in this committee, but we have 
certainly heard in the Energy Committee, that if we want to be 
competitive globally, if we want to be a producer and not just 
an importer, we cannot afford for it to take 10 years to permit 
a mine on public land.
    So I want to work with the Department to ensure that our 
vast potential is realized in Alaska, whether it is gold, or 
silver, or copper, all of our critical minerals, but it seems 
that for every step forward we take on policy, we are taking 
two steps backwards on projects. Perfect example of that is the 
Ambler Access Road, just kind of stunning that the 
administration has openly conflicted its commitment to supply 
chain security, and deliberately set back one of its best 
options to improve it.
    Ambler has a guaranteed right-of-way under a 1980 law, 
under ANILCA, that the Federal Government has to abide by. I do 
understand, of course, the need for tribal consultation, I 
strongly support it, but that can occur even as Access Project 
continues.
    So telling Ambler to stop all work and lose the field 
season I think is a ridiculous approach that undermines any 
credibility the administration may be seeking on mineral 
security. What we need here is a strategic focus to reduce our 
dependence on China and Russia, other adversarial nations, but 
not an incoherent approach on minerals.
    So Madam Secretary, to an area that I think we have much 
more agreement on, and that is working together to provide 
resources to our tribal communities, whether we are talking 
about public safety, and justice, natural resources, 
construction programs, working with our tribes throughout 
Alaska, and in Indian Country, I think that this has been one 
of those areas where we do have bipartisan support. We do have 
bicameral priority.
    We know that the appropriations process is never quick, it 
is never easy, but as we work through the process I do think it 
is important for us to continue this bipartisan approach to 
these issues to ensure high priority program areas like PL280 
programs are funded.
    And then I want to wrap my remarks by thanking you for 
coming to Alaska to hear from so many Alaskans. The trip that 
you took to not only visit with people who came to Anchorage to 
meet with you, the meetings that you had, but also your travels 
to see first-hand some of the unique challenges and 
opportunities.
    I think this is particularly illustrated by our visit to 
King Cove, and your opportunity to hear from residents about 
the critical need for a life-saving road. So I do appreciate 
that, and value the time that you gave us for that.
    So as you consider this and other Alaska-specific issues, I 
hope you will build upon the experience that you had on the 
ground, and consider the views of those most directly impacted 
by departmental decisions.
    I know that there are many areas where you and I just--we 
don't see eye-to-eye on some of these matters related to 
Alaska, but I appreciate your willingness to work with me on 
areas that we do have agreement. And I am ever hopeful that as 
you are continuing to hear from Alaskans, you will come to 
understand our state and the potential that it has really as an 
economic center, and what we can provide and contribute for 
energy and mineral security, while at the same time an equal 
priority is to protect and care for our lands and our people.
    We need a lot from the Department, more than we are getting 
right now, but thank you. Thank you for being here.
    Mr. Chairman, I appreciate a little indulgence with the 
length of time in the opening, but much to be said this 
morning.
    Thank you, Madam Secretary. Thank you, Mr. Chairman,
    Senator Merkley. Thank you very much to our Ranking Member 
Senator Murkowski.
    And Madam Secretary, the responsibilities that your 
Department has create many challenging decision points, and the 
Senate at its best, is a chance for senators to articulate 
their visions that come from their personal experience in their 
home states. You have heard a little bit of the diversity of 
opinion this morning, and I think that is a very--a healthy 
thing for a hearing to be able to express those opinions and 
thoughts. And the administration now gets to wrestle with them.
    With that, we are looking forward to your opening 
statement. Thank you.

                   SUMMARY STATEMENT HON. DEB HAALAND

    Secretary Haaland. Thank you, Chairman, and Ranking Member 
Murkowski, and members of the subcommittee. It is an honor and 
a privilege for me to be here on the ancestral homelands of the 
Anacostan and Piscataway people, to speak with you today on 
behalf of the President's 2023 Budget for the Department of the 
Interior.
    Before I begin, I want to acknowledge that you and your 
staffs are busy with your markup of the Interior Bill. I 
sincerely appreciate all of the work that all of you are doing 
to support the critical missions of our Department, and I and 
my staff appreciate the opportunity to assist you in any way 
that we can throughout this process.
    I also want to thank you for your support of Interior's 
programs in the 2022 Omnibus Appropriation. I appreciate your 
efforts to build capacity within the Department, and to fully 
fund our fixed costs which are our must-pay bills. I have had 
the honor of being Secretary of the Interior for over a year 
now and I recognize the importance of this moment for the 
future of the Department and for our country.
    Through my travels, and while working in Washington, D.C., 
I have seen firsthand how every single day in every corner of 
our country our employees go to work with a focus on results. 
They work with their local communities, with states, with 
tribal nations, and other partners, to conserve and steward our 
Nation's natural resources and cultural heritage for the 
benefit of everyone.
    Interior's programs are helping generate jobs, grow the 
economy, and build resilience to the challenges of our changing 
climate. Just last week Assistant Secretary Estenoz and I 
viewed the devastating flood damage in Yellowstone National 
Park, and we met with Senator Tester, Senator Daines, and 
Governor Gianforte, and other local leaders, to discuss ways 
Interior can repair the damage and restore access to the park.
    I am grateful, over the past year, to have visited many of 
you in your states and meet the great people that you 
represent. The work we do would not be possible without your 
leadership and support. And I look forward to our continued 
partnership. Working together, we can make tangible differences 
in the lives of families across the country.
    With your support we have already made great progress. In 
the last year, we took steps to accelerate the development of 
renewable energy on public lands and waters, we launched the 
Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative to address the 
intergenerational impacts of Indian Boarding School policy. We 
deployed resources to build resilience to address the drought 
crisis, we pursued justice for missing and murdered indigenous 
people, and worked to keep tribal communities safe, and help 
communities prepare against the threat of wildfire by 
strengthening our Federal firefighting workforce and the 
resilience of our lands.
    We also began implementing the Bipartisan Infrastructure 
Law, a once-in-a-generation investment that will help 
communities to tackle the climate crisis while creating jobs, 
advancing environmental justice, and boosting local economies.
    This funding is already at work at Interior kick-starting 
ongoing efforts to address intensifying drought, wildfires, 
flooding, and legacy pollution.
    The President's 2023 Budget complements this with a request 
of $18.1 billion for the Interior Department. Of this, $16.6 
billion is within the jurisdiction of this subcommittee. Our 
total request is a 12 percent increase from the 2022 enacted 
appropriation.
    Specifically, the President's budget invests in our country 
with an unprecedented total of $4.5 billion for Indian Affairs 
programs, focused on tribal sovereignty, and stronger tribal 
communities. Up to $1.5 billion for wildland fire management to 
increase firefighting capacity, continue the transformation to 
a more permanent and professional wildland fire workforce, and 
ensure Federal firefighters are paid at least $15 an hour.
    A total of $4.9 billion across Interior to strengthen 
natural resource management, and improve the resilience of 
tribal and Interior managed lands, $125 million to advance the 
President's ambitious clean energy goals, by increasing 
offshore wind energy power generation, and permitting of 
onshore renewable energy technologies.
    More than $1.4 billion for research and development 
programs across the Department to ensure science continues to 
underpin Interior's core mission activities, and implementation 
of our Department-wide Diversity, Equity Inclusion, And 
Accessibility Initiative to proactively advance equity, civil 
rights, racial justice, and equal opportunity.
    I have great ambitions for the Department of the Interior 
and what we can accomplish on behalf of the American people. 
Working together we can do more to create good-paying union 
jobs, increase the resilience of our lands, expand our ability 
to fight wildland fires, and mitigate drought, strengthen 
tribal nations, and improve the lives of Americans everywhere. 
I look forward to continuing our strong partnership.
    In conclusion, we are doing our part to advance priorities 
that build a better America. Thank you, again, for having me, 
and our budget director, Denise Flanagan. We are happy to 
answer any questions that you may have.
    [The statement follows:]
                   Prepared Statement of Deb Haaland
    Chair Merkley, Ranking Member Murkowski and Members of the 
Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of 
the Interior Department's fiscal year 2023 Budget Request.
    It is an honor and privilege for me to be here with you today. When 
I testified before this Committee last year I had only been confirmed 
for a few months. Now that I have had the opportunity to spend a year 
at Interior it is even more of an honor to represent the Department and 
our over seventy thousand dedicated professionals. Every day, in every 
corner of the country, our workforce shows up with a singular focus on 
achieving results. They work with
    States, Tribal Nations, and other partners to conserve and steward 
the Nation's natural resources and cultural heritage for the benefit, 
use, and enjoyment of the American people. Interior's programs are 
helping to generate jobs, grow the economy, and build resilience to the 
challenges of our changing climate.
    I have also enjoyed working with the Members of this Subcommittee 
this year. I have had the honor to visit many of you in your States and 
to meet the great people you represent. I look forward to continuing 
Interior's long tradition of working together with the Interior 
Appropriations Subcommittee to accomplish great things for the American 
people. This Subcommittee plays a vital role in the success of the 
Department of the Interior (DOI) and I look forward to our continued 
collaboration.
                     overview of interior's budget
    Interior's budget request totals $18.1 billion in current 
authority, of which $16.6 billion is within the jurisdiction of this 
Subcommittee. The total budget request is an increase of $1.9 billion, 
or 12 percent, from the 2022 enacted appropriation. This request 
includes an increase of $269.0 million to cover fixed-cost increases, 
such as rent and Federal salary adjustments, needed to maintain 
staffing and core operations for the bureaus and offices funded through 
the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriation. An 
additional $340.0 million is accessible through the budget cap 
adjustment for wildfire suppression to ensure funds are available in 
the event the annual appropriation is inadequate to meet suppression 
needs.
    The 2023 President's Budget request complements the landmark 2021 
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) investments we are now 
implementing. This once in a lifetime investment provides the 
significant down payment needed to address longstanding health and 
safety risks from abandoned coal mines and oil and gas infrastructure 
across the country. These investments are increasing the resilience of 
critical ecosystems, Tribal Nations, and communities to meet the 
challenges of critical drought and threats of wildland fires, which 
pose unprecedented risks across the country.
    The 2023 President's Budget for Interior complements this 
investment and maintains the Administration's commitments to deliver 
jobs and economic growth, build up America's resilience to climate 
change, advance a transition to clean energy, strengthen the Nation-to- 
Nation relationship with Tribal Nations, and expand work with partners 
to conserve lands and increase access to outdoor recreation. 
Overarching these, the 2023 budget continues to reflect the importance 
of science, diversity and inclusion, and the goal to leverage the power 
of collaboration to support Interior's important missions.
    The 2023 President's Budget proposes allocations for important 
mandatory funding investments available through the Great American 
Outdoors Act (GAOA), including $1.6 billion for deferred maintenance 
projects through the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration 
Fund (LRF) in the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), U.S. Fish and 
Wildlife Service (FWS), National Park Service (NPS), and the Bureau of 
Indian Education (BIE). The 2023 budget allocates $681.9 million in 
mandatory funding for Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) programs, 
which includes $294.8 million for voluntary land acquisition projects.
    The 2023 budget proposes important legislative and technical 
adjustments to secure mandatory funding for important funding for 
Tribal Nations. In addition, the Administration supports funding the 
renewal of our Compacts of Free Association (COFA) relationships with 
the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the Republic of the Marshall 
Islands (RMI), and the Republic of Palau. Financial assistance under 
the COFA is scheduled to end after 2023 for the FSM and the RMI and in 
2024 for Palau. The Administration will request necessary mandatory 
funding to be appropriated to the Department of State, with language 
calling for continued implementation by the Department of the Interior. 
The United States remains committed to its longstanding partnerships 
with the governments and the people of the Freely Associated States as 
we work together to promote a free and open Indo-Pacific.
                      strengthening tribal nations
    It is deeply meaningful for me to speak on behalf of the 
Administration's 2023 budget for the Department of the Interior which 
includes an unprecedented total of $4.5 billion for Indian Affairs 
programs. This is an increase of $880 million from the recently enacted 
2022 appropriation and the request prioritizes Tribal sovereignty, 
strong Tribal communities, and advances equity and opportunity for all 
American Indians and Alaska Natives.
    The 2023 request reflects the input of Tribal Nations through the 
Tribal Interior Budget Council as well as the government-wide Tribal 
consultation on the President's fiscal year 2023 Budget held by the 
Administration last September. The budget expands many core programs 
and goes further to address outstanding gaps to improve environmental 
quality and ensure Tribal communities are part of the national 
priorities to address climate change and move toward clean energy. The 
2023 President's Budget also expands the inclusion of Tribes in 
proposed investments across other Federal agencies and across Interior.
    The 2023 budget request for Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) programs 
totals $2.8 billion, an increase of $583.4 million from the 2022 
enacted appropriation. The BIA budget features investments to address 
the most critical needs in Indian Country, foremost among these is 
upholding the Federal trust relationship with Tribal Nations and 
strengthening the government- to-government relationship. Within this 
request is $464.5 million to cover the estimated 2023 requirements for 
Contract Support Costs and 105(l) Tribal lease requirements which the 
Administration proposes to reclassify as mandatory funding in 2023. 
This proposal honors the Administration's commitment to ensure 
continued full funding to support Tribal operating costs associated 
with the self-determination and self-governance of Federal programs. I 
look forward to working with Congress to secure this mandatory funding 
for Tribal Nations.
    The budget also proposes legislation to complement the $2.5 billion 
investment in the BIL which will accelerate completion of enacted 
Indian Water Rights Settlements. This mandatory investment is reflected 
in the 2023 request for BIA Indian Land and Water Rights Claims.
    Additionally, the 2023 budget proposes $340.0 million in mandatory 
funding over 10 years to support the operations, maintenance, and 
repairs associated with enacted Bureau of Reclamation Indian Water 
Rights Settlements. The Administration is also interested in working 
with Congress on an approach to provide a mandatory funding source for 
future settlements.
                    investing in tribal communities
    The 2023 budget for BIA features an investment of $44.7 million to 
strengthen Tribal communities by expanding the Tiwahe Initiative to 
provide more opportunity for Tribes to manage and integrate programs 
which impact their communities. Under Tiwahe, a portion of the funding 
assists Tribes at selected sites to implement a Tribal driven approach 
to deliver services more effective and efficiently. Tiwahe facilitates 
collaboration within Tribal communities-- which can help to leverage 
resources, share expertise, reduce duplication, and exchange 
information about families' needs--to formulate the most responsive 
approaches to provide services. Since 2015, the Tiwahe Initiative has 
focused primarily on promoting family stability through several Human 
Services programs. The Department's 2023 budget expands Tiwahe in 
Social Services, the Indian Child Welfare Act, and establishes new 
programs in Tribal Justice Support, and Economic Development programs.
    The new Tiwahe program in Tribal Justice Support will assist Tribes 
as they work to strengthen Tribal justice practices and protocols to 
meet the child, youth, or adult needs within their communities. The new 
program features support for Tribal Healing and Wellness Courts as 
alternatives to incarceration. The Tiwahe program in Economic 
Development will support Tribal development of unique solutions 
tailored to their communities to create economic opportunity. Including 
an economic development component of Tiwahe was a priority request from 
the Tribal Interior Budget Council for the 2023 budget.
    The 2023 budget includes $562.1 million for Public Safety and 
Justice programs and $70.3 million for Public Safety Construction, for 
a total of $632.4 million to address these needs. The combined increase 
is $38.3 million above the 2022 enacted appropriation. The 2023 request 
includes $282.4 million for boots-on-the-ground police services, $127.0 
million for the operation of Detention and Corrections programs, and 
$52.7 million to support Tribal Courts. This funding includes $32.0 
million to address increased requirements of Tribes impacted by the 
McGirt Decision, and $10.0 million to equip BIA funded law enforcement 
officers with body- worn cameras as part of a DOI-wide effort. The 2023 
budget includes $16.5 million to address the crisis of Missing and 
Murdered Indigenous People.
    BIA's budget includes additional investments in Tribal communities 
in areas such as Tribal climate resilience, clean energy, road 
maintenance, environmental quality projects, Tribal broadband grants, 
and funding to raise the minimum Small Tribe Supplement payment for 
existing eligible Tribes in this program. The budget also proposes key 
investments to strengthen Tribal sovereignty of their homelands with 
$14.8 million for the acquisition of new Tribal lands and $80 million 
for Indian land consolidation to address the ongoing fractionation on 
Indian lands. These investments are paired with proposed language to 
clarify Federal recognition requirements for land into Trust cases in 
light of the Carcieri v. Salazar.
    The 2023 budget request includes $7.0 million to continue the 
progress made with the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative 
launched in June 2021. Interior is uniquely positioned to assist in the 
effort to recover this history. Interior has focused initial efforts of 
the initiative on Tribal outreach, collection and review of Department 
documents and records, and compilation of existing data in the 
Department's jurisdiction. Funding in 2023 will support additional 
outreach, research, and documentation to locate potential gravesites at 
former school locations and to help ensure the remains of those who are 
found are identified and protected. Additional resources are included 
in the budget to increase funding for Native language grants, which are 
essential to revitalizing this critical component of Native culture.
                       advancing indian education
    The 2023 budget includes $1.6 billion for Indian Education 
programs, an increase of $294 million above the 2022 enacted level. 
Native students face stark inequities in access to education, many of 
which were highlighted and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. To 
help address this gap, the budget invests a total of $891.5 million, an 
increase of $98.3 million above the 2022 enacted level for BIE-funded 
elementary and secondary school programs. This includes $500.6 million 
for the Indian Student Equalization Program formula funds, which 
provide the primary support for academic activities in the classroom, 
instructional services, and teacher training, recruitment, and 
retention. The budget includes $146.4 million to operate and maintain 
BIE-funded schools and fully funds the estimated requirement for Tribal 
Grant Support costs to cover administrative costs for Tribes that 
choose to operate BIE-funded schools. The 2023 budget also features 
specific investments, including $23.0 million to maintain support for 
distance learning and enhanced technology at BIE schools and $4.0 
million for Native language immersion programs.
    The budget includes $185.2 million for postsecondary schools and 
programs, an increase of $20.7 million above 2022 enacted. This 
includes $131.7 million for Haskell Indian Nations University and 
Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, Tribal Colleges, 
Universities, and Technical Colleges and $53.5 million for expanded 
Tribal scholarships and adult education programs.
    Addressing BIE-funded school facilities that are in poor condition 
and deferred maintenance backlogs at more than 180 schools in the BIE 
school system continues to be a top priority for the Department. The 
2023 budget includes $420.1 million in annual funding for Education 
Construction, an increase of $155.8 million above the 2022 enacted 
appropriation. An additional $95.0 million in mandatory funding through 
the GAOA will also be available in 2023. The continued emphasis on BIE 
school infrastructure conditions has produced tangible results, with 
four new campuses opened to students in 2021 and another three schools 
to be completed in 2022. The 2023 requested increase will support 
planning, design, and construction for six BIE replacement school 
projects.
         addressing climate challenges and building resilience
    Interior has unique responsibilities on behalf of our country to 
steward many of our lands, waters, and natural resources; provide 
essential scientific information about those resources; and uphold the 
Nation's commitments to American Indians and Alaska Natives. As such, 
Interior's programs inherently include a focus on the climate crisis. 
Similar to farmers, ranchers, community planners, and disaster 
preparedness professionals across the country, Interior land and 
resource managers are seeing climate-related changes on the ground and 
are working to address them. Worsening drought, increased weather 
risks, more extreme wildfires, profound threats to wildlife habitats, 
warming water temperatures, and new threats from invasive species are 
among the tangible challenges land and resource managers face right 
now.
    The 2023 budget recognizes that Interior plays a crucial role in 
the whole-of-government approach to tackling climate change. The 2023 
budget continues funding for the immediate challenges of the changing 
climate while laying the foundation to build America's resilience and 
promoting economic growth, creating good-paying jobs, and ensuring that 
40 percent of the benefits of certain climate and clean energy 
investments accrue to disadvantaged communities.
                            water challenges
    The effects of the current drought conditions in the West are 
severe and long lasting, and a full recovery will take years. The 
challenges these communities are facing now will likely continue 
through 2023. Drought analyses, combined with projections of future 
hydroclimate conditions, suggest that overall, drought severity and 
duration will increase across the West in the coming century. A growing 
risk to effective water management in the western United States is 
climate change. The BIL provides $8.3 billion for the Bureau of 
Reclamation to invest over 5 years to build up America's ability to 
address pervasive drought conditions in the West. This work is underway 
with States, Tribes, and communities in the most drought-affected 
geographic areas to ensure predictable and sustainable water supplies.
    Complementing this transformative investment, the 2023 budget 
before the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee 
includes $1.4 billion for Reclamation programs and projects. This 
request supports a suite of water conservation, recycling, and planning 
programs to help communities mitigate drought and climate change 
impacts. The 2023 budget includes $62.4 million for Reclamation's 
WaterSMART (Sustain and Manage America's Resources for Tomorrow) 
programs, which work cooperatively with States, Tribes, and local 
communities as they plan for and implement actions to increase water 
supply.
    The Reclamation budget includes additional investments to support 
drought-impacted areas of the West. For example, $11.5 million is 
requested for the Lower Colorado River Operations Program to implement 
drought contingency plans and response actions to maintain elevations 
at Lake Mead. Another $2.0 million is requested for water 
infrastructure investments along the Texas border, and $5.0 million of 
the request within the Central Valley Project in California is specific 
to drought planning and resiliency efforts that will be implemented in 
coordination with the California Department of Water Resources.
                        wildland fire management
    In the United States, on average, more than 62,000 wildfires burn 
7.5 million acres every year. In 2021, Interior's wildfire managers saw 
that the intensity of fires increased earlier in the year and required 
elevated levels of fire preparedness for longer periods. The Nation 
remained at Preparedness Level 4 or 5 for a record 99 consecutive days, 
requiring a significant commitment of firefighters and firefighting 
resources over an extended period. Communities and wildland 
firefighters across the West felt the devastating impacts of these 
changing fire patterns.
    The 2023 budget request for the Wildland Fire Management (WFM) 
account is $1.2 billion, an increase of $173.5 million above the 2022 
enacted appropriation. An additional $340.0 million in wildfire 
suppression resources is available in the Wildfire Suppression 
Operations Reserve Fund, as authorized by the Consolidated 
Appropriations Act, 2018 (Public Law 115-141) to ensure the 
availability of sufficient funds above the appropriated amount for 
suppression in the event of a severe fire season.
    The 2023 budget includes $477.2 million for Preparedness, an 
increase of $106.6 million above the 2022 enacted appropriation. This 
request will enable Interior to increase firefighting capacity, 
continue the transformation to a more permanent and professional 
wildland fire workforce, and support pay and compensation reforms, 
including the President's commitment that Federal firefighters are paid 
at least $15 per hour. The budget proposes $304.3 million for Fuels 
Management and $20.5 million for Burned Area Rehabilitation. The budget 
request for Fuels Management will enable Interior to increase the pace 
and scale of fuel treatments by proactively addressing wildfire risk on 
Federal and Tribal lands and reducing carbon emissions. This 
discretionary request complements the $218.6 million investment in 
Fuels Management and Burned Area Rehabilitation available through the 
BIL in 2023 to address the significant need for this work. The budget 
funds Suppression Operations at $383.7 million, in accordance with 
Division O of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018 (Public Law 
115-141).
                     building resilient communities
    Communities across the country are considering the changing climate 
not only as in the context of disaster preparedness but also as they 
plan long-term infrastructure and program investments. Interior 
programs support these efforts in a variety of ways. USGS manages the 
Groundwater and Streamflow Information Program, which maintains a 
nationwide network of streamflow and water-level information from more 
than 11,000 sites. The budget includes $117.0 million for this program, 
an increase of $6.4 million above the 2022 enacted appropriation. The 
information from the network is available online to help natural 
resource managers, scientists, and emergency managers across the 
country with monitoring for floods and drought and with forecasting 
water availability for natural resources and crops. The budget also 
includes $60.9 million for the USGS Coastal and Marine Hazards and 
Resources Program, an increase of $19.1 million above the 2022 enacted 
appropriation, to expand work providing information that informs long- 
and short-term planning and mitigation of the impacts of climate change 
to the Nation's coastlines.
    The budget includes $61.0 million for Interior's Tribal Climate 
Resilience program, an increase of $32.0 million above the 2022 enacted 
level. This funding supports Tribes in climate resilience planning, 
assessment, and adaptation activities and planning and design work for 
Tribal communities evaluating the need for or pursuing climate-related 
relocation. The budget includes $117.3 million for Assistance to 
Territories, which supports the Insular Areas through the provision of 
basic services as well as targeted investments related to climate 
change, including $3.5 million for work related to coral reef 
ecosystems and other natural resource needs and $15.5 million for clean 
energy projects and grid infrastructure improvements, an increase of 
$4.5 million above the 2022 enacted appropriation.
    The 2023 budget for USGS includes $10.0 million to support a 
climate information portal. The portal would integrate climate-relevant 
Federal data, tools, and information to help Tribal, State, and local 
governments; communities; and commercial entities understand potential 
climate- related hazards and guide infrastructure investment decisions 
and other efforts to build resilience to extreme events equitably and 
inclusively. Entities could use this research enterprise portal to 
explore the potential impact of climate hazards among human 
populations, economies, and built and natural environments; assess 
vulnerability and risk and determine which risks require actions; 
evaluate and evolve building standards and designs to help ensure that 
new infrastructure and capital improvement projects are climate 
resilient; and prepare climate impact assessments.
                          resource stewardship
    The 2023 budget includes increases to strengthen natural resource 
management across the Department to improve the resilience of Tribal 
lands and the lands Interior manages. The 2023 budget includes $4.9 
billion across Interior to support the restoration, conservation, and 
improvements needed for healthier lands, waters, and ecosystems and 
their resident species. Healthier lands are more resilient to the 
effects of the changing climate, and investments that are made now will 
help ensure the unique and spectacular lands and resources Interior 
manages endure for future generations.
    The 2023 budget proposes significant increases in the Bureau of 
Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, 
and the National Park Service for resource stewardship programs which 
are at the heart of Interior's mission. The budget includes $553.0 
million for resource stewardship programs in the National Park Service, 
an increase of $170.9 million from the 2022 enacted appropriation. This 
additional funding will help to build capacity within the national 
parks to address natural resource challenges, expand youth and job 
program partnerships through the Civilian Climate Corps to restore 
national park resources, and invest in inventorying and monitoring to 
support proper stewardship of park ecosystems and species.
    Across Interior, the 2023 budget includes $174.2 million to address 
invasive species, including targeted early detection and rapid response 
efforts. Invasive plants and animals outcompete native species, disrupt 
ecosystem function and deplete resources, exacerbate hazards such as 
fire and landslides, damage infrastructure, and spread wildlife and 
human disease. In addition, the Administration supports congressional 
efforts to amend Title 18 of the Lacey Act to return the longstanding 
authority of FWS to prohibit interstate transport of injurious species. 
Recent incidences of injurious species, such as invasive mussels 
contaminating commercial products, demonstrate the need to restore this 
authority.
                  the america the beautiful initiative
    Interior plays a critical role in helping the Administration's 
America the Beautiful initiative meet the President's ambitious goal to 
work with States, Tribes, Territories, private landowners, local 
communities, and other partners to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands 
and waters by 2030 to help address the climate crisis and its impacts 
on nature. This initiative will help strengthen the economy, address 
the interconnected climate and biodiversity crises, and advance 
environmental justice and people's access to nature.
    The America the Beautiful initiative features partnerships like the 
recently launched Task Force on Collaborative Conservation which 
includes Interior, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Western 
Governors Association. The Task Force will work to enhance 
collaboration across Federal, State, and local jurisdictions to support 
cross-boundary coordination on issues such as wildfire mitigation, 
invasive species control, and habitat restoration, and support the 
voluntary stewardship effects of ranchers, farmers, and other private 
landowners to keep working lands working.
    Building on the conservation efforts of the previous 
Administration, Interior is working to further the goals of Secretary's 
Order 3362 to enhance migration corridors and winter range for elk, 
mule deer, and pronghorns in the West; this work includes a grant 
program, administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, for 
projects that improve big game habitat through voluntary efforts on 
private and Tribal lands.
    In 2023, America the Beautiful builds on these efforts and other 
broadly supported actions to advance land and water conservation in a 
manner that is locally led, is guided by science, honors Tribal trust 
and sovereignty, and is respectful of landowners. The implementation of 
this initiative continues to rely on broad engagement, including that 
of hunters, anglers, outdoor enthusiasts, private landowners, Tribal 
Nations, States, territories, and local officials. These important 
partners and stakeholders drive the strategies that reflect the 
priorities of all communities.
    In 2023, through the Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance 
Program, NPS will provide free, on-location help to communities working 
to create and restore parks and conservation areas. Completed projects 
have helped restore rivers, wildlife habitat, and impaired resources 
and have improved outdoor recreation opportunities to meet changing 
demands. Through Tribal Climate Adaptation Grants, BIA supports Tribes 
and Tribal organizations with planning, capacity building, and actions 
to address climate risks. With climate change disproportionately 
affecting the Arctic and northern areas of the United States, the 
program's planning and data development awards alone are estimated to 
benefit more than 440,000 Alaska Native people.
    The 2023 budget invests across the Department to support 
partnerships that encourage conservation. For example, FWS includes 
funding to broaden support for habitat restoration on private lands 
that are located along migration corridors and waterways through 
Candidate Conservation Agreements with partners. The budget includes 
$20.4 million for the Candidate Conservation program and $67.4 million 
for the FWS Partners for Fish and Wildlife program, which assists 
private landowners who are interested in restoring and enhancing 
wildlife habitat on their lands.
       creating jobs to meet environmental and energy challenges
    Interior programs supported an estimated 1.9 million jobs in the 
U.S. economy in 2019, according to the most recent Department of the 
Interior Economic Contributions Report. Those jobs were driven 
primarily by Interior's work in the areas of energy and minerals, 
recreation and tourism, irrigation and other water-related activities, 
and grants and payments. Interior's 2023 budget continues these core 
activities and includes additional investments that complement funding 
made available through the GAOA and the BIL, which are targeted to 
boost economic and job growth. The President's Budget proposes growth 
in areas that position the country to be more competitive in the 
changing economy and environment.
                    clean energy jobs of the future
    Interior is working hard to meet the President's ambitious goal to 
deploy 30 gigawatts (GW; 30,000 megawatts [MW]) of offshore wind energy 
by 2030 to fight climate change and create nearly 80,000 jobs. To 
provide context for the Administration's ambitious wind energy goal, 
earlier this year, I commemorated the groundbreaking of the second 
commercial-scale offshore energy project approved for Federal waters, 
which will have the capacity to generate 130 MW of wind energy--enough 
to power more than 70,000 homes and businesses. The South Fork wind 
energy project will be located offshore Rhode Island and New York. In 
addition, nine additional project reviews were initiated in the first 
year of the Biden-Harris Administration.
    As of July 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) 
oversees 27 active commercial wind energy leases in the Atlantic Outer 
Continental Shelf (OCS), initiated the review of 10 offshore wind 
projects on those leases, and approved the Nation's first two 
commercial projects off of Massachusetts and New York, which will be 
built with union labor. BOEM plans to complete the review of 14 
additional projects by 2025, representing 25 GW of new, renewable 
energy for the Nation. BOEM held the New York Bight offshore wind sale 
on February 23, 2022, offering six lease areas covering more than 
488,000 acres for potential wind energy development. The sale resulted 
in winning bids from six companies totaling $4.37 billion, which was 
the Nation's highest grossing competitive offshore energy lease sale in 
history, including oil and gas lease sales. BOEM also held an offshore 
wind lease sale in the Carolina Long Bay on May 11 for two lease areas, 
which sold for approximately $315 million. To continue progress on the 
leasing path I announced last fall, BOEM plans to hold the first 
offshore wind lease sale in the Pacific for areas off the central and 
northern coast of California before the end of the year.
    The Administration is actively working with States, Tribes, ocean 
users, and key stakeholders to plan sales in the Gulf of Mexico and 
offshore the U.S. Central Atlantic coast in 2023. Additional planning 
is underway for potential lease areas offshore Oregon and Hawaii and in 
the Gulf of Maine. The 2023 budget includes $51.7 million for BOEM's 
Renewable Energy programs and $7.7 million for the Bureau of Safety and 
Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) to establish an offshore renewable 
energy inspection and regulation program. Compared to the 2022 enacted 
appropriation, the 2023 request for these two programs combined is an 
increase of $18.6 million.
    Onshore, the Administration's clean energy goal is to permit 25 GW 
of renewable energy by 2025, as required by the Energy Act of 2020. 
Interior plays a central role in achieving this goal by carrying out 
environmental reviews for clean energy projects on our Nation's public 
lands, conducting meaningful consultations with Tribal Nations, and 
assessing potential impacts to species. To help achieve this goal, the 
2023 budget includes $49.7 million for BLM's Renewable Energy program, 
an increase of $18.7 million above the 2022 enacted appropriation, to 
expand the number of Renewable Energy Coordination Offices which 
specialize in permitting for renewable energy projects on public lands. 
To further improve coordination across the Government, Interior has 
signed a memorandum of understanding with the Departments of 
Agriculture, Defense, and Energy and the Environmental Protection 
Agency to streamline clean energy reviews. The BLM Resource Management 
Planning program also includes $11.0 million to support the siting of 
renewable energy projects on public lands.
    BLM has prioritized and is actively processing dozens of large-
scale renewable energy projects and transmission lines; as of June 
2022, the bureau is working to complete the environmental review and 
permitting for 64 utility-scale onshore clean energy projects proposed 
on public lands. This effort includes 48 solar projects, 3 wind 
projects, 9 geothermal projects, and 4 interconnecting gen-tie lines 
that are vital to the feasibility of clean energy projects proposed on 
non-Federal lands. Combined, the 64 projects have the potential 
capacity to add more than 41,000 MW of renewable energy to the western 
electric grid. BLM also has approximately 60 applications that are 
still under initial or preliminary review, and the bureau has been 
receiving additional wind and solar applications weekly.
    To facilitate the development of geothermal projects, the request 
includes $3.6 million for USGS to characterize and assess domestic 
geothermal energy resources and work with partners to advance 
technologies to utilize those resources. Geothermal resources are a 
significant source of renewable electric power in the western United 
States and, with recent advances in technology, are becoming a 
potential source of a large fraction of baseload electric power.
    To further support the achievement of clean energy goals, the 
Administration is working to accelerate the transition of Federal fleet 
of vehicles to 100 percent zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs). By leveraging 
the buying power of the Federal Government and transforming its fleet 
of more than 600,000 cars and trucks to an all-electric fleet, the 
Administration aims to accelerate America's industrial capacity to 
supply domestically produced ZEVs and electric batteries to create new 
good-paying jobs and address the climate crisis.
    Interior's fleet includes approximately 30,800 vehicles located 
across the country. Interior owns 70 percent of the vehicles, 80 
percent of which are light- to medium-duty trucks, vans, and sport 
utility vehicles. The 2023 budget includes $61.9 million to accelerate 
the transition of Interior's fleet to ZEVs. Funding will support either 
acquiring ZEVs within the owned fleet or transitioning to the General 
Services Administration's leased fleet, investing in the related 
charging infrastructure, and making plans and integrating those plans 
to effectively support the initiative.
                balancing the nation's energy portfolio
    The 2023 budget includes $476.6 million for oil and gas programs in 
BSEE, BOEM, and BLM, an increase of $63.7 million above the 2022 
enacted appropriation. The budget for BSEE includes $246.1 million for 
safety and environmental stewardship programs. The budget for BOEM 
provides $63.6 million for conventional energy programs to support OCS 
planning, leasing, and oversight, including inventorying oil and gas 
reserves, overseeing ongoing activities, ensuring adequate financial 
assurances for decommissioning liability and risk management, 
developing and implementing the National OCS Oil and Gas Leasing 
Program (National OCS Program), reviewing and administering oil and gas 
exploration and development plans as well as geological and geophysical 
permitting, and conducting economic analyses and resource evaluations.
    As required by section 18 of the OCS Lands Act, BOEM prepares the 
National OCS Program, which sets the schedule for proposed offshore oil 
and gas lease sales over a 5-year period. The National OCS Program is 
designed in a manner to best meet the Nation's energy needs while 
carefully considering factors to balance the potential for accessing 
oil and gas resources with the potential for adverse impacts from such 
activities.
    The 2023 budget includes $166.8 million for BLM's Oil and Gas 
Management program, including $51.0 million for inspection activities 
to be offset by an onshore inspection fee. The 2023 budget proposes to 
offset the cost of BLM's Oil and Gas Inspection Activities program from 
appropriations to revenue from a new inspection fee. In addition to 
administering oil and gas leasing and ensuring environmentally 
responsible development, the budget request will allow BLM to remediate 
legacy well sites in the National Petroleum Reserve--Alaska.
                 reclamation jobs in energy communities
    The BIL provides nearly $16.0 billion, mostly for States and 
Tribes, to reclaim abandoned coal mine lands and orphaned oil and gas 
wells across the country. Both important investments will support 
needed jobs, address environmental hazards and risks, and restore lands 
for other uses.
    The 2023 budget includes related--but not duplicative--funding to 
address reclamation needs not addressed through the BIL. The budget 
includes $65.0 million in the Energy Community Revitalization Program 
for abandoned hardrock or non-coal mine reclamation, which was 
authorized but not funded in the BIL. States and the Interstate Mining 
Compact Commission have indicated that abandoned hardrock mines can be 
found across the country, and many States do not have good inventories 
or strong programs to manage those sites. Interior has identified 
thousands of mines and features on its lands that pose safety risks and 
generate environmental contaminants. The 2023 program will include 
$33.0 million for assistance and support to States, $10.0 million for 
reclamation work on Tribal lands, and $17.0 million to address 
reclamation and restoration on Interior lands.
    BLM has estimated that more than 51,000 abandoned hardrock mines 
are on BLM lands, and of that number, 10 percent have environmental 
impacts and 95 percent pose physical safety risks. In recognition of 
the 150th anniversary of the Mining Law of 1872, the Department has 
established an Interagency Working Group to comprehensively review 
hardrock mine permitting and oversight on Federal lands to help ensure 
that mining operations adhere to strong social, environmental, and 
labor standards. As part of this whole-of-government effort, the 
Department will host extensive public input and comment sessions on 
potential hardrock mining reforms.
    To address the volume and complexity of abandoned hardrock mines on 
BLM lands, the 2023 budget includes $62.2 million for Abandoned Mine 
Lands (AMLs) and Hazardous Materials Management. The budget for the 
Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement (OSMRE) includes 
$115.0 million for AML Economic Revitalization grants. This funding 
allows coal communities in States and Tribes with the greatest amount 
of unfunded AML problems to leverage mine land reclamation with local 
economic development.
                             infrastructure
    Interior manages an infrastructure portfolio valued at more than 
$400.0 billion, which captures a variety of structures, including dams, 
storage buildings, and national icons. The Department is responsible 
for roughly 43,000 buildings, 100,000 miles of road, and 83,000 
structures. Interior's funding focuses significantly on the operations, 
maintenance, renewal, and modernization of infrastructure, which 
directly helps create jobs and benefit local economies.
    The 2023 budget includes more than $2.8 billion to address the 
Department's infrastructure operations, maintenance, renewal, and 
modernization needs. Interior's annual request for infrastructure 
funding is in addition to the estimated $1.6 billion in mandatory 
funding that is available to Interior each year through 2025 through 
the Legacy Restoration Fund included in the GAOA. These funds are 
available to address the Department's deferred maintenance backlog in 
NPS, FWS, BLM, and BIE schools. The U.S. Forest Service also receives 
up to $285 million in LRF funding each year.
    At the end of 2022, Interior's LRF program will have initiated 222 
projects touching all 50 States; Washington, DC; Puerto Rico; and the 
U.S. Virgin Islands. When completed, these projects are estimated to 
address $2.2 billion of Interior's deferred maintenance backlog, create 
an average of 18,000 jobs each year, and contribute an average of $1.9 
billion each year to the overall gross domestic product.
    The 2023 budget request reflects a change the National Park Service 
began in 2022 to transform its facilities condition assessment process. 
This transformation will provide a more streamlined, comprehensive, 
consistent, and timely identification of estimated repair needs to 
maintain the NPS asset portfolio, including how it reports deferred 
maintenance and repair (DM&R). The new approach reduces the burden on 
parks and supports a more operationally useful assessment of the 
condition of and estimated deferred maintenance requirements for the 
NPS asset portfolio. This approach will improve the allocation of NPS 
infrastructure investments. NPS will calculate DM&R needs for its 
assets using three components: parametric condition assessments, a 
commonly used tool, for industry-standard assets; Federal Highway 
Administration assessments for transportation assets; and work orders 
for most other assets.
    As NPS implements its process, Interior's other bureaus are 
exploring the lessons learned to improve their infrastructure 
investment processes. Historically, attention has focused on Interior's 
DM&R backlog as a proxy for infrastructure investment requirements, but 
mission fulfillment requirements also include operations, other 
maintenance, renewal, and modernization. This shift is part of an 
ongoing effort to manage Interior's assets to better direct limited 
resources to address more critical maintenance, renewal, or 
modernization needs. This approach aligns with Interior's longstanding 
investment criteria for asset management programs, which consider 
facility condition as merely one factor to ensure that assets can 
capably deliver mission requirements or other benefits.
                 balancing development and conservation
    Interior also plays a critical role in balancing conservation and 
the development needed for vibrant communities with strong economies. 
The 2023 budget includes $152.8 million for the FWS Ecological Services 
Planning and Consultation program to support reviews and permitting of 
clean energy and other infrastructure and development projects. These 
investments will help facilitate consultation and permitting required 
under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), including for ESA consultations 
required to implement the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. FWS works 
collaboratively with industry, agencies, Tribes, and other stakeholders 
to provide technical assistance that informs project development to 
help avoid, minimize, and mitigate impacts on wildlife and habitats. 
The budget also includes $12.3 million for the FWS Migratory Bird 
Management program to conduct activities to support development while 
protecting migratory birds, notably iconic bald and golden eagles. 
These investments in the Migratory Bird Management program will help 
modernize Interior's permitting process to access the latest scientific 
and energy technology information when evaluating development 
proposals.
                         civilian climate corps
    The Civilian Climate Corps (CCC) is an important Administration 
initiative that draws on America's strength to work together to 
revitalize public lands, waters, infrastructure, and communities--and, 
in doing so, create jobs. This initiative expands the Department's 
longstanding partnership, apprenticeship, and youth engagement programs 
to restore Interior's lands and waters, improve access to outdoor 
recreation, increase reforestation, and inventory cultural heritage and 
paleontology sites, among other activities. These programs provide job 
opportunities and experience, teach skills, provide a pathway to 
employment, contribute to the resilience of unique lands and resources, 
and reflect the diversity of America. The 2023 budget includes $60.0 
million to expand these programs, provide program participants with a 
living wage, and put more people to work restoring public lands.
    BIA has also established the Indian Youth Service Corps to conserve 
and protect Indigenous people's natural and cultural resources through 
maintenance, research, resilience, and mitigation. Program activities 
align Indigenous traditional cultural values with projects that provide 
sustainable benefits for program participants and Tribal communities. 
The program expands BIA's Pathways Internship Program, which targets 
American Indian and Alaska Native students for internships across seven 
BIA programs and complements the BIA CCC program.
          advancing and incorporating science across interior
    Science is integral to the accomplishment of Interior's core 
mission activities. The 2023 budget includes more than $1.4 billion for 
research and development programs across the Department, but the 
application of science is also essential in carrying out direct mission 
activities. FWS has integrated scientific information to help improve 
and streamline the environmental review process for Federal projects. 
The Consultation Package Builder leads agencies through development of 
biological assessments, and plans are in place to expand available data 
of species and their locations.
    Interior's natural resource managers rely on science every day as 
they gather, analyze, and apply inventorying and monitoring data to 
inform stewardship decisions. The ability to examine data regarding the 
status of lands, waters, ecosystems, and the resident species plays an 
increasingly important role in understanding and building resilience to 
the effects of climate change. The 2023 budget includes funding to 
support adaptative management and applied science within the operating 
accounts of BLM, FWS, and NPS.
    USGS is Interior's primary science organization, providing science 
and actionable information about natural hazards, natural resources, 
ecosystems and environmental health, mapping and land imaging, and the 
effects of climate change. The 2023 budget includes $147.1 million for 
applied science in species management and land management, directly 
supporting the work of Interior bureaus. USGS also supports a network 
of Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CASCs), which promote scientific 
collaboration to tackle regional climate science challenges. The budget 
includes $124.7 million for this work, which helps provide resource 
managers with the ability to integrate the best available science into 
everyday resource management. The newest CASC, hosted at the University 
of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment, will pay special attention 
to Tribal concerns and build off the unique and robust experience of 
Midwest Tribes with adaptation science and practice.
    USGS science plays an important role in addressing significant 
challenges that have substantial societal and environmental impacts. 
Frequently, USGS science is paired with resource management expertise 
in Interior bureaus as well as with other Federal and non-Federal 
partners. An example of this collaboration is USGS' role in ongoing 
governmentwide work to address the problem of invasive carp. USGS 
research in this area supports early detection, risk assessment, and 
development and assessment of tools to control the number of invasive 
carp. Removal efforts using a USGS-developed method in Barkley Lake, 
KY, removed tens of thousands of pounds of invasive silver and bighead 
carp. Research testing on the effectiveness of an acoustic deterrent 
system at Lock and Dam 19 on the Mississippi River will support efforts 
to stop the upstream expansion of invasive carp. Research on other 
deterrents, such as carbon dioxide, have proven effective against grass 
carp in laboratory tests. The 2023 budget includes $47.9 million to 
continue research on biological threats and invasive species, an 
increase of $7.5 million from the 2022 enacted appropriation.
 promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion of underserved communities
    The Administration is adopting a whole-of-government approach to 
advance equity, civil rights, racial justice, and equal opportunity. 
The Interior 2023 budget request supports the actions needed to 
recognize and redress inequities and to proactively advance diversity, 
equity, inclusion, and accessibility within the Department's workforce.
      strengthening interior's commitment to diversity and equity
    The 2023 budget includes $16.8 million as part of a Departmentwide 
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility initiative. Funding 
will be used to increase capacity in the bureaus and in the 
Department's Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Civil Rights; Office 
of Human Capital; and Office of Collaborative Alternative Dispute 
Resolution to:

  --Improve Interior's Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) adjudication, 
        investigations, and processing of final Department decisions 
        and increase EEO training across the Department;

  --Expand capacity for alternative dispute resolution and EEO 
        complaint mediation;

  --Assess hiring programs to eliminate barriers to effective and 
        inclusive recruitment; and

  --Ensure consistent and equal pay for equal work.

    In February 2022, I established the first-ever Diversity, Equity, 
Inclusion and Accessibility Council to prioritize equity and inclusion 
and to incorporate best practices into the Department's work across its 
many bureaus, programs, and services. The budget includes additional 
specific investments to expand the Office of Diversity within FWS and 
to establish an Office of Equity and Inclusion within BOEM.
    For far too long, environmental policy decisions have failed to 
adequately account for environmental injustice, including the 
disproportionate, disparate, and cumulative impacts pollution and 
climate change have on low-income communities and communities of color. 
To address those inequities, the Administration is working to implement 
the Justice40 initiative to ensure that 40 percent of overall benefits 
of certain Federal investments in climate and clean energy are directed 
to disadvantaged communities. Interior bureaus and offices have been 
working as part of governmentwide efforts to refine the criteria and 
metrics needed to implement this important initiative. The 2023 budget 
includes $4.0 million for dedicated staff and technical support to 
provide programmatic expertise, coordination, and outreach support 
across the Department. These additional resources will enable the 
Department to implement the Justice40 initiative while quantifying the 
benefits and positive impacts of Justice40-covered programs on 
disadvantaged communities across the country.
                    building a more inclusive agency
    Interior is also working to make our mission programs and services 
more inclusive of diverse and underserved communities. The 2023 budget 
includes targeted investments to better connect with and be more 
responsive to new audiences. Examples of this effort in the budget 
include the following:

  --The Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration program 
        includes $8.1 million to better address environmental justice 
        issues.

  --USGS includes $800,000 to enhance scientific capacity partnerships 
        through technical training internships with Tribes, Alaska 
        Native communities, and underserved communities.

  --FWS includes $4.0 million for an expanded Native American Programs 
        Coordination Office.

  --NPS includes $5.7 million to establish an Office of Native American 
        Affairs and support Tribal liaisons at national parks to 
        strengthen partnerships and improve coordination with Tribal 
        Nations and support the Native American Tourism and Improving 
        Visitor Experience (NATIVE) Act.

    The 2023 budget also expands ongoing programs that are working to 
connect new audiences to the outdoors and to Interior's mission 
activities. For example, the FWS budget includes $12.5 million for its 
Urban Wildlife Conservation program. This program leverages the 101 
national wildlife refuges that are within 25 miles of an urban area 
through local partnerships. The program helps to connect the refuges to 
their local communities through outreach and programming, creating 
opportunities for the 80 percent of Americans who are living in urban 
areas to benefit from time spent in nature.
    The NPS mission includes the preservation of America's cultural and 
historical resources. Including the cultural practices and history from 
across America in carrying out this mission is an important 
responsibility. The 2023 budget includes several important investments 
that reflect inclusion and diversity:

  --Support for the African American Civil Rights Network to present a 
        comprehensive narrative of the people, places, and events 
        associated with the African American Civil Rights movement--
        $5.4 million.

  --Historic Preservation Fund support for Historically Black Colleges 
        and Universities--$10.0 million.

  --Grants to Indian Tribes to support Tribal historic preservation 
        offices that preserve the distinct cultural heritage of 
        American Indian Tribes nationwide--$23.0 million.

  --Competitive historic preservation grants to support State and local 
        efforts to preserve sites that document the struggle for equal 
        opportunity for African Americans--$21.8 million.

  --Transfer of $3.3 million to the 400 Years of African American 
        History Commission for research and programs throughout the 
        United States to recognize and highlight the resilience and 
        cultural contributions of Africans and African Americans over 
        400 years.

  --Expanded capacity at more than 30 national park units that preserve 
        and tell the story of historically underrepresented and 
        marginalized groups or conduct programs that reach out to local 
        underserved communities.

  --Assessment and addressing of transportation barriers to National 
        Park System units from underserved communities--$5.0 million.

  --Establishment of the Park Accessibility for Visitors and Employees 
        Network--$5.0 million.
                        building agency capacity
    Interior is working to strengthen the Department moving forward and 
continuously improve the delivery of our mission programs and services 
to the American people. Efforts related to improving Interior's 
workforce and operations and better leveraging technology and 
information are underway across the Department.
                 workforce and operational improvements
    Interior's mission activities rely on a talented and dedicated 
workforce, and many bureau operations are labor intensive and complex. 
At the end of 2020, however, Interior's staffing was at a 10-year low, 
with 60,558 full-time equivalents (FTEs). Despite the pandemic, by the 
end of 2021, staffing had increased to 62,027 FTEs. When fully enacted, 
the Department's 2023 budget would support 68,133 FTEs.
    As the Department rebuilds its workforce, Interior is working to 
recruit, hire, and train the next generation of talented people who 
will reflect the diversity and strength of the United States. 
Complementing our diverse workforce, the Department is committed to 
providing the tools critical for success across Interior. DOI will 
regularly conduct equity assessments and pursue more meaningful 
engagement with underserved communities to make sure they are visible 
and considered during outreach and hiring efforts. The budget includes 
$2.3 million for Human Capital initiatives, which include the use of 
Talent Teams to strengthen recruitment and improve outreach to diverse 
candidates.
    With regard to the Wildland Fire Management workforce, Interior is 
working closely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest 
Service, and the Office of Personnel Management to ensure that Federal 
wildland firefighters receive pay that is competitive with the pay 
received by other firefighters. The 2023 budget continues to support a 
transition to a more permanent wildland fire workforce, with improved 
training and career development opportunities to encourage the 
retention of experienced and skilled staff members.
    To better support Interior's uniformed law enforcement efforts, the 
2023 budget includes $21.1 million to ensure that Interior law 
enforcement personnel have body-worn cameras and the associated data 
storage capability they need. The 2023 budget proposal would provide 
coverage for all Interior law enforcement officers.The Department 
continues its work to strengthen BLM's workforce, which experienced a 
significant loss of expertise during the 2019 reorganization of the 
bureau, when the BLM headquarters was moved from the Washington, DC, 
area to Grand Junction, CO. At that time, more than 80 percent of the 
employees in positions identified for relocation chose not to relocate, 
and many employees moved to positions outside BLM and Interior. BLM is 
working now with employees to rebuild a headquarters in Washington, DC, 
and to fully leverage the strengths of the western headquarters in 
Grand Junction, CO, and in BLM field offices across the West.
                 leveraging technology and information
    As part of a governmentwide initiative, the Department is working 
to incorporate a stronger analysis process through evidence-based 
program evaluations that rely on data. To improve data-management 
practices, the budget invests $2.3 million to increase transparency by 
establishing a robust data-management program, organizing data through 
an enterprise data registry. The budget also includes $4.3 million for 
an independent evaluation fund to support efforts to conduct 
independent evaluations of programs, initiatives, and processes across 
Interior. DOI will also develop and implement a Departmentwide 
Enterprise Risk Management program to better identify and address 
systemic risks across the agency. The 2023 budget includes an 
additional $700,000 to support evidence-based evaluations and risk-
management work across the Department.
    To better support this data-driven work, the 2023 budget includes 
$54.3 million to continue to modernize and enhance the Department's 
enterprise business management system, the Financial and Business 
Management System (FBMS). FBMS supports the administrative system's 
requirements across the Department for core accounting, budget 
execution, acquisition, aspects of financial assistance, real and 
personal property management, fleet management, travel integration, 
enterprise information management, and reporting.
    In 2023, the Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR) will invest 
$17.5 million for the next phase of its ongoing Information Technology 
(IT) Modernization effort, which will focus on the design, development, 
and implementation of the new system and the eventual decommissioning 
of the legacy financial system. ONRR ensures that revenue from Federal 
and Indian mineral leases is effectively, efficiently, and accurately 
collected, accounted for, analyzed, audited, and disbursed to 
recipients in a timely fashion. Revenue distributions, which totaled 
$8.8 billion in 2021, benefit States, Tribes, individual Indian mineral 
royalty owners, and U.S. Treasury accounts. IT Modernization will 
provide the capacity, flexibility, and agility to reduce long-term 
operations and maintenance costs, and it will strengthen the 
cybersecurity of Federal networks and critical infrastructure.
    In the area of law enforcement, the 2023 budget includes $11.0 
million to implement a unified Law Enforcement Records Management 
System (LERMS). With LERMS, Interior will be able to centralize law 
enforcement activities--including criminal investigations, jail 
management, and citation tracking--and securely transmit law 
enforcement records across the Department and other law enforcement 
agencies and courts. At present, data sharing between the two legacy 
law enforcement systems is limited, and systems are inaccessible in 
rural areas, such as at national parks that do not have cell service or 
the Internet and require officers to reenter handwritten paper ticket 
and report information at a computing device when a connection becomes 
available. The current systems do not have the capability to 
electronically transfer ticket information to the U.S. Courts or report 
mandatory data to the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation (FBI). By transitioning to a unified LERMS, the realized 
efficiencies and increased capabilities will allow DOI law enforcement 
officers to spend more time protecting people and resources and will 
promote accountability.
    Interior bureaus and offices use field communications to carry out 
critical operations, including law enforcement, wildland firefighting, 
land and resource management, scientific studies, and emergency 
management. The 2023 request includes $28.6 million to be distributed 
across BIA, NPS, FWS, USGS, and the Office of the Chief Information 
Officer (OCIO) to modernize field communications. This DOI Field 
Communications Modernization investment is part of a strategy to 
address needed upgrades in Interior's field communications systems to 
ensure more efficient and reliable voice communication and remote 
broadband connectivity to provide employees working in the field with 
voice, video, and data capabilities for all missions. In many 
locations, this deployment will enhance or replace voice-only, mid-
20th-century land mobile radio technology with technology that is 
cheaper to operate and maintain. Operations and maintenance costs may 
be significantly reduced, and communications capabilities will likely 
increase by assessing current capabilities and needs, leveraging 
current technological solutions, and seeking to deliver more cost-
effective cellular and satellite services.
    Interior is also investing in cybersecurity to ensure that the 
security and integrity of our systems are not compromised. In January 
2022, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, FBI, and 
National Security Agency encouraged all agencies to increase cyber 
resilience in light of elevated risk. Interior continues to pivot to 
keep pace with a dynamic cybersecurity environment and deploy needed 
mitigation tools and upgraded capabilities. The 2023 budget includes 
$44.3 million to address high-priority cyber defense requirements, 
better detect emerging threats, make needed improvements to Interior's 
IT networks, initiate supply chain risk management analysis, and 
maintain ongoing operations.
                               conclusion
    The 2023 President's Budget for Interior sets ambitious goals, but 
they are achievable. Working together, we have the opportunity to 
invest now to strengthen our Nation for all Americans, protect our 
environment, and ensure our future generations continue to not only 
enjoy, but improve our way of life. I look forward to doing this work 
together. Thank you again for having me, and I am pleased to answer any 
questions you may have.

    Senator Merkley. Thank you very much Madam Secretary. And 
we, without objection, will put your full testimony, written 
testimony into the record.
    I will begin rounds of questioning now, seven minutes, I 
will stop asking questions when my seven minutes are up, and I 
will ask everyone else to do the same so that we can make sure 
everyone gets a chance to make inquiries that are important to 
these issues across the country.
    Let me start with the Klamath Basin. The Klamath Basin in 
Oregon has experienced many, many years of drought, a number of 
worst-ever drought years, and it puts enormous stress on the 
water resources, water resources that have declined both with 
the changing weather patterns, and also with the loss of less 
water coming out of the Cascade snowpack.
    And we have, Congress has provided $162 million in the 
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and more than 16 million through 
the Fish and Wildlife Service for the Klamath Basin, helping to 
address those issues. But these funds will be funds that will 
not last forever, and the question is kind of, what is the plan 
to be able to help the Basin figure out the path for the future 
under these difficult circumstances.
    I really appreciate that a team, led by Liz Klein, just 
recently completed a trip to the Basin, and your Department has 
convened a number of roundtables with stakeholders. So just, 
what is the status of that 162 million, and how will the 
funding be distributed? And what is the timeline?
    Secretary Haaland. Chairman, thank you so much for the 
question. And first of all I think you know how much we all 
care about the Klamath Basin, and we have people in our 
Department, Liz is one of those, Tanya Trujillo another, and of 
course Camille Touton, who work every single day on this issue. 
And there is not enough water, obviously. And that is the 
incredibly challenging piece of all this.
    I thank you for recognizing that we are doing our best to 
work with partners on the ground. I think it is incredibly 
important that we are in contact with the people whose lives 
are affected by this issue. And I want to assure you that every 
single day our team is working with partners in the states to 
evaluate the options for renewing discussions about how to 
foster the long-term issues moving forward.
    I think that we will take our cues from folks on the 
ground, and know that our team is dedicated. I wanted to also 
recognize that the Tribal communities are important in this 
piece as well. You might know that I had a chance to meet with 
all those folks, virtually, and just understand that even 
though people don't agree on everything they agree that they 
care deeply about this place.
    So thank you. And we are happy to keep you informed of the 
progress on this issue as we move forward.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you. I absolutely will follow up, 
because how we spend that $162 million is going to be so 
important to the future and success of all the stakeholders in 
the Basin.
    I want to commend you for your leadership on the Indian 
Boarding School Initiative.
    You have embarked on a mission to document a dark chapter 
in American history. Just fully supportive of these efforts, 
and well, a lot of those schools, a number of them were in 
Oregon, ten of those schools, one of which Chemawa is still 
operating under--but unfortunately under very different 
circumstances, so from that past.
    How will the Department use the fiscal year 2022 funding of 
$7 million to further the efforts for this program?
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you very much, Chairman. As you 
know, we finished our first report on the Boarding School 
Initiative. We are working on the second report. We also 
started a nationwide listening tour, if you will a healing 
journey tour. We had the first piece of that this past weekend 
at the Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, Oklahoma. We will 
travel to your state likely, as well as to many states across 
the country.
    The second report in the Boarding School Initiative will 
dive deeper into the issues that we raised, and it is largely 
driven by what the tribes would like us to do as well. So we 
are keeping close contact with all of that. We appreciate your 
support. There is more work to do to bring closure and healing 
to this issue, and so the $7 million is going to go toward the 
healing journey, toward researching and writing the second 
report, and any subsequent reports that would come after that.
    Senator Merkley. I think we are all going to learn a lot 
from this effort. It is an incredibly important effort. Thank 
you.
    Public Law 280 is a nearly 70-year-old law affecting 
criminal jurisdiction in tribal lands in six states, including 
Oregon. I know that criminal jurisdiction on tribal lands is 
complicated, the situation for each affected tribe is unique, 
but essentially there are 32 tribes across the country that 
should qualify for funding assistance with their criminal 
jurisdiction programs that have not been included in the past. 
And this is profoundly unfair.
    And I want to draw it to your attention, and I want to 
advocate that these are 32 tribes be treated fairly. And just 
ask how you might champion appropriate, equal fair treatment of 
these tribes that have been excluded, even though they qualify?
    Secretary Haaland. Chairman, thank you so much for the 
question. Of course justice services and law enforcement in 
Indian Country is a priority for all of us, and I recognize 
that sometimes it can be difficult given where the tribal 
communities are located. But safety all across Indian Country 
is a priority for me.
    We have focused on increasing capacity in areas where we 
have existing law enforcement programs, growing our Missing and 
Murdered Unit, and I know you were supportive of that, so thank 
you, and improving detention and correction centers. We 
recognize the need to turn our attention to the 32 non-PL280 
tribes, like the Cow Creek, who have not had the opportunity to 
receive direct service law enforcement from the BIA. For tribes 
in this situation, we are looking at strategies to provide them 
an opportunity to receive law enforcement funding in a manner 
that doesn't diminish the level of support for tribes who 
receive the law enforcement services for funding.
    So it is a good balancing act. But I assure you that we 
care deeply, and this is an issue that we will continue to work 
on. And of course, we are happy to be in touch with you about 
it.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you, Madam Secretary. I appreciate 
your recognition that those 32 tribes deserve to be included in 
the program, and we will work with you in that regard.
    And let me turn this over to Ranking Member Senator 
Murkowski.
    Senator Murkowski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Madam Secretary, you know very well the issues related to 
our legacy wells up north, particularly within the National 
Petroleum Reserve. We provided significant resources to the 
Department to address these, last year $22 million, but what we 
are hearing is the concern, and I know it has been raised with 
you, that these wells are not being plugged to the appropriate 
standards.
    In March, there were releases that came from previously 
plugged legacy wells, you know, once they are plugged they 
shouldn't be a problem. But what we are facing is the standards 
that are used by the state government in Alaska are more 
stringent, and they result in better remediation outcomes.
    I don't know if this is a staffing issue at BLM. If so, we 
can work to address that. But I need you to commit to me to 
have BLM review the remediation and plugging standards that are 
used by the State of Alaska to see what improvements can be 
made to BLM's own standards. And I would hope that after you 
get such a review we can sit down and work through this?
    Secretary Haaland. Absolutely. We are happy to work with 
you on all of that, Senator.
    Senator Murkowski. Okay. Thank you. Then what I would ask 
again is if you can do this review, and if in 3 months we will 
follow up for a meeting to go over that, I would appreciate 
that.
    Secretary Haaland. Yes, of course.
    Senator Murkowski. On the fire as I mentioned what we are 
seeing up in the state right now, 512 fires this year, covering 
2.8 million acres of land. Interior received $1.5 billion in 
the Infrastructure Bill for wildland fire--or wildfire 
mitigation and preparedness. I think it goes without saying, 
but we certainly need funding to conduct the hazardous fuels 
reduction.
    Can you tell me how much of the infrastructure money has 
been distributed, and how soon you expect to see that funding 
get out the door?
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you so much. The Bipartisan 
Infrastructure Law provided over $1.4 billion for Interior's 
fire programs over a five-year period, Wildland Fire Management 
Program allocated $407 million in 2022, and the Interior and 
U.S. Forest Service recently announced $120 million will be 
paid out as a supplemental salary payments to wildland 
firefighters. That was so we could ensure firefighters are paid 
at least $15 an hour. Some programs will take longer to 
implement fully because of upfront planning and other 
requirements.
    Senator Murkowski. Can I stop you on that?
    Secretary Haaland. Yes.
    Senator Murkowski. Because when I asked a similar question 
in the Energy Committee recently to Chief Moore, he said, you 
need to have a plan. This is an issue where, again, I think the 
states have plenty of plans that are out there, and so I am not 
sure where the issue is in getting these resources directed out 
to the states. So I am trying to follow this through with 
Forest Service so if there is--if there is still some delay, if 
we are waiting for plans, in the meantime places are on fire.
    Secretary Haaland. Yes.
    Senator Murkowski. So can you help me in understanding what 
more we can be doing to get these funds out the door?
    Secretary Haaland. As you know we work with the Forest 
Service quite a bit with respect to wildland fire. I am happy 
to have someone follow up with your staff on this issue.
    Senator Murkowski. Good.
    Secretary Haaland. And make sure that everything is in 
place. And I am willing to do whatever we can to make sure it 
happens.
    Senator Murkowski. I appreciate that.
    I mentioned the five-year plan, and in Cook Inlet, and I 
think there was a lot of concern in May when the Department 
canceled Lease Sale 258, citing lack of industry interest. And 
I can say with real certainty that was not the case. But in the 
environmental analysis the Department's experts stated that if 
no lease sale occurred the price for gas would increase, as 
would emissions due to use of alternative fuels.
    So I mean, the problem that we are facing here is, in 
Alaska, we are already paying some of the highest gas prices in 
the country, and so it was just kind of stunning to people to 
actually read the Department's own words that canceling this 
sale would actually increase the emissions, increase the cost.
    So can you tell me why this particular sale was canceled? 
What consultations were done with industry that led to this 
claim about lack of industry interest? Because the folks that 
are coming to me are saying: We absolutely are interested, were 
interested, now there is no opportunity because it has been 
taken off the table.
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you, It was the fact that actual 
oil companies did not show interest in Cook Inlet, I recognize 
that the Oil and Gas Association did show interest, but for us 
to move that forward we would have had to have interest from 
the actual companies who would be bidding on the leases.
    Senator Murkowski. Yeah, but there has been nothing that 
was laid down they can't indicate what their interest is. It is 
kind of a, you know, chicken and for example, or horse before 
the cart. I mean, but what happened was there was no ability, 
no opportunity to even show an interest because the sale was 
entirely cancelled.
    Secretary Haaland. Well, I appreciate your perspective on 
this, and I am not sure what to say, other than what I have 
already said. In any other lease sales we have actual companies 
showing the interest and putting forward, ideas for those 
opportunities, and we didn't get that with respect to Cook 
Inlet.
    Senator Murkowski. Madam Secretary, my time has expired. I 
will just share that what we face is that 80 percent of the 
natural gas that comes to the most populated portion of the 
state, comes out of that Cook Inlet. And there is a real 
concern that now that this is taken off the table what comes 
next.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you. Senator Heinrich?
    Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman.
    Secretary, welcome. I have been very glad to see the 
funding from the Great American Outdoors Act begin to go to 
work over the last couple of years. But I am deeply concerned 
about agency process bottlenecks that really frustrate our 
ability to get LWCF, Land and Water Conservation Fund projects 
done in a reasonable timeframe.
    And I certainly recognize the importance of accurate and 
professional appraisals, but I don't understand why that 
process should take years as it often now does. That was not 
the case in the past in these agencies, and it is not the case 
in the private real estate market certainly.
    So what can we do to ensure that Land and Water 
Conservation Fund projects can be completed in a timeframe that 
works both for the public, but also for the landowners who 
engage in these transactions?
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you so much, Senator. It is nice 
to see you.
    Senator Heinrich. Good to see you.
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you for the question. We are 
working with our LWCF bureaus and the Appraisal and Valuation 
Services Office to set up a comprehensive review that looks at 
the root causes of these delays. And that includes internal 
processes and external factors as well. We are happy to follow 
up with you as that moves forward. And I understand the 
frustration.
    Senator Heinrich. So my hope is that we can get this to a 
place where the appraisal's process can be done in a matter of 
months as opposed to years. You are familiar with the L Bar 
Project in New Mexico.
    Secretary Haaland. Yes.
    Senator Heinrich. We specifically avoided working with the 
Federal Government in that transaction, other than the Federal 
funding that came from Pittman-Robertson. But we didn't use 
LWCF dollars in that project because the timeframe just would 
not allow for it. So we have to get to a place where we can do 
marquee projects that really--the kind of projects that the 
public really gets excited about, but on a timeframe that works 
for these landowners.
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you.
    Senator Heinrich. I want to ask you a little bit about 
Hardrock Mine Cleanup. As you know, on the Bipartisan 
Infrastructure Bill, Congress finally authorized a program 
dedicated to abandon Hardrock Mine Reclamation. Something that 
has existed for abandoned coal mines for decades. We all know 
that bill didn't include funding for that program, but your 
Department budget request includes 85 million in new funding 
for Hardrock Cleanup, something I very much appreciate.
    But it directs it through other existing programs rather 
than through the specific program authorized specifically for 
this purpose. So I just want to ask: Does the administration 
support funding for the dedicated Hardrock Program authorized 
in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill?
    Secretary Haaland. Yes.
    Senator Heinrich. Great. We look forward to working with 
you on that. I think it is going to break new ground, and we 
are going to be able to do some really good projects that 
should have been addressed decades ago. And I look forward to 
working with you closely on that.
    The number of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, THPOs, 
has grown rapidly over the last couple of decades. Funding from 
the Historic Preservation Fund has not kept pace as you know. 
More than 200 tribes have a Historic Preservation Office, but 
each THPO receives only about $75 thousand right now to support 
all the work that they do, to review projects that impact 
tribal cultural sites, both on and off tribal land. How can we 
get the Tribal Historic Preservation Offices the resources that 
they need to fully protect their communities' sacred spaces?
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you for the question, Senator. And 
of course I fully support the Tribal Historic Preservation 
Offices. It may be the only Federal program that helps tribes 
to protect and conserve their cultural history and resources, 
so they are incredibly important. Our 2023 budget proposes an 
$8 million increase for those offices, and of course we are 
always available to help support them in any way that we can.
    Senator Heinrich. Yeah. I hope this committee will look 
closely at this because you know, we are spreading the same 
resources over more and more tribal THPO offices.
    Secretary Haaland. Yes.
    Senator Heinrich. And it is not a sustainable approach 
right now. Secretary, as you are all too aware, American 
Indians and Alaska Natives who are living on reservations face 
violent crime rates, up to 20 times those living off 
reservation. More than 80 percent of Native Americans will 
experience violence in their lifetime, and there are currently 
thousands of missing indigenous people.
    So I want to ask you a little bit about BIA and how they 
set their law enforcement priorities, and specifically 
referencing situation that we have had in New Mexico. 
Basically, why instead of focusing on this crisis that is truly 
a crisis, are limited BIA resources being used to enforce 
Federal cannabis laws on reservations where cannabis has 
already been legalized by the sovereign tribe there?
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you for the question, Senator. I 
believe very strongly that we should respect tribal laws and 
work in partnership with tribes on their public safety 
priorities, and they know their communities far better than we 
ever will. This question also involves the authority and policy 
of the Department of Justice, and I respect that we have to 
have an Administration approach to this.
    So it is absolutely noted. We have been approached by 
tribes on this issue as well, and it is something that we are 
not ignoring.
    Senator Heinrich. I appreciate that. And I think this is a 
conversation that I look forward to continuing, because I just 
think it is a horrible misappropriation of focus at a time when 
we have such pressing needs. And obviously, you know, in my 
state, the state has chosen to legalize cannabis, a number of 
tribes have followed suit. Whatever you think about that as a 
policy matter, we have such more important, pressing criminal 
needs in Indian Country right now, that we need to set our 
priorities appropriately.
    So thank you, Secretary. And my time is expired.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you, Senator. And Senator Hyde-Smith 
is next.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and thank you, 
Secretary Haaland, for being here today.
    Madam Secretary, the draft proposed program issued recently 
by the Interior Department, in my opinion, is filled--it is 
just full of uncertainty for the oil and gas industry, 
ambiguity, and for instance, it indicates the Department will 
consider up to ten Gulf of Mexico lease sales, plus the option 
for one sale in Alaska's Cook Inlet that we have talked about, 
but does not guarantee any.
    What are the odds that the Department could break with the 
past precedent and exercise the option to hold zero lease sales 
as the proposed five-year lease plan is finalized?
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you very much for the question, 
Senator. First what I will say is that we do have a 90-day 
public comment period, and those comments that come in will be 
factored into any decisions that we make. I can't prejudge 
anything at this time but I absolutely appreciate your 
perspective, and know that we will work to have a balanced 
approach to this issue; and happy to stay in touch with your 
office as we move forward.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. So you do think we will have some lease 
sales?
    Secretary Haaland. I can't prejudge this issue until we 
come to a decision. That will be after the 90-day public 
comment period.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas, 
has lower greenhouse gas intensities than fossil fuels used to 
substitute for energy not produced in the Gulf. Importing 
foreign energy also increases emissions because other countries 
sending us these resources have lower emission standards than 
we do. Are you aware that a no-sell option could in fact 
increase the price of all energy, oil, gas, coal, and 
electricity?
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you for that comment, Senator. I 
appreciate that.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. So are you aware that it could increase 
the price of the energy, oil, natural gas, coal, and 
electricity, is a question?
    Secretary Haaland. Well, I appreciate your perspective on 
this. When we are talking about our five-year plan, we don't 
take cost into consideration in that respect, because we are 
focusing on managing our natural resources.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. But because their standards are lower, 
their emission standards are lower; I mean you don't agree that 
that could increase the price?
    Secretary Haaland. Senator, I would be happy to follow up 
with your office on that if you would like. I appreciate the 
question.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. And I appreciate the question. But I 
would also appreciate an answer.
    Secretary Haaland. What I could say is that I know that 
there is a lot that goes into the price of fuel, and I know it 
is expensive right now. As I have said many times before there 
are about 9,000 approved drilling permits across the country 
currently that are not being used, 10.4 million acres of 
offshore Federal waters already under lease, as of July 
approximately three-quarters of active leases on the OCS are 
non-producing.
    I know that there is a lot that goes into considerations 
with the price of fuel, but I want to assure you that at the 
Department of the Interior we are doing our jobs and following 
the law to move any of these issues forward.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. Okay. And talking about those leases, 
let us talk about permits. What is your Department doing to 
streamline the approval of right-of-way permits so gathering 
lines can be installed more quickly on public lands, and to 
help make sure companies can use those 9,000 Federal permits 
the White House keeps referring to, and capture methane during 
production?
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you for the question. I would love 
to follow up on this question with your staff. I know that is 
an issue. We take our job seriously, Senator. I know that it is 
important for us to move this issue forward. And BOEM, the 
Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, continues to advance permits 
for these activities, and 49 have been issued since November of 
2020.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. Has there been the permits for those 49 
issued as well?
    Secretary Haaland. Forty-nine permits have been issued 
since November.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. Of the leases you have 49 permits?
    Secretary Haaland. Yes, ma'am, as I understand it.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. Okay. In your opinion, what is the 
earliest we can see a lease sale?
    Secretary Haaland. I can't pre-judge that.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. Your Department has issued a draft plan 
to the public that has yet to file the request for information, 
that I am sure you are familiar with, which is the action that 
triggers the first 45-day comment period that is necessary. As 
you know, pre-leasing activities, such as area identification, 
NEPA review, environmental impact statements, and other 
activities are allowed so work can begin as quickly as possible 
once the lease is finalized.
    Since your Department has already well passed deadline for 
conducting lease sales, what progress has been made inside your 
Department on preparing a request for information on any pre-
leasing documents to ensure the most efficient transaction once 
lease is finalized?
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you, Senator. I want to just make 
sure that I mention the fact that the reason why this five-year 
plan has been late to begin with is because it was dropped by 
the last administration. They started it and didn't finish it. 
We picked it up after that. They took no further action after 
releasing the draft proposed plan in 2018.
    So we are moving forward expeditiously on the next steps. 
We have two steps of five completed. We released the proposed 
program on July 1st. On the Environmental Impact Statement, we 
began the 90-day public comment period on July 8th, and then we 
will incorporate input to develop and publish the proposed 
final program which can be approved by the Secretary, and 
adopted 60 days later following Presidential and Congressional 
consideration.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. So it is the last administration's 
fault; who by the way, was energy independent?
    Senator Merkley. Thank you, Senator Hyde-Smith. Your time 
has so expired. But you are welcome to adopt a second round if 
you would like.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. Thank you.
    Senator Merkley. Senator Reed.
    Senator Reed. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Welcome, Madam Secretary, and Ms. Flanagan. There has been 
throughout the morning, beginning with the chairman, a 
discussion of the Biden administration's policy on gas prices, 
oil and gas leasing. And you have mentioned some facts and I 
would just like to get them right back on the table, if I 
could. And you may answer these questions, as yes or no.
    But Madam Secretary, is it true that in the first year the 
Biden administration would produce more oil from Federal lands 
onshore and offshore than in any year in history?
    Secretary Haaland. Yes, Senator.
    Senator Reed. Is it true that oil companies have nearly 
9,000 approved but unused drilling permits?
    Secretary Haaland. Yes, that is correct.
    Senator Reed. It is true that there are more than 20 
million acres of unused Federal leases, 12 million onshore, and 
8 million offshore?
    Secretary Haaland. Yes.
    Senator Reed. Is it true that the oil companies aren't 
using roughly half of their onshore Federal leases?
    Secretary Haaland. That is correct.
    Senator Reed. And is it true that oil companies aren't 
using roughly 75 percent of their offshore Federal leases?
    Secretary Haaland. Yes, sir.
    Senator Reed. So it seemed one conclusion is that even 
though there is an ample capacity to drill, that the companies 
for reasons related to the business have decided they are not 
going to drill. Or because of the price of oil is so high right 
now that they literally can make more money just extracting for 
existing wells, and not increasing production which would lower 
cost; is that one possible analysis?
    Secretary Haaland. Well, I think there is a lot that goes 
into what the cost of fuel is. And I think there is a lot 
happening around the world that has caused fuel prices to go 
up.
    Senator Reed. No, I think there is. And I think also too, 
we are at a moment where, as the automobile industry announces 
that within 10 years or so they will just sell electric cars, I 
think there is a lot of discussion among the boardrooms at 
hydro carbon companies of: Do we really want to make billion-
dollar investments? But I think these factors are beyond the 
administration's control, they are the decisions of the 
companies that are making them at the moment.
    I want to thank you for joining myself, and all of my 
colleagues, and delegations, and the White House, and 
Congressmen Langevin and Cicillini. Last summer when you signed 
in a ceremony to formally establish the boundaries of the 
Blackstone River Valley National Historic Park, and making it 
an official into the National Park Service, and thanks to the 
tireless work of the Park Service's real state, and local 
officials, and volunteers.
    We have already received a recovery and revival of dozens 
of historic villages and along the river, kayaking, other 
sports, hiking. But the park service still has a long way to 
go, as you well know. They have to acquire the Old Slater Mill 
which is literally the place where the Industrial Revolution 
began in the United States, complete its shale management plan, 
you know, build out administrative offices.
    I am glad to see that the administration put a slight 
increase in the budget this year, but I am convinced they are 
going to need more resources. So I would ask you to commit to 
work with me and my office to increase funding so that we can 
really tackle the establishment of this park.
    Secretary Haaland. Absolutely. And thank you, Senator. I 
was happy to join you for that issue. The 2023 budget includes 
$1.9 million for the park, and that would support fixed-cost 
increases, and staffing capacity, which I know is important 
during these times. We want the park to grow. And so there is a 
budget in there for that.
    Senator Reed. I would mention it runs into Massachusetts, 
so this is a two-state enterprise. And also I must give credit 
to my predecessor, John Chafee, who really started this process 
many years ago. He would be very happy today. We have talked 
about offshore wind. Rhode Island has the only offshore wind 
project in the United States, and it was built, and it was 
built very efficiently. We are generating power now for the 
entire island of Block Island, and actually the excess power is 
going into the state grid.
    And we are also committed to purchasing another 600 
megawatts of offshore wind power. Indeed the New York Bight 
Wind Energy area is talking about a $4.4 billion sale of 
energy, hydro, and energy power, wind energy power. One of the 
players in this whole process is BOEM, and they were very 
responsible and very responsive when we were doing our project, 
but they have to be very cognizant of other stakeholders, 
particularly fishermen. And this is an issue that I would ask 
your attention to. The BOEM released the Draft Fisheries 
Mitigation Guidance last month, but I think much more should be 
done.
    And can you indicate what other steps BOEM might take, or 
will take to expedite the licensing of these projects?
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you for the question, Senator. I 
know that BOEM takes this charge incredibly seriously. They do 
include the fishing industry in the leasing process, and all 
the proposed projects have stakeholder engagement consistently. 
Since 2008 BOEM has invested more than $70 million on 
environmental studies that address renewable energy issues, 
including developing fisheries best management practices.
    Under these circumstances I know that moving to clean 
energy, or transitioning to a clean energy economy is not 
without important issues. So I know that BOEM cares deeply. The 
fishing industry is incredibly important, not only to the 
economy, but to the health of our country.
    We are happy to speak with you about this if there are 
other ideas that you have. But I want to assure you that they 
are working very hard to make sure that the industry is fully 
engaged in the process and the projects that we are doing.
    Senator Reed. Thank you very much, Madam Secretary. Thank 
you, Mr. Chairman.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you. And now, Senator Hagerty.
    Senator Hagerty. Thank you, Senator Merkley; Senator 
Murkowski, for holding this hearing.
    Secretary Haaland, thank you, for appearing here today. We 
had some very bad news this morning, the Consumer Price Index, 
inflation posted at 9.1 percent. That is a 40-year record high. 
If you look at gas prices at the pump, they are at all-time 
record highs. American families are suffering tremendously 
right now.
    Secretary Haaland you are responsible for granting oil and 
gas leases on Federal land, Federal lands account for about a 
quarter of U.S. oil production. Yet on July 1st, despite the 
fact that American families are facing record high prices, your 
Department announced that it might not issue any new offshore 
oil and gas leases for the next 5 years, and you limited 
yourself to a maximum of 11 leases.
    And in the process your Department said that this quote, 
``Significantly narrowed the 47 leases proposed by the previous 
administration,'' and in support of this effort to reduce U.S. 
oil and gas production you declared, and I would like to read 
the quote, ``From day one President Biden and I have made clear 
our commitment to transition to a clean energy economy.''
    So Secretary Haaland, I want to ask you, at what point, at 
what point is this transition to a green energy economy that 
you and President Biden are trying to force, worth making 
American families pay $6 a gallon at the pump?
    Secretary Haaland. Senator, thank you for the question. And 
first of all, I completely understand, I raised my kid as a 
single mom. It is difficult right now, and I have had those 
experiences. So I want you to know that I care deeply about 
American families who are suffering right now.
    Of course we are still coming off of a two-year pandemic 
that really affected our country in so many ways. I do want you 
to know that while the vast majority of U.S. oil and gas 
production occurs on private lands, Federal lands have produced 
more oil than any time in our history.
    Senator Hagerty. So you are telling me that the Biden 
administration is a champion of oil production here in America?
    Secretary Haaland. I am just saying that because of the way 
the leases and permits have gone over the last several years, 
oil production from Federal lands and waters right now is at an 
all-time high.
    Senator Hagerty. Well, I think it is important what you 
signal to the marketplace. Chairman Reed brought this up. 
American oil and gas companies are not investing right now 
because the environment has been terrible for them. You have 
created an environment here. You have sent every message since 
this administration took office that the Biden administration 
will ensure that oil and gas investments do not pay off in 
America, killing the Keystone XL Pipeline.
    If you think about the message that comes to the industry 
when they find out that you are not going to allow new leases 
on oil and gas properties, or you are going to limit yourself 
to only 11 over the next 5 years, at the maximum, this is 
sending a very bad message.
    What I need to understand from you, is at what point, at 
what point does the pain that American families are feeling, 
that you indicate you are appreciative of, is it $6 a barrel 
that you say, I am going to give up this attempt to force this 
green new energy program, and go back to maximizing oil and gas 
production here in America?
    At what point will you commit? And I am asking you to 
commit, to increase oil and gas production to address the pain 
that American families are feeling?
    Secretary Haaland. Senator, I would like to also mention to 
you, and I have said this many times. There are 9,000 unused 
permits currently; permits that oil companies can use to drill 
that are not being used. And onshore, more than 12 million 
acres are under lease, offshore 8 million acres are under 
lease.
    Senator Hagerty. So I just want to make this clear, that 
you are saying that the Department of Interior under the Biden 
administration has championed oil and gas production here in 
America?
    Secretary Haaland. Well, I can say that because of how 
things have gone over the last several years, there are 
thousands of permits, and land under lease that could be used 
by these companies to drill.
    Senator Hagerty. What we need to see to address the pain at 
the pump right now is an expansion of supply. You have many 
tools at your disposal, and as the Secretary of Interior I am 
asking you, will you commit to use every tool at your disposal 
to expand oil and gas production at this point given the pain 
that we are suffering right.
    Secretary Haaland. Senator, my job as Interior Secretary is 
to conserve and manage the natural resources and cultural 
heritage for every single American. I said from day one that we 
would do that using a balanced approach, and I feel very 
confident that our team is looking at every issue. And we are 
working to make sure that this is a balanced approach.
    Senator Hagerty. Madam Secretary, you mentioned the word 
``balance'', but balance is precipitating massive pain. If you 
think about where gas prices were the day that your 
administration took office, $2.30-odd a gallon, we are now 
looking at $6 a gallon of oil or gasoline at the pump. American 
families are suffering dramatically.
    And I will come back and ask you again. At what point do 
you back off this attempt to force a transition to green 
energy? At what point will you use the tools at your disposal 
to expand oil and gas production here in America?
    Secretary Haaland. Senator thank you for the question. I 
know that nationally, as of July 11th, the gas prices were at 
$4.68 a gallon that is still incredibly high. And Senator 
Murkowski mentioned that in Alaska they are a lot higher. I 
understand this, and I understand exactly what that means, 
because I have been in positions like that in the past.
    Senator Hagerty. Well, please, I implore you to use that 
understanding to feel that pain, and do something about it. You 
have the power--you control a quarter of the production lands 
here in America, the oil and gas leases that could be 
permitted. Please commit to me that you will do everything in 
your power to use your authority to expand production now?
    Secretary Haaland. Senator, there are 9,000 unused drilling 
permits right now today, and millions of acres of land.
    Senator Hagerty. I have heard this, but that is less than 
10 percent of the total that we are talking about. That is a 
distortion. That is a distraction. I am asking you to send the 
message to industry to do everything that you can to expand oil 
and gas production. You will not commit to doing that, 
Secretary?
    Secretary Haaland. Senator, again I would just like to say 
that gas and oil production as at an all-time high on Federal 
lands currently, at this time.
    Senator Hagerty. What we need to see is a message to the 
marketplace that expands production not constrains it. How do 
you explain the record high prices that we are experiencing, 
were it not for that? How do you explain the fact that we are 
no longer in a position to be a net energy exporter? How do you 
explain the transition from $2.30 gas to $6 of gasoline that 
has happened in the 18 months this administration has been in 
office?
    Secretary Haaland. Senator, thank you for the question. We 
are more than happy to follow up with your office.
    Senator Hagerty. I am very disappointed that you are not 
able to commit to the simple notion that you should use the 
authority that you have, Madam Secretary, to expand production 
now to alleviate the pain for the American public. We are 
suffering dramatically, our economy is in tough shape, 9.1 
percent inflation right now, and record high prices.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you very much, Senator Hagerty. 
Senator Feinstein?
    Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I 
would say to the Senator, it may just not be this woman's 
fault. Let me read you something from the Los Angeles Times, 
``Officials recently announced they were unable to fill about 
1,000 temporary firefighter positions, and looking to make 
emergency hires by shortening the onboarding process. As 
California faces what is expected to be a punishing fire season 
only 62 percent of Federal firefighter positions here are 
filled, according to a source within the agency. Before 2020 
nearly all spots, nationwide, typically would be filled at this 
time of year, said the source, who requested anonymity to 
discuss sensitive internal matters.
    ''In addition, roughly a third of all Forest Service fire 
engines in California are on five-day staffing. Meaning there 
aren't enough crew members to operate them seven days a week. 
An additional 13 percent of engines are, quote, ``Down staffed, 
end quote. Essentially parked because of a lack of 
firefighters, the source said.''
    So I don't blame this person. Something is wrong in the 
system, somewhere somebody is putting a hold on things in the 
fact that they are disguised, they take the blame, and fire 
rises throughout my state. I am really concerned about it.
    The Forest Service has acknowledged challenges in reaching 
this year's national target of 11,300 firefighters, especially 
in the Pacific Northwest, and Southwest regions which include, 
Oregon, Washington, and California. The recruitment and 
retention problems are in areas quote, ``Where state and 
private firefighter wages are out-competing Federal firefighter 
wages, housing costs are not affordable, and positions are in 
remote locations.'' The Agency said in a statement. Would you 
support that?
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you so much for the question, 
Senator. I want to commiserate with you on the fires in your 
state. New Mexico had the most devastating wildfire in our 
state's history recently, and so I understand how devastating 
that can be, especially when you love your state so dearly.
    We are working every single day to make sure that we are 
supportive of the firefighters on the ground, raising the pay 
so they can have the personal resources they need to raise 
their families. And certainly, yes, filling those positions----
    Senator Feinstein. I don't mean to cut you off. But I have 
limited time. My understanding is, as far as California is 
concerned, there are 1,800 Federal wildland firefighter 
vacancies; is that correct?
    Secretary Haaland. Senator, I don't have this specific 
number, but we are happy to get back with your staff on that.
    Senator Feinstein. Yes. I am concerned. We have a lot of 
Federal land in California, and a lot is burning, and I need to 
put a real emphasis on this. This is important. Large amounts 
of land, California has 20 million acres of Federal forest land 
in our state, we have to provide the fire services, 
particularly with lightning and weather changes.
    So I am really concerned. And I am not blaming you. I think 
we have to take a look at what future weather conditions are 
going to bring about for us, and really see that we have the 
people in place to deal with those conditions.
    Right now in my state I do not believe we do. So I would 
like to ask that you participate in an effort to take a look at 
what has happened in fire-prone areas, and see that we have 
enough coverage to take care of our people, and our land.
    Secretary Haaland. Senator, nationally we expect to reach 
our target hiring goals for wildland fire fighters, which is 
5,600. I know that we are working every day to fill those 
vacant positions.
    Senator Feinstein. Well, wait. Are you saying you have 
5,600 vacant positions?
    Secretary Haaland. We want 5,600 total personnel.
    Senator Feinstein. The number I have been given is 1,800 
Federal wildland firefighter vacancies. Is that true or false?
    Secretary Haaland. We are happy to follow up with you on 
the exact number, Senator. We have wildland firefighters both 
in the Department of the Interior, and the Forest Service as 
you mentioned. We are happy to follow up with you on the exact 
number of vacancies. But I want you to know that we are working 
every day to fill those vacancies.
    Senator Feinstein. Well, this is a big problem, Mr. 
Chairman. We have a lot of Federal land in California, and we 
also have a lot of fire, the LA Times runs an article, 
``Hellish fires, low pay, trauma, California's Forest Service 
Firefighters face a morale crisis.'' And that is what is 
happening in the state.
    And goes on, ``California faces what is expected to be a 
punishing fire season, only 62 percent of Federal firefighter 
positions are filled, according to a source within the agency. 
Before 2020 nearly all spots, nationwide, typically, would be 
filled at this time of year, said the source, who requested 
anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters.''
    You are under oath. Are those figures correct?
    Secretary Haaland. Senator I don't have the exact figures, 
but we will absolutely reach out to your staff as soon as I get 
back to my office and let you know.
    Senator Feinstein. Well, Mr. Chairman, this is World War 
III for me. I cannot let the state burn and knowing that 
positions that we passed are not being filled.
    Senator Merkley. Senator, you are you are absolutely right. 
There are a tremendous number of vacancies. The recruitment is 
very difficult. I do note that the Interior Department is 
working towards year-round positions, to try to have wildland 
firefighters be able to do hazardous fuel reductions when they 
are not fighting fires. They have implemented the $15 minimum 
pay, which is helpful, but not competitive with the state 
positions in California.
    And I just appreciate that you continuously really advocate 
for this, because our western states are burning, we need our 
firefighters.
    Senator Feinstein. Let me go on one more.
    In addition, roughly a third of all Forest Service fire 
engines in California are on five-day staffing. Meaning, 
``There aren't enough crew members to operate them seven days a 
week. An additional 13 percent of engines are down-staffed, 
essentially parked because of lack of firefighters,'' the 
source said.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you, Senator. And we can put it into 
the record, and do some follow-up questions, and I really 
appreciate you bringing attention to this issue.
    Senator Feinstein. Yeah. I appreciate it. This is the Los 
Angeles Time, June 14th.
    Senator Merkley. Without objection, I enter it into the 
record.
    [The information follows:]
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you. Senator Blunt.
    Senator Blunt. Thank you, Chairman. And Secretary, good to 
have you here today.
    Congress, a few years ago, mandated that states would have 
a Wildlife Action Plan. In our state, in Missouri, we have 
great outdoor recreation, we have great hunting, we have great 
fishing. For a long time one of the oldest and most successful 
conservation commissions in the country was funded just by 
hunting and fishing licenses our state added 40 years ago a 
sales tax for conservation and parks. I don't know any state 
that has done a better job trying to fund its own efforts for 
conservation.
    But the Congressionally Mandated State Wildlife Action 
Plans, effort to be sure that we don't have things moved to the 
endangered species list, for that plan to be successful we need 
more than the amount of money that Missourians have been able 
to dedicate to that.
    Senator Heinrich and I introduced the Recovering America's 
Wildlife Act. Under that Act, Secretary, you would be in charge 
of implementing the Act, and the Act is designed to help for 
the states to be able to mandate their own state wildlife 
action plans. How large role do you see for your Department in 
trying to tell the states what they need to do, as opposed to 
implementing the funding that this Act would provide?
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you, Senator, for the question. 
And thank you so much for your efforts to conserve our 
country's wildlife. And of course I feel very confident and 
grateful to my team at Interior because we want to be able to 
work with everyone to make sure that we are achieving our 
goals.
    I could say that the Fish and Wildlife Service would help 
prevent the need to list species. We could amplify 
partnerships, support conservation on private lands, leverage 
money, and so forth.
    I feel that one of our strengths at the Department is 
working with those local communities, governments, states, and 
so forth to make sure that we are all achieving the goals that 
we need to achieve.
    Senator Blunt. Well, I appreciate that, and I appreciate 
the fact that the administration has endorsed the Recovering 
America's Wildlife Act, and just want to be sure at this 
hearing we have discussed the topic, that the purpose of the 
act is to help the states fund their own plans. And certainly 
Congress gave the authority to the states to mandate that they 
have a Wildlife Action Plan, and this funding would be used 
there.
    There has been some concern that this legislation would 
empower the Fish and Wildlife Service, and increase the 
authority of the Endangered Species Act. I don't think it does 
either one, but at some point it is very important what you 
think it does.
    Do you view this bill as a method of increasing fish and 
wildlife enforcement activity, or more as an opportunity to 
collaborate with the states to prevent states from being listed 
were the Endangered Species Act ever has to come into effect 
when the states are doing the job they want to do, and they are 
trying to do?
    Secretary Haaland. I would take it as the opportunity to 
assist the states. We feel very strongly that it is the folks 
on the ground who know their communities far better than we do, 
and so it makes sense that we are working to support the work 
that they are already doing on the ground, and give the best 
assistance and help that we can.
    Senator Blunt. Well, I think at least 49, and at least 49 
of the state agencies are in favor of this, the National 
Association is in favor of this. I look forward to seeing this 
bill on the floor sometime between now and the end of this 
year, hopefully even between now and the end of the fiscal 
year.
    But your effort to help with the successful implementation 
of getting the funds to the states, to do what the states have 
proposed to do under the mandate that Congress has giving them, 
would be a very important part of that, and I am glad to hear 
what you had to say today about it.
    Secretary Haaland. Absolutely. Thank you.
    Senator Blunt. Thank you.
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Blunt. Thank you, Chairman.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you very much. Senator Van Hollen?
    Senator Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And Madam Secretary, great to see you and your team here. 
You won't be surprised I am going to ask you some questions 
about the Chesapeake Bay. And specifically, I want to thank you 
for your leadership, and support, and assistance from the 
National Park Service as we work to establish the Chesapeake 
National Recreation Area, which would highlight the cultural, 
historic, and ecological significance of what is a national and 
natural treasure, the Chesapeake Bay.
    I am excited about the ongoing discussions Congressman 
Sarbanes and I, and other members of the delegation from 
Maryland, and Virginia as well, have been reaching out to 
stakeholders. And we appreciate the technical support that we 
have received from your team, including Wendy O'Sullivan, of 
course the Director of the Chesapeake Bay Office of the 
National Park Service. I would just ask you for your continuing 
commitment to work with us as we plan on introducing this 
legislation.
    Secretary Haaland. Absolutely. We support you on this and 
thank you for recognizing that our and technical assistance has 
been helpful to you.
    Senator Van Hollen. It has been. And as you know, you have 
testified to it today, it is in your written remarks at least, 
that we are all trying to do more with less staffing, so 
anything you can do to fully engage your team in this effort. 
We are trying to get this introduced in the coming weeks and 
months. And again we appreciate all the efforts. I know that 
you have got staffing vacancies. In fact, as I understand it 
the National Park Service has lost roughly 29 percent of its 
staff from 2010 to 2020. We are talking about thousands of 
employees. What are your plans to help fill that gap? Let me 
just give you one other local example.
    Secretary Haaland. Okay.
    Senator Van Hollen. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National 
Historic Park has seen an 85 percent increase in visitation 
over the last 15 years, with a roughly 50 percent decrease in 
staff. So that is one example. What are your plans to try to 
re-staff the National Park Service?
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you, Senator. And we have 
absolutely realized that this is an issue. Our budget includes 
$148.3 million across the National Park Service to support more 
than 1,100 additional full-time equivalents that would 
strengthen critical functions. This includes funding to build 
park capacity and address critical operating responsibility at 
park units in Maryland.
    I just came from Yellowstone, and there is always an issue 
with housing, too. Well, you probably saw the video of their 
staff housing floating into the river after the flood. So I 
know that housing is an issue for National Park Service staff 
as well, and so we are taking all these things into 
consideration, and really trying to find solutions to make sure 
that we can have the folks where we need them.
    Senator Van Hollen. Well, we look forward to working with 
you. I know the chairman and I think the ranking member as well 
would like to see the National Park Service, you know, 
adequately staffed, and continue to recruit skilled and 
talented folks.
    Secretary Haaland. Absolutely.
    Senator Van Hollen. Let me ask you about the Chesapeake 
Gateways and Trails Program. This helps provide technical and 
financial assistance to the Bay Watershed, and we work to 
engage communities across the Chesapeake Bay regarding 
conservation, and important recreational opportunities, 
including better access to the Chesapeake Bay.
    The program is part of laying the groundwork toward that 
larger effort that I mentioned, and which is to make the 
Chesapeake Bay a unit of the National Park Service. Right now, 
this program, the Gateways Program, we have been successful at 
getting the annual appropriations, but it is not yet 
authorized. Would you, as the Secretary, support authorizing 
that program on an ongoing basis?
    Secretary Haaland. For the Gateways Trails Program, our 
budget includes $3 million, and of course we support that. We 
love all our outdoor spaces, and we will do whatever we can to 
help.
    Senator Van Hollen. Well, we appreciate that. I will be 
working with the chairman, and others. I mean this is the 
Appropriations Committee, but we are working with the 
authorizers to get that fully authorized. But we appreciate the 
fact that that is in your budget.
    There is one important item regarding the Bay that is not 
included in your budget. It is called the Chesapeake WILD 
Program. It was a piece of legislation that I worked on with 
Senator Capito on a bipartisan basis. It was included in the 
larger piece of legislation a number of years ago.
    And it authorizes the Fish and Wildlife Service's ongoing 
participation. That was not included in your budget 
appropriation request. Can you assure us that you will work 
with this committee to make sure the Fish and Wildlife Service 
continues to remain engaged? We will be pressing for the 
continued appropriation, in fact, an increased appropriation 
for that.
    Secretary Haaland. Absolutely. It is a wonderful program. 
There was $4 million available for these grants that was funded 
through the 2022 appropriation. We know that it funds and 
supports locally driven conservation, which it is very 
important.
    So thank you. Yes. I think the goals of this program are 
consistent with the Administration's move to ensure that we are 
conserving these spaces for Americans.
    Senator Van Hollen. Thank you. While I have you here, I 
also just want to mention the important role that the U.S. 
Geological Service plays within the overall Bay Program. For 
example, the USGS Eastern Ecological Science Center has 
provided us important information regarding migratory birds, 
and other native species as well, at the Patuxent Research 
Refuge in Laurel, Maryland.
    Do you have any thoughts on how we can increase the 
collaborative efforts with respect to the U.S. Geological 
Service as part of the Bay effort?
    Secretary Haaland. I will make sure that they reach out to 
all of you. Thank you for recognizing how important the USGS is 
to the work that we do. We are happy to work with you. If you 
would like me to have someone reach out to your staff, we can 
do that soon.
    Senator Van Hollen. That would be great.
    Secretary Haaland. Yes.
    Senator Van Hollen. Thank you, Madam Secretary. And thank 
you for all your good work.
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you as well.
    Senator Van Hollen. And that of your team.
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Van Hollen. Thank you.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you very much, Senator Van Hollen.
    So we are going to have a second round, but I also think 
Senator Tester is going to be here in a few moments. And I just 
want to start by noting that the question was raised as to 
whether this administration has created a hostile economic 
environment for oil and gas companies. And the short answer is 
that the oil and gas companies made--just the American 
companies--$205 billion in net profits last year, absolutely 
record-setting.
    The record-setting profits this last quarter, massive stock 
buybacks, and they have tripled their margins on refining, so 
they are truly gouging the American public. And so if we want 
to stop this gouging, the windfall, the big oil windfall 
profits tax is the way to do it, and that I invite any 
colleagues who are as concerned as I am about the price of the 
pump, to join us to stop this gouging, by the oil companies, of 
the American consumer.
    Switching gears, I recently led my colleagues in urging the 
Department to renew its commitment to the Western Oregon 
Operating Plan. This plan ensures a coordinated, interagency 
approach to wildfire response between the state, the tribes, 
the communities, and BLM. This is so important that we put into 
the fiscal year 2022 Omnibus direction requiring the BLM to 
maintain or expand the scope of that agreement, which means no 
shrinking of the agreement. But despite that, we keep hearing 
concerns from the Oregon Governor, local officials, emergency 
managers, Oregon tribes that BLM is seeking to shrink the scope 
of the agreement.
    Now, Southern Oregon communities like Ashland, and Medford 
have been repeatedly declared high-risk areas from wildfire by 
both Federal and state agencies, and a couple of our Southern 
Oregon communities, like Talent and Phoenix were absolutely 
devastated in the 2020 wildfires, that just devastated those 
towns.
    So will the Department honor the requirement in 2022 fiscal 
year to make sure that this Western Oregon Operating Plan is 
maintained in its full scope and functionality?
    Secretary Haaland. Chairman, thank you so much for the 
question. And of course the BLM remains committed to 
maintaining the Mutual Aid Response Agreements for wildland 
fire management. The BLM partnered with the Oregon Department 
of Forestry for 2022 and 2023, and they are discussing 
currently 2024.
    Senator Merkley. Absolutely. And that discussion is being 
directed by what we put into 2022, that it be maintained in its 
scope and functionality. And I want to make sure that I have 
your commitment, that will honor that requirement in the 2022 
bill to maintain the scope and functionality of that plan?
    Secretary Haaland. Yes, Senator.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you. Thank you.
    Secretary Haaland. Yes, absolutely. Fire is a top priority 
for our Department across the board. We understand how 
important this is, and I appreciate your concern as well. We 
are always happy to work with you.
    Senator Merkley. Well, I appreciate the commitment you have 
expressed to make sure it sustains its scope and functionality, 
incredibly important to my state.
    I am going to squeeze in one last question before I turn 
this over to Senator Tester. The Department has noted it is 
going to be considering a listing for the Monarch and the 
Endangered Species Act in the year 2024. That should send a 
signal that we have 2 years to do everything possible to 
restore the monarch, as I pointed out in the beginning. Even 
after a big rebound we have less than 1 percent of the historic 
number of monarchs.
    Our children are growing up--whose parents saw these 
butterflies everywhere have never seen one. And they play an 
important role as pollinators. We know that we have to 
massively increase the habitat, and we can use public lands, we 
can use highways, we can use conservation agreements, but will 
we be able to populate those lands with both flowers producing 
nectar, and also milkweed for caterpillars?
    And those flowers that produce nectar are great for all the 
pollinators, so we have to develop a massive effort to restore 
flowers and milkweed. And I know that the Department was just 
fabulous in partnering on the Monarch Summit. This of course, 
pollinator--nectar-producing flowers are so important to a 
whole range of pollinators, certainly our bees as well.
    And I just want to ask: Will you continue to work over 
these 2 years before the--to do everything we possibly can to 
massively increase habitat for the monarch and other 
pollinators?
    Secretary Haaland. Thank you, Senator. I appreciate so much 
your dedication to this. So with the $4 million increase 
provided in 2022, the Service will inventory and monitor 
pollinators, support on-the-ground projects for monarch habitat 
restoration, and stand up a new Office of Pollinator 
Conservation. Of course that funding also helped with the 
Monarch Summit for National Pollinator Week that we hosted 
along with you. And then our 2023 budget includes an additional 
$5 million increase for this work.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you. I look forward to continuing to 
press forward on this.
    And let us turn to Senator Tester.
    Senator Tester. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And I want to thank you, Secretary Haaland.
    I apologize for having to get here late. And if you had to 
extend this hearing for me, thank you, Mr. Chairman. But we had 
to chair the Commerce Committee on the TSA Director.
    At any rate, I also want to thank you, Secretary Haaland, 
for being in Montana last week, I think it was a week ago 
tomorrow, as a matter of fact. I appreciate you being there, 
and I appreciate your fast response, and the fast response from 
this administration on the disaster that happened in Southern 
Montana, a 24-hour disaster that caused a billion dollars worth 
of damage.
    We got to see it together, and we got to see what the 
challenges are, and they are many. One of the challenges is, is 
there is a temporary road between Cooke City and Gardiner. Is 
there any hope to get that road in a position where it could 
provide more than just essential services?
    Secretary Haaland. This is the road from Gardiner into the 
park?
    Senator Tester. Yeah, basically into the park, that is 
correct.
    Secretary Haaland. Yes, thanks to the $60 million from the 
relief fund of the Department of Transportation. They are 
working very hard. We drove on that road, in fact, when we were 
there.
    Senator Tester. Right.
    Secretary Haaland. And they are working to expand it now.
    Senator Tester. Okay.
    Secretary Haaland. So that it is two lanes rather than one.
    Senator Tester. So I know that it takes a long time to make 
assessments when the damage is this bad. From the folks you 
have talked to, and you may not be able to respond to this, if 
you can't I understand, is there any hope to getting access to 
the northern part of that park open before the season ends?
    Secretary Haaland. Senator, both the North and the South 
Loop are open now, 93 percent of the park is open to visitors. 
We want visitors to visit, we want them to spend time in those 
communities right outside the parks, we want them to enjoy 
their summer.
    Senator Tester. Thank you for clarifying that, but the 
ability to get there through the North End is severely limited. 
Is there going to be any possibility of getting that North End 
open before the season is over?
    Secretary Haaland. Well, I am happy to follow up with your 
staff, as soon as we get the most super recent update on that 
road.
    Senator Tester. Okay.
    Secretary Haaland. But I know they are working on it, and 
as far as I understand, both the North and the South Loops are 
accessible.
    Senator Tester. Okay.
    Secretary Haaland. Encourage folks to go on the website to 
figure out which gates are open.
    Senator Tester. For sure.
    Secretary Haaland. And make sure they don't waste time 
driving somewhere they can't.
    Senator Tester. Sure. So you are the last person I should 
have to talk about this, because you understand the public 
safety crisis in Indian Country probably better than anybody 
else in the administration. For years, through different 
administrations, I have heard from the Northern Cheyenne Tribe 
about the BIA's failure to provide adequate law enforcement on 
that reservation. I don't think they are the lone example. I 
think they have some problems, I think most of it deals with 
manpower, and deals with the prison availability. The question 
is, in this budget is there adequate dollars to deal with the 
law enforcement challenges that occur in Indian Country all 
across this country? I bring up Northern Cheyenne because 
Northern Cheyenne is probably in the greatest need right now.
    But the truth is, I could be talking about any reservation 
in Montana, truthfully, any of them have challenges when it 
comes to law enforcement. So as you look at this budget, as we 
look at this budget, is this budget up to snuff when it comes 
to making sure that we have enough law enforcement to keep 
folks safe?
    I won't even go into Missing and Murdered Indigenous 
people. I will leave--I won't go into human trafficking, I 
won't go into any of that, I will just go into just basic law 
enforcement. Do we have enough folks--money in this budget to 
deal with that?
    Secretary Haaland. Senator, thank you for your dedication 
to this issue, and I really appreciated the opportunity to 
speak with tribes directly when I was there with you in Montana 
not too long ago. And you are right I do understand the 
challenges associated with making sure that we have folks on 
the ground in these areas.
    The 2023 budget request includes a total increase of $41 
million for nationwide detention and corrections programs which 
I know are also foundational as well as public safety and 
justice facility construction. I know that is half the battle. 
I know there are a lot of issues and we are working hard to 
make sure that we can get folks on the ground in those areas.
    Senator Tester. And you will have to--I was listening but I 
didn't hear it, so you will have to repeat it. How much of 
those dollars that you just talked about, there is some for 
public safety construction, but how much of that is dedicated 
toward additional officers?
    Secretary Haaland. Let us see. 282 million for criminal 
investigation and police support, detention centers.
    Senator Tester. Okay.
    Secretary Haaland. I will get you that number. You want to 
know how much for actual people, for boots on the ground?
    Senator Tester. I mean, I think there is a case to be, made 
as you well know, for construction of facilities. You got to 
have it someplace. I mean in Northern Cheyenne's case, if they 
can't get into the facility that holds nine people, they have 
to haul them 1,000 miles. Okay?
    Secretary Haaland.Yes.
    Senator Tester. So there is a case to be made for public 
safety construction. There is also a case to be made for 
manpower. What I am looking for, and I can have my staff dig 
this up, truthfully, because it is not on my written sheet that 
they gave me. These questions I want to know. I want to know 
how much of that budget is for manpower, over what was put in 
the last budget, because I don't think static funding is going 
to get it done in Indian Country.
    And the same thing on the construction end of things. And I 
hate building prisons. I hate it. I just think it is a waste of 
money. We ought to be dealing with this long before we get to 
this point. But nonetheless it is a necessary evil in my 
opinion. And so how much of that money is there for public 
safety construction? And I know there is some, but is it 
enough?
    Secretary Haaland. As I mentioned, for public safety 
construction: $41 million.
    Senator Tester. Okay.
    Secretary Haaland. We will absolutely get you a number for 
the actual boots on the ground for people that we hire.
    Senator Tester. Yeah.
    Secretary Haaland. We will get you that today.
    Senator Tester. Thank you. And I know you will. And I 
appreciate that. I think that as I look at these large land-
based tribes in particular, and those are the ones I am 
familiar with, because those are the ones we have in Montana, 
law enforcement is a continual challenge. By the way, water is 
a challenge, schools are a challenge, housings are a challenge, 
I mean go down the list, and law enforcement is a challenge. So 
thank you very, very much.
    Secretary Haaland. Yes, thank you, Senator.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you very much, Senator Tester. And 
one of the issues I raised earlier here in the hearing was that 
there are 32 tribes that are not receiving any funding for law 
enforcement, though they fall under the same qualifications; 
and advocating that we try to start figuring out how to help 
those that have none, while sustaining and increasing the 
support for the tribes that are receiving some support.
    Madam Secretary, thank you for your testimony.
    And Ms. Flanagan, appreciate you being here to support 
that.

                     ADDITIONAL COMMITTEE QUESTIONS

    And the record will remain open for members of the 
committee to submit questions for the record, or statements 
that they would like, until July 20th. And of course we will 
get those questions for the record to you and your team at 
Interior.
    What a breadth of issues that we consider through the 
Department of Interior. Thank you for your hard work, and your 
leadership, and your entire team.
    And if there are no further comments; and seeing that I am 
now alone, there are none.
            Questions Submitted by Senator Dianne Feinstein
    Question. The global helium supply has been dramatically impacted 
by leaks and disasters at several helium production facilities around 
the world as well as Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Several scientific 
and medical facilities throughout California are now facing critical 
shortages of this important resource, and those that can get it are 
seeing price increases of more than 1,400 percent.
    Secretary Haaland, what steps is your Department taking to ensure 
that a stable supply of helium, which is critical for science, 
medicine, and national security, is restored?
    Answer. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), 
the Federal Helium System (FHS) produced approximately 7.8 percent of 
the total helium produced in the United States in 2021. In addition, 
the USGS report shows that the U.S. is a net exporter of helium, 
exporting five times as much helium in 2021 as it imported. While 
foreign supply disruptions impact the global price of helium, these 
disruptions do not pose an immediate threat to U.S. national security 
or economic interests given the current U.S. status as a net exporter 
of helium. Further, the Federal helium supply from the FHS accounts for 
a small percentage of total helium produced in the U.S. As a result. 
the Department does not anticipate a significant fluctuation in the 
supply of helium.
    Additionally, the Department has implemented Section 1109 of Public 
Law No: 116-9, also known as the ``Dingell Act,'' which amended the 
Mineral Leasing Act to allow the extraction of helium from gas produced 
from Federal oil and gas wells to maintain the lease as if the 
extracted helium were oil and gas. This serves to incentivize companies 
to produce helium from Federal wells where natural gas production may 
no longer be sufficient by itself to maintain the lease.
    Finally, the Department remains committed to meeting the 
requirements of the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013 (50 U.S.C. 167a-q; 
HSA) to dispose of the FHS. The act is intended to complete the 
privatization of the Federal helium reserve in a competitive market 
fashion that ensures stability in the helium markets. In preparation 
for the sale and conveyance of the FHS and continued delivery of 
helium, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has required the purchaser 
of the FHS to assume the delivery requirements of the current fiscal 
year 22-27 Helium Storage Contracts.
    Question. The past several fiscal years have seen significant 
increases to the Department's budget for the management of wild horses 
and burros, including an 18 percent increase in fiscal year 2022 and a 
request for another 12 percent increase this year.
    I understand that the humane management of these wild horse herds 
nevertheless remains a problem, with the size of these herds impacting 
the native landscape and the health of the horses themselves.
    Last year, this Committee provided the Department with the 
direction and authority to use up to $11 million for fertility control 
measures needed to keep these herds at a manageable level.
    Secretary Haaland, can you tell me what steps you are taking to 
keep these herds of wild horses at a sustainable level? What progress 
have you made in implementing more fertility control treatments?
    Answer. In response to chronic overpopulation and severe drought 
conditions impacting western public lands, the BLM continues to 
increase its efforts to reduce overpopulation in wild horse and burro 
herds and achieve sustainable population levels. In fiscal year 22 the 
BLM removed 19,011 animals from the range and treated 1,558 animals 
with fertility control, which is the highest level that has been 
achieved. This follows several years of increased removals and 
treatments; removals over the past 5 years (fiscal year 18-22) totaled 
approximately 43,941 animals, and the BLM and its partners completed 
4,815 fertility control treatments in that time period. Thanks in part 
to these efforts, the total population has declined for the second year 
in a row to an estimated current on-range population of 82,284 as of 
March 2022.
    Fertility control works best when herds are close to target 
population sizes. Moreover, fertility control can help slow population 
growth, but it does not immediately address overpopulation. Removing 
animals is the only effective way to humanely reduce on-range 
populations. As populations reach sustainable levels, the BLM plans to 
implement increased fertility control to stabilize herd sizes.
    The BLM continues to invest in the research and development of 
better, longer-lasting fertility control vaccines for wild horses and 
burros. The Bureau published a Wild Horse and Burro Strategic Research 
Plan in 2021 that identifies the development of safe, long-lasting 
fertility control methods as the top research priority. The BLM plans 
to award contracts for three new research projects in the coming 
months, pending NEPA analysis.
    Question. Secretary Haaland, scientists project that with climate 
change, the Colorado River will lose a third of its flow on average 
within a generation. That is more than 5 million acre feet, or enough 
water for 30 million people.
    I have two bills that will help with this problem. The first, the 
STREAM Act, would provide more than 1 million additional acre-feet of 
water per year on average, in combination with the bipartisan 
infrastructure law. That's enough water for more than 6 million people.
    The second bill, the Canal Conveyance Capacity Restoration Act, 
would allow California to capture water and recharge aquifers during 
the few big storms we get.
    Secretary Haaland, my staff has worked with your Department while 
drafting these bills. Will you commit to reviewing them? I hope we can 
count on your support.
    Answer. The Department is committed to use every resource available 
to ensure that irrigators, Tribes, and adjoining communities in 
California and across the West receive adequate support to build 
resilient communities and protect our water supplies for people and the 
natural environment. Regarding the legislation that you reference, the 
Department testified on both of these bills at a hearing before the 
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last spring.
    The Department supports the goal of S. 1179, to repair storage and 
conveyance capacity to critically important components of the Central 
Valley Project (CVP), as well as the goal of restoring salmon 
populations in the San Joaquin River. We have been working to address 
reductions in conveyance capacity due to subsidence and other factors 
which have impacted facilities of the CVP in California, including 
through funding under the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the 
Nation Act. The Bureau of Reclamation is working with the California 
Department of Water Resources to develop planning documents and 
engineering studies to determine the work required to correct the 
subsidence related to the San Luis Joint Use facility.
    Regarding S. 4231, we appreciate the bill's ambitious goal of 
expanding our Nation's capacity to address the drought crisis through 
small-scale storage, water recycling, desalination, and aging 
infrastructure investments, as well as to address the critically 
important issue of ecosystem health. We would like to continue working 
with your office to ensure the authorities within this bill are 
implementable, effective, and can be integrated with existing laws 
recently passed, including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
    Question. Secretary Haaland, as you know, the Wildlife Refuge 
System is the only system of Federal lands dedicated to the 
conservation of wildlife and habitat.
    California has 44 wildlife refuges, and many species depend on 
these lands for their survival, including sea otters and Californian 
condors.
    Additionally, millions of Americans visit these lands every year 
and have the opportunity to learn about our state's incredible 
biodiversity.
    I am now working to establish a new wildlife refuge in Riverside 
County that will support local wildlife and provide equitable access to 
nature for all Californians.
    Secretary Haaland, despite having these irreplaceable resources, 
California's wildlife refuges are chronically underfunded and 
understaffed--and sometimes not staffed at all.
    Answer. The fiscal year 2023 President's budget requested an 
increase of $82 million over the fiscal year 2022 enacted budget to 
address capacity issues on the National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS). 
This increase will restore needed capacity for the Refuge System's 
basic needs.
    Question. How would increases in funding to the National Wildlife 
Refuge System improve California's public lands?
    Answer. With an increase in appropriated funding, the NWRS will be 
able to strategically add capacity by hiring full-time, skilled 
professional and seasonal staff as well as field technicians; enhance 
Tribal relationships; increase community outreach; increase student 
recruitment through the Pathways program; fully implement Civilian 
Climate Corps hires; and provide additional financial assistance to 
public and private partners.
    Increased funding will further enable the NWRS to deliver 
programmatic goals including adaptively managing lands, combatting the 
spread of invasive species, and providing adequate water management 
programs on national wildlife refuges. Due to persistent and long-term 
drought in much of the West, it is important for the NWRS to assess 
landscape conditions and prioritize areas for conservation and 
restoration interventions. The NWRS will be able to utilize increased 
funding to build ecological resilience to climate change and enable 
landscapes to be more resistant to drought and the effects of fire.
    In a typical year, more than 700,000 teachers and students use the 
Refuge System as their outdoor classroom. Increased funding will 
further enable the Urban Wildlife Conservation Program (UWCP), which 
includes urban national wildlife refuges such as San Diego National 
Wildlife Refuge, to expand opportunities to bring more youth and 
education programs to refuges. This program will help develop the next 
generation of environmental stewards. Increased NWRS funding will also 
enable the UWCP to expand infrastructure opportunities for urban 
populations to better access local national wildlife refuges through 
connected trails, bus routes, and roadways.
    Lastly, the Refuge System maintains a $40 billion infrastructure 
portfolio. The FWS estimates a fully implemented life-cycle management 
approach to maintain its portfolio would require about 1.3 percent of 
the infrastructure portfolio value annually. The 2022 enacted level for 
FWS NWRS programs focused on asset management was $147 million, which 
includes $47 million focused on addressing deferred maintenance backlog 
that is created when resources are not available to address life cycle 
asset management needs at the most appropriate and cost-advantageous 
time.

                                 ______
                                 

               Questions Submitted by Senator Jon Tester
    Question. Prior to fiscal year 1997, the amount of ``New Tribes'' 
funding received by newly recognized tribes varied greatly. New tribes 
would assess their needs, design or propose operational programs to 
meet their needs, and submit proposed budgets to implement the proposed 
programs. In fiscal year 1996 alone, this led to newly recognized 
tribes receiving a low of $127,000 and a high of $1.492 million in 
``New Tribes'' funding. In fiscal year 1997, the ``New Tribes'' funding 
methodology was simplified by providing $160,000 in base funding for 
new tribes with less than 1,500 members and $320,000 to tribes with a 
population of 1,501 to 3,000 members. The funding level for new tribes 
with more than 3,000 members was to be determined on a case- by-case 
basis.
    In fiscal year 2011, the population component of the methodology 
was slightly changed moving from 1,500 to 1,700 members for the 
$160,000 base level funding and 1,701 to 3,000 for the $320,000 funding 
level.
    The Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians, with a Tribal 
membership of approximately 6,100 members, qualifies for the ``case-by-
case'' determination under the BIA's longstanding policy. If the 
funding level for Tribes with 1,701 to 3,000 members is $320,000, that 
equals to a range of $106.66 to $188.12 per Tribal member. According to 
this methodology, the Little Shell Tribe's ``New Tribes'' allocation 
should be in the range of $650,000 to $1.14 million annually. It is 
critically important to provide the Little Shell Tribe with adequate 
``New Tribes'' funding as it is the Tribe's third and final year in the 
program. The Bureau of Indian Affairs Budget Justifications and 
Performance Information for fiscal year 2023 notes that ``Once a Tribe 
has been acknowledged as a federally recognized Tribe, its designated 
funding remains in the New Tribes line item for three fiscal years at 
which time the funding is then base transferred for the Tribe to the 
Aid to Tribal Government line item.''
    Failing to right-size ``New Tribes'' funding in fiscal year 2023 to 
meet the Little Shell Tribe's population needs creates inequity and 
establishes precedent for future funding allocations.
    Would you support a higher New Tribes allocation for the Little 
Shell Tribe in fiscal year 23 in line with Department of the Interior's 
past precedent?
    Answer. The New Tribes enrollment criteria was modified in fiscal 
year 2011 to align with the enrollment criterion used for Small Tribes 
Supplement funding. BIA does not calculate funding at the level of the 
individual members served in determining distributions and instead uses 
a banded approach that provides a flat amount for Tribes with 
enrollment up to 1,700 and double that funding for Tribes with 
enrollment from 1,701 up to 3,000. At the time the Little Shell Tribe 
received recognition, their estimated enrollment number of 5,300 
members was provided to Indian Affairs. BIA determined their enrollment 
number was roughly 3 times the amount of 1,700, so Little Shell was 
provided $480,000 annually as their New Tribe base, which is 3 times 
the level of funding provided to a Tribe with enrollment up to 1,700.

                                 ______
                                 

            Questions Submitted by Senator Chris Van Hollen
                               c&o canal
    Question. I appreciate that the National Park Service worked with 
us in Maryland to move the C&O Canal National Historic Park 
Headquarters in Williamsport last year. This site serves as the 
administrative hub for all 184.5 miles of the park. Can you provide an 
update on the move and the impact that this new headquarters will have 
on the region?
    Answer. After 20 years in downtown Hagerstown, approximately 10 
miles from the park, the park headquarters officially moved in March 
2021, to its new location adjacent to the park in Williamsport, MD. The 
relocation to Williamsport brought park management back to the park 
grounds. Operationally, the move has led to several efficiencies 
including greater integration of operational and administrative staff, 
improved communication with the field, and improved resource/knowledge 
sharing with local stakeholders and partners. The headquarters move has 
become a catalyst for economic development. Visitation to the area has 
increased and many new small businesses have opened. In addition, the 
park headquarters site includes two historic buildings that will be 
rehabilitated and leased to commercial businesses that will provide 
much needed amenities to park visitors and create 10-15 jobs.
    Due to the pandemic, the official ribbon cutting was delayed until 
September 21, 2022. Over 100 attendees from Federal, state, county and 
local government who collaborated and supported the project were in 
attendance.
                               glen echo
    Question. The National Park Service has owned and operated Glen 
Echo Park since 1971, and has entered into multiple cooperative 
management agreements with Montgomery County, which partners with the 
Glen Echo Park Partnership for Arts and Culture to offer year-round 
cultural and recreational activities. This cooperative partnership 
allow Marylanders and all park visitors to enjoy all the park has to 
offer. However, as Montgomery County works with NPS to pursue vital 
upgrades needed for the park grounds, it is critical that the 
management plan is updated to support the continued partnership between 
the County and NPS. I have heard repeated concerns from constituents 
about delays in simple repairs as well as the long-term plans for 
maintenance of historic properties.
    Will you commit to working with my office and Montgomery County to 
improve the turnaround time on maintenance and repairs? What steps will 
you take to ensure the management plan is updated to support 
recreational access to Glen Echo Park?
    Answer. The NPS remains committed to working with your office and 
park partners to support recreational access to Glen Echo Park. For 
instance, the NPS has moved some park staff to free up space for in-
person partner programming which has returned post-pandemic. More 
generally, the NPS continues to work with Montgomery County and is 
committed to the top priorities agreed to in July 2021. The NPS and the 
County regularly engage in strategic planning related to deferred 
maintenance and capital improvements as well as routine planning to 
ensure operations are in keeping with environmental and historic 
requirements for Federal property.
    The park has undertaken several planning efforts in collaboration 
with the County and Glen Echo Park Partnership for Arts and Culture 
(GEPPAC). In the past year, the park team participated in the GEPPAC 
sponsored Urban Landscape Institute effort to inform future master 
planning of the site. This three-month effort will aid in amending and 
updating the NPS Developmental Concept Plan, implementation of which is 
subject to future funding. Additionally, the NPS has awarded a contract 
to complete a historic structures report for the Spanish Ballroom; the 
park and partner collaborated to create a scope of work for this 
contract that considers both deferred maintenance and capital 
improvements for the ballroom. Finally, the NPS has engaged throughout 
the year in significant and substantive ways to expand the existing 
agreement to include the Clara Barton National Historical Site. 
Montgomery County has written a letter of interest supporting the 
expansion, and the NPS has included County and partner staff in the 
design team and as consulting parties.
    The County is working to fulfill their obligations to complete 
routine and life-cycle maintenance and repair of all facilities used in 
the operations of the park at its sole expense. To that end, the NPS is 
currently working to provide a permit to the County for repaving the 
upper parking lot.
                                landsat
    Question. Last year, I had the opportunity to visit NASA Goddard 
Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland with Vice President Harris 
to see first-light images from Landsat 9, a partnership between NASA 
and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). We know that users around the 
county rely on the ongoing measurements taken by Landsat satellites to 
monitor and measure the changes in our land, and more locally, its data 
has been used to monitor changes in the Chesapeake Bay.
    Given how the Landsat program is constantly evolving to continue 
its mission of providing remote sensing data for the Earth, what can we 
expect to happen with Landsat Next? What is the Department's plan for 
this new Landsat mission?
    Answer. The Department of the Interior (Interior) is working 
closely with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 
under a Sustainable Land Imaging (SLI) Interagency Agreement to develop 
the next Landsat mission called Landsat Next. The SLI Joint Steering 
Group met in February 2022 and agreed to pursue a multi-element SLI 
architecture, including a new government-managed Landsat Next mission 
and partnerships with the international and commercial remote sensing 
sectors.
    The Landsat Next mission concept will take advantage of new 
technologies like smaller satellites and improved sensors to sustain 
the 50-year Landsat data record while delivering greater capability to 
meet the ever-increasing demands of the user community. This would 
include more frequent, better resolution, and high-quality land imaging 
data. The Landsat Next mission concept leverages commercial sector 
capabilities under government oversight to build and launch the 
satellites; develop the ground segment; operate the on-orbit 
satellites; and disseminate the data via the commercial cloud.
    Landsat data are used for a wide range of regional and global 
applications, including monitoring agriculture crop health and 
production; assessing consumptive water use; tracking urban heat 
islands; conducting wildfire science; disaster response and 
remediation; detecting harmful algal blooms; and documenting forest 
extent and health.
                    land and water conservation fund
    Question. Secretary Haaland, thank you for the efforts that the 
Department of Interior (DOI) has made on strong implementation of the 
Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), specifically the dedicated funding 
provided for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). Conservation 
is a key priority of mine, and environmental protection is critical in 
the Chesapeake Bay watershed, where land protection and water quality 
are inextricably linked and where the health of the Bay directly 
impacts our economy and our entire way of life. The need for LWCF in 
communities and public land areas all across America has outstripped 
the annual LWCF funding available.
    GAOA was an important step in the right direction to try to meet 
the country's needs, but the $900 million provided annually under that 
legislation reflects a figure set more than 40 years ago, which cannot 
keep up with current prices, especially in our rapidly growing area of 
the country.
    How can we best support the diverse and urgent conservation needs 
that are funded through the LWCF, particularly in areas such as the 
Chesapeake that are interconnected and interdependent on the health of 
the watershed?
    Answer. Thank you for your support of the Land and Water 
Conservation Fund (LWCF). The Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) 
authorized full and permanent funding of $900 million annually from the 
LWCF, ensuring the Nation's commitment to conservation and recreation 
endures for future generations. The fiscal year 2023 President's 
proposal for the Land and Water Conservation Fund would allocate 
$807.034 million to the Department of the Interior for LWCF programs, 
including $125.175 million from the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act 
(GOMESA). Timely enactment of final annual appropriations enables the 
Department to allocate this funding earlier in the fiscal year and do 
more work to address these diverse and urgent conservation needs.
    The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has several active land 
acquisitions at National Wildlife Refuges within the Chesapeake Bay 
watershed. In fiscal year 2021, FWS acquired 88 acres at Blackwater 
National Wildlife Refuge and 264 acres at Great Dismal Swamp National 
Wildlife Refuge. In fiscal year 2022, FWS received a donation of a 
conservation easement on 465 acres at Rappahannock River Valley 
National Wildlife Refuge. FWS continues to advance its conservation 
mission within the watershed and is working with willing sellers on 
potential future acquisitions.
    The LWCF also authorizes funding for land acquisition under the 
Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation Fund, specifically for land 
acquisition related to the recovery of species listed under the 
Endangered Species Act and to complement Habitat Conservation Plans. 
States within the Chesapeake Bay watershed are encouraged to apply for 
these grants as a means of protecting habitat for listed species and 
restoring the watershed.
                          monarch butterflies
    Question. First, I was heartened to hear that there was real 
progress at the recent monarch butterfly summit this summer involving 
Federal agencies, research scientists, habitat managers, and volunteer 
groups. Recognizing the vital pollinator role of native bees, and the 
emerging science and diversity of partnerships developing at the USGS 
Eastern Ecological Science Center Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring 
Lab in Maryland, how will the DOI and USGS leverage this opportunity to 
also advance native bee science and conservation?
    Answer. The USGS is pleased to report that the USGS Bee Lab, part 
of the USGS Eastern Ecological Science Center (EESC), continues to grow 
and provide critically important services to pollinator conservation 
efforts led by local, State, and Federal government agencies and non- 
profit organizations. The lab is currently the only facility within 
Interior whose staff are capable of identifying the 4,000+ native bee 
species in the United States. In response to increased partner demands, 
in 2023, the USGS will double the size of the lab space, with the 
opening of the newly remodeled Annex facility that will provide 
research and office space for additional collaborating partners, 
support education and training efforts, and house entomological 
collections. This year, the Bee Lab will host co-located staff 
positions sponsored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, USDA Office 
of the Secretary, Northeast Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, 
and the USGS Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit Program, as 
well as over 150 volunteers and interns from local colleges, 
universities, and high schools. The USGS also recently signed a 
Memorandum of Understanding with the Smithsonian Institution that will 
increase opportunities for research and education between the USGS and 
Smithsonian's museums and research centers.
    The USGS Bee Lab is currently engaged in a broad range of research, 
training, and technical assistance activities to help meet increased 
demand from partners at local, state, and Federal government agencies, 
as well as non-profit organizations and citizens groups. Current areas 
of investigation include: the development of planting strategies for 
monarch butterflies and native bees; the identification of plant 
species that benefit both monarch butterflies and native bees; surveys 
of public and private lands for native bees; status assessments for 
individual native bee species; documentation of insect pollinators for 
native plant species; and the development of broader planting 
strategies at larger geographic scales. In addition, lab staff teach a 
weekly online course in bee identification that has over 200 
participants, and also offer bee identification courses through 
Interior's National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, West 
Virginia.
    Moving forward, the USGS is working to expand the expertise 
available at the EESC. This would include a Quantitative Methods and 
Decision Science Team to assess population trends and habitat use and 
restoration strategies, as well as decision science to inform 
pollinator conservation decisions. Another area of relevant expertise 
to pollinator health is within the Ecological Patterns and Processes 
and Animal Health Diagnostics and Surveillance Team. This team could 
expand its research capacity to better understand drivers and stressors 
influencing trends in pollinator species and associated ecological and 
socio-economic impacts.
    The USGS welcomes further inquiries regarding its native bee 
research and conservation efforts and invites the Senator and his staff 
to visit the USGS Bee Lab facility in Laurel, Maryland.
                       migratory bird treaty act
    Question. There has been a documented loss of nearly 3 billion 
birds across North America in recent years. This staggering loss of 
biodiversity and the impacts of social and economic consequences are of 
deep concern. How will the DOI support migratory bird science programs 
at USGS such as the North American Bird Banding Laboratory and Breeding 
Bird Survey and migratory bird conservation and management programs at 
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS)?
    How will the DOI leverage these efforts with other Federal, state, 
Tribal, non-governmental organizations, and the public to reverse these 
concerning declines?
    Answer. The severe decline in migratory bird populations is a deep 
concern of the Department of the Interior. The data are alarming, as 
they reveal that the losses are widespread among many species of 
grassland birds, seabirds, forest birds, shorebirds, and aerial 
insectivores. Time is of the essence to act now due to myriad threats 
to birds from habitat loss and degradation, human caused mortality, and 
ecosystem impacts due to the changing climate. The Migratory Birds 
program leads the FWS response to this crisis, and it has established 
and begun implementing a visionary approach to tackle this complex 
conservation issue. Working across regional boundaries and programmatic 
areas, FWS has established a core team and a national coordinator to 
focus on the problem. Together, FWS is implementing a ``5-and-1'' 
strategy-- named for its focus on five priority bird groups (grassland 
birds, forest birds, shorebirds, marine birds, and aerial insectivores) 
and one major source of bird mortality (collisions with manmade 
structures). Six sub-teams have been established focused on each of the 
five priority bird groups and the mortality source. This represents a 
holistic path forward for focused conservation.
    Currently, the 5-and-1 teams are having varying degrees of success. 
The collisions team created a buildings initiative to address light and 
glass collisions at FWS facilities and developed a tool to assess 
collision risk with buildings. To date, more than 40 percent of FWS 
buildings have been surveyed and those identified as a high collision 
risk are being modified. FWS now requires all new buildings and major 
renovations to include bird-friendly designs, which both protects 
wildlife and improves energy efficiency. Additionally, FWS, in its 
capacity of serving as Chair of the Council for the Conservation of 
Migratory Birds, has shared their success stories on light and glass 
collisions with other Federal agencies and is encouraging them to take 
similar actions.
    Other teams, like the marine bird team, have identified high 
priority areas and partnerships where resources should be directed to 
slow population declines. Seabirds face many challenges: declining and 
shifting prey distributions; warming and rapidly changing ocean 
conditions; loss of nesting and roosting habitats due to human 
development, disturbance, and sea level rise; bycatch mortality; 
plastic ingestion and debris entanglement; offshore energy development; 
and pollution. Because of their mostly pelagic existence and wide-
ranging movements, there are many gaps in the knowledge about seabirds 
and how to best address the challenges they face.
    The fiscal year 2023 President's budget includes nearly $5 million 
for the Migratory Birds program that would provide the conservation 
capacity needed to allow FWS' 5-and-1 teams to scale up activities and 
engage with partners. This investment could be transformational, 
permitting targeted investments in partner engagement, monitoring, 
technical assistance, conservation planning, and promoting bird-
friendly practices that would greatly leverage the resources of other 
FWS programs and other Federal, state, Tribal, and private conservation 
partners to dramatically increase the pace and scale bird conservation.

                                 ______
                                 

              Questions Submitted by Senator Bill Hagerty
    Question. Tennessee is home to the Great Smoky Mountains National 
Park, the most visited national park in the country. In 2021 alone, 
over 14 million people visited the Smokies. The Park serves has an 
important economic driver for Tennessee and the surrounding region, the 
impact was even further felt during the COVID pandemic when many small 
businesses in the area were forced to stay closed.
    Secretary Haaland, how will you prioritize our national parks 
operations budget and the park's access to resources now that more 
Americans are going outdoors and the number of visitors to our national 
parks this summer is expected to continue to increase. Is there a 
contingency plan for this expected increase?
    Answer. The fiscal year 2023 President's Budget Request makes bold 
investments essential for the NPS' continued mission success while 
remaining committed to the daily mission of ensuring that the American 
public continues to have an enriching experience at every NPS site. In 
particular, the budget funds fixed costs to support baseline operating 
levels and provides funding to build park capacity throughout the 
National Park System in visitor services, park protection, facility 
operations and maintenance, and park support.
    Question. Secretary Haaland, can you detail the formula the 
National Park Service utilizes to determine how much funding each 
National Park receives? Additionally, are the numbers of visitors and 
utilization of the park services considered as part of this formula?
    Answer. The NPS is responsible for safeguarding irreplaceable 
magnificent natural wonders and significant historical and cultural 
resources. Each unit of the NPS is unique. There are parkways with 
hundreds of miles of road; canyons that are miles deep; battlefields, 
caves, lakes, and rivers. Due in part to these differences, each park 
has its own set of priorities and manages its park operational budget 
according to the unique needs of the park, its visitors, partners, 
community, and resources. While visitation is often a key driver of 
need for additional operating capacity, it must be considered alongside 
many other factors during the budget formulation process.

                                 ______
                                 

             Questions Submitted by Senator Lisa Murkowski
    Question. I appreciate the efforts of the Department and Bureau of 
Land Management so far in implementing the Alaska Native Vietnam 
Veterans Allotment program as I authorized in the Dingell Act. We have 
an obligation to these Alaska Native Veterans to ensure their allotment 
applications are completed in a timely and efficient manner. I am 
concerned though that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) does not have 
the current capacity to meet this task before the program expires in 
December 29, 2025. I want to make sure BLM has the resources needed to 
contact all eligible veterans and be able to process the 2,900 plus 
applications it may potentially receive.
    What is BLM's plan to ensure that all applicants will have their 
applications processed within the deadline established in the Dingell 
Act?
    Answer. The BLM developed a streamlined process to review incoming 
applications, complete the associated cadastral surveys, and issue the 
Allotment Certificates. If complete applications are received without 
conflicts, the BLM's streamlined process will support issuing the 
Certificate of Allotment within 1 year after receipt of the 
application. The last day a veteran or heir of a veteran can file an 
application is December 29, 2025. All complete applications should 
therefore be processed by December 2026 if the corresponding budgetary 
resources are available.
    Question. Can you please provide this committee, either now or 
after this hearing, an estimate on the total costs required to complete 
all potential veteran applications by the deadline established in the 
Dingell Act?
    Answer. The largest cost associated with completing the application 
process is a cadastral survey. Due to the remoteness of selected 
allotment locations, helicopter support is typically needed to access 
the allotment. The cost for surveying one allotment can range between 
$25,000 to $35,000. In fiscal year 23, approximately 65 surveys will be 
completed for a total estimated cost of $2.2 million. It is estimated 
that up to 2,000 eligible individuals or their heirs may apply during 
the open selection period. The BLM estimates it will cost approximately 
$50 million to $70 million to complete all 2,000 potential surveys, 
however this estimate will fluctuate based on the actual number of 
applications received.
    You recently had the opportunity to visit Alaska and hear directly 
from Alaska Native Vietnam veterans how important it is to them for 
their allotments to be near where they live have ties to, as well as to 
be accessible. The BLM lands that have thus far been offered up do not 
meet that criteria.
    Question. Do you support making additional lands available for 
selection, including opening up Fish and Wildlife Service lands?
    Answer. Current law (the Dingell Act) provides that the BLM can 
provide eligible individuals the opportunity to select an allotment of 
up to 160 acres from vacant, unappropriated, and unreserved Federal 
lands in Alaska. The BLM has made more than 28 million acres of lands 
available for selection.
    In November 2020, the FWS delivered a report to Congress titled, 
Report to Congress: Identification of National Wildlife Refuge System 
Lands in Alaska That Should Be Made Available for Allotment Selection 
by Eligible Alaska Native Vietnam Era Veterans (Report to Congress 
(fws.gov)). FWS developed this report with input from over 160 Alaska 
Native Tribes and 100 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) 
Corporations. In the report, FWS identified 3.6 million acres of refuge 
lands that could be made available for selection by eligible veterans 
with Congressional authorization if the BLM eligible lands are not 
adequate.
    Question. What is the fiscal year 2023 proposed funding level for 
the Public Law 280 states in the President's Budget Request?
    Answer. The President's Budget proposes $15.0 million for Tribal 
Justice Support funding directed to Public Law 280 Tribes in fiscal 
year 2023.
    Question. To help address the crisis of Missing and Murdered 
Indigenous Persons across the United States, the Secretary announced 
the formation of a new Missing & Murdered Unit (MMU) within the BIA in 
2021 to better coordinate law enforcement resources and seeks an 
additional $5 million for this effort for investigative personnel. It's 
my understanding previous funding has been to open new offices so can 
you tell us here today what is the base amount of funding being used 
for this new law enforcement unit and exactly where are these units 
located?
    Answer. The additional $5.0 million provided in the fiscal year 
2022 appropriation brought total funding for the Missing and Murdered 
Indigenous People (MMIP) initiative up to $16.5 million to support the 
BIA Missing and Murdered Unit. Of this funding, $2.5 million is used 
for advanced training on forensics and other specialized training for 
the MMU investigators. The table below identifies existing MMU agent 
locations as well as new locations planned for additional agents.

 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
          Current Agent Locations            Additional Agent Locations
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Albuquerque, NM                             Bemidji, MN
Anchorage, AK                               Farmington, NM
Billings, MT                                Gallup, NM
Bismarck, ND                                Muskogee, OK
Bloomington, MN                             Riverton, WY
Carson City, NV                             Sacramento, CA
Fort Apache, AZ                             Salt Lake City, UT
Nashville, TN                               Seattle, WA
Oklahoma City, OK                           Sioux Falls, SD
Phoenix, AZ
Rapid City, SD
Shelby, MT
Vancouver, WA
------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Question. An issue that I have worked on for several years now is 
the Small and Needy Tribe program. This program is vitally important to 
the many small tribes in Alaska and for the last several years we have 
tried to work with Administration officials to determine the proper 
funding levels so that all eligible tribes receive the maximum amount 
allowed. Over the years we have struggled to get good information about 
what the program level should be in order to fund all currently 
eligible tribes at the maximum level, and, not only has the program 
level consistently changed there have been challenges in tracking and 
obligating funds. As result, the annual appropriations bills has been 
carrying report language for the last few years that continues to go 
unanswered. Given the historical challenges in determining eligibility, 
funding levels, and meeting Committee directives, it's a bit surprising 
to see such a dramatic increase of $18 million being proposed in the 
fiscal year 2023 budget.
    In fiscal year 2018, the Committee was informed that $5 million was 
the amount of funding necessary to fund all known, eligible small 
tribes up to the established maximum funding level. Yet, the fiscal 
year 2023 budget proposal is asking for an additional $18 million. Can 
you explain what has changed in the last 3 fiscal years regarding this 
program to warrant the increase?
    Answer. In fiscal year 2019, Indian Affairs (IA) began to improve 
the allocation process for the Small and Needy Tribe programs focusing 
on the means by which the tribal base information (location and base 
TPA funding) and enrollment tracking were managed and reported. This 
improved process allowed IA to automate a base funding report from the 
Primary Tribal Priority Allocation (TPA) Base tables used for the Small 
and Needy Tribe funding distributions and to integrate the new 
enrollment data collected in fiscal year 2021, which has continued to 
improve our efforts to ensure we are including all eligible Tribes. 
This has resulted in a larger count of eligible Tribes for the funding 
under this program. Additionally, at the request of Tribes and the 
Tribal/Interior Budget Council (TIBC) our request for additional 
funding in fiscal year 2023 includes raising the minimum level of 
funding for all Tribes to $300,000.
    Question. What tribes are currently eligible to receive this 
funding and what is the methodology and data the DOI uses to determine 
eligibility?
    Answer. Currently, IA determines Tribes to be eligible for the 
Small Tribes Supplement program based on location and base TPA funding. 
Alaska Tribes are eligible if they receive $200,000 or less in TPA base 
funding and Tribes in the lower 48 States are eligible if they receive 
$160,000 or less in base TPA funding. In fiscal year 2021, under the 
existing criteria, 87 Tribes were deemed eligible and received funding.
    IA conducted consultation with Tribes concerning the methodology 
and criteria for issuing Small Tribes funding as instructed in the 2022 
appropriations report language. The program is undergoing a review of 
all feedback from that consultation and based on that, is developing 
revised criteria that will enable us to bring all known, eligible small 
Tribes up to a newly established, increased minimum base funding level 
which may differ from the $300,000 minimum proposed in the fiscal year 
2023 Budget. The increase is in line with inflation to ensure a 
reasonable level of funding for a Tribal government to operate. The 
current base levels were established in 1994 and are no longer 
sufficient for small Tribes to run viable Tribal governmental 
operations. Raising the threshold for minimum base will result in 
additional Tribes qualifying.
    Once BIA fully works through the Tribal consultation comments and 
updates the parameters of the program, we will be able to determine a 
final count on the number of eligible Tribes and what level of funding 
would be needed to bring all eligible Tribes up to the minimum 
threshold. The amount requested in 2023 was based on an estimate using 
the original criteria.
    Question. What is the status of the congressional directives 
contained in recent appropriations bills?
    Answer. The congressional directives are currently being addressed 
and will include the results of the above-mentioned Tribal 
consultation.
    Question. Resource management planning is an expensive and time 
consuming exercise. In calendar year 2021, the BLM finalized updates of 
the Bering Sea Western Interior and Central Yukon Resource Management 
Plans. This was a culmination of effort that began in 2013 and spanned 
multiple administrations. In addition to the incredible time invested, 
these efforts were expensive and my understanding is that the cost to 
finalize these two plans exceeded $20 million.
    Unfortunately, the BLM has undertaken a rewrite of these RMPS, 
which will result in Alaska's lands being kept in a further state of 
limbo and will prevent the State and Alaska Natives from gaining title 
to lands that were promised to them over 50 years ago.
    Why is the Department rewriting these RMPs that were developed by 
career staff across multiple administrations?
    Answer. The Central Yukon Resource Management Plan (CYRMP) was 
released as draft for public comment in December 2020. The BLM is 
focused on identifying the next steps in the ongoing planning process 
and will soon be announcing the path forward.
    The Bering Sea Western Interior (BSWI) RMP has been finalized, and 
the Record of Decision was published in January 2021. That plan remains 
fully in effect and is being implemented by the BLM.
    Question. How long will the rewrites take and how much do you 
anticipate it will cost?
    Answer. The BSWI RMP remains in effect and is being implemented, 
and the CYRMP is in the planning process between the draft and final 
stages. Additional costs are not anticipated.
    Question. How much funding is included in the President's Budget 
Request for fiscal year 2023 for proposals and related planning efforts 
for the lease sale required in the 1002 area by the Tax Cuts and Jobs 
Act?
    Answer. The President's Budget Request for fiscal year 2023 did not 
request any additional funding for the lease sale required in the 1002 
area by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The BLM estimates the fiscal year 
2023 lease sale preparation costs to be approximately $300,000, which 
would be executed with appropriated base funding.
    Question. The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) filed a in 
early June that coincided with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's 
publication of its Proposed ``Hunt-Fish'' Rule which would preclude the 
use of traditional ammunition and tackle going forward on several 
National Wildlife Refuges. The Department entered into closed door 
settlement negotiations with CBD even before a court could provide any 
merit to their claims. I'm concerned that rather than going through the 
land management planning process, the Department is entering into 
closed-door settlement negotiations with an advocacy organization where 
Tribal consultation and input from the public will be absent.
    Has a settlement been reached with the Centers for Biological 
Diversity in their lawsuit against the Fish and Wildlife Service?
    Answer. FWS develops the annual Hunt-Fish Rule over a 14-month 
cycle. This process begins each June and concludes in August of the 
following year, with the goal of publishing the final rule in time for 
the fall hunting seasons. FWS began developing the packages for the 
2022- 2023 Hunt-Fish Rule, which included proposals at several refuges 
to require non-lead ammunition or tackle, in June 2021. The final rule 
was published in September 2022. This process began prior to receiving 
the Center for Biological Diversity's (CBD) lawsuit in December 2021 
and their June 2022 petition, and therefore is unrelated to their 
actions.
    The Department of Justice (DOJ) was authorized by FWS to draft a 
tentative settlement agreement with CBD that will be approved by FWS 
prior to finalization. The current stay from the Court ends on November 
2, 2022. FWS and the Department of the Interior's Office of the 
Solicitor expect settlement to be reached in this case.
    Question. If so, please provide a copy of the settlement to the 
subcommittee. If not, will you commit to providing a copy of the 
settlement to the subcommittee within 10 days of the settlement being 
reached? If you will not commit to providing the subcommittee with a 
copy of the settlement, please explain why.
    Answer. As the litigation is ongoing, FWS is not able to share the 
draft settlement agreement at this time. FWS commits to sharing a copy 
of the settlement agreement within 10 business days after the 
conclusion of the case.
    Question. Is the Department negotiating with CBD on banning lead 
ammunition and tackle as part of the settlement of the CBD petition?
    Answer. FWS cannot commit to reaching a particular result in any 
future notice-and- comment rulemaking process, which would be 
considered pre-decisional. As such, FWS cannot commit to requiring non-
lead ammunition or tackle on the National Wildlife Refuge System as 
part of any settlement agreement with CBD or rulemaking petition 
submitted by CBD. It is not uncommon for FWS to require non-lead 
ammunition or tackle on FWS lands and waters when it determines through 
scientific analyses, as part of National Environmental Policy Act 
(NEPA) analyses, refuge plans, and compatibility determinations, that 
lead ammunition and tackle have negative impacts on species. FWS will 
respond to CBD's petition for rulemaking as required by the 
Administrative Procedure Act. FWS considers all petitions from the 
public, non- governmental organizations, States, and other partners, in 
order to best serve the American public.
    Question. The aforementioned ``Hunt-Fish'' Rule proposes to ban 
lead ammunition and tackle on certain public lands by 2026 and I am 
concerned that this is a precursor to further regulatory actions. Given 
that approximately 95 percent of all ammunition contains lead 
components, banning traditional ammunition is certain to price a 
significant number of hunters and target shooters who hunt and shoot on 
public land out of the market. It would also have a significant impact 
on conservation. I my home State of Alaska alone, we would stand to 
lose over $12 million in Pittman Robertson funding in the event of a 
traditional ammunition ban.
    Please share what science was discovered since you became Secretary 
that supports the ban that you propose. Is the science sound enough to 
warrant decreasing access and opportunity for millions of taxpayers as 
well as hurting wildlife conservation efforts?
    Answer. The best available science demonstrates that lead 
ammunition and tackle have negative impacts on both wildlife and human 
health. FWS included many of these studies in National Environmental 
Policy Act (NEPA) documents and Cumulative Impacts Report, and 
incorporated these sources in the 2022-2023 Hunt-Fish Rule. In total, 
there are over 90 scientific sources cited, which are available through 
the final Cumulative Impacts Report available at the following site: 
https://www.regulations.gov/document/FWS-HQ-NWRS-2022-0055-16123. A key 
example of the available scientific evidence is the recent study by the 
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) which found significant population-level 
impacts on eagles nationwide from the use of lead ammunition for 
hunting. The study, published in the journal Science (Volume 375, Issue 
6582, February 18, 2022), is available at the following site: https://
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj3068.
    FWS has received an increasing number of comments from the public, 
including a significant number of hunters and anglers themselves, over 
the past few years on the annual Hunt-Fish Rules, asking FWS to further 
consider requiring non-lead ammunition and tackle on national wildlife 
refuges based on the increasing body of scientific literature 
illustrating the negative impacts of lead on wildlife.
    Some public comments FWS received from those who would prefer it 
not regulate lead ammunition and tackle alleged that the scientific 
analysis lacked evidence of ``population-level'' impacts to species. 
However, from studies like the USGS eagle study, there is significant 
evidence of population-level impacts for some species. For other 
species that are not impacted at the population-level, the science 
illustrates that many individuals are at risk of death or lead 
poisoning from ingestion of lead through gut piles, picking up spent 
pellets on the ground or lake bottoms, or even in bodies of water 
depending on the acidity of the water.
    FWS is required by statute to make decisions that support its 
conservation mission and to find uses on national wildlife refuges 
compatible with the mission and refuge purposes before allowing them. 
FWS will regulate when the science illustrates that the use of lead 
ammunition and lead tackle presents a risk for any species that are 
especially susceptible to lead. FWS prioritizes access for hunters and 
anglers when compatible and only pursues restrictions on how the use is 
allowed when necessary to support its mission.
    Question. Will the Department consider the impact of potential lost 
conservation funding when making decisions about whether to finalize a 
ban on traditional ammunition?
    Answer. FWS considers the socioeconomic impacts of how it manages 
hunting and fishing programs before making changes. This includes 
considering the impacts of any requirements to use non-lead ammunition 
or tackle on hunters and anglers. The viability of alternatives to lead 
ammunition and tackle have increased over time, both in terms of price 
and availability. In light of recent ammunition shortages and increases 
in price of all ammunition, the gap has been closed even further. As 
noted in the 2022-2023 Final Hunt-Fish Rule, FWS does not anticipate 
significant decreases in hunter participation caused by regulation of 
lead use on refuges, and it has not seen significant hunter decreases 
at refuges where non-lead requirements have been implemented in past 
rules.
    FWS also does not anticipate an impact to Pittman-Robertson (PR) 
excise tax funds used for conservation funding from any action on FWS 
lands and waters. Hunting and fishing on FWS lands and waters is a 
small fraction of the overall hunting and fishing that occur in the 
United States. FWS' experience is that non-lead requirements have not 
resulted in a decrease in hunting on national wildlife refuges. 
Therefore, FWS anticipates the impact to conservation funding from non-
lead requirements on national wildlife refuges to be very small.
    Question. I was disappointed in your June 17th Secretarial Order 
3408 which revoked the previous Secretarial Order 3368 that created a 
publicly available repository on the Solicitor's website where 
everyone, members of congress and the general public can see settlement 
negotiations that the Department has entered into. This is in addition 
to the Equal Access to Justice information that is provided in the 
annual budget request. Your press release indicated that the 
Secretarial Order you rescinded was a waste of taxpayer funds.
    Can you elaborate on how much the department spent on the 
implementation of SO 3368 and what portions of the disclosures on the 
Department's website were responsible for the supposed waste? How did 
you determine whether the previous transparency order provided a 
``tangible benefit'' to the public?
    Answer. The Department's additional expenses included annual 
developer costs to create and maintain the website; costs for employee 
time in compiling and uploading information; and costs for preparation 
of and fees for Federal register notices. The total cost of compliance 
with SO 3368 during its effective period is estimated at $94,582. After 
review of the limited benefits achieved from these additional expenses, 
the Department found that SO 3368's requirements either duplicated 
existing rules or policies governing settlements or added requirements 
that are not found in law or policy and raised concerns about 
consistency with court orders and/or the confidentiality expectations 
of parties in litigation. The Department concluded that spending 
Departmental resources in this way did not advance the Department's 
goals of enhancing transparency or safeguarding the public interest. 
Further, information about settlements and attorneys' fees is publicly 
available in alternate sources, including the annual reports to 
Congress and a Department of Treasury on-line database.
    Question. Can you please provide an example of how the previous 
order prevented the Department from entering into ``rational and fair'' 
settlement agreements?
    Answer. The Department's approach to settlements is governed by our 
internal policies and those of the Department of Justice, which prevent 
the Department from entering into settlements that make excessive 
commitments of time or resources or compromise the Department's legal 
authority. After review of SO 3368, we determined that it reiterated 
those substantive constraints but added new and vague procedural 
requirements that did not support the substantive criteria.
    For example, SO 3368 included a requirement to provide notice to 
non-party States or Tribes with ``substantial direct'' interest in all 
complaints or petitions filed against the Department, its bureaus or 
officers. The Order also established a new notice-and-comment process 
for certain settlements. These new bureaucratic requirements are not 
found in laws, regulations, or court rules and therefore interfered 
with the normal litigation and settlement process. The Department 
cannot share specific examples without violating promises of 
confidentiality regarding settlement negotiations, which are governed 
by Federal Rule of Evidence 408 and ensure frank and open discussions 
to reach agreements.
    Question. On the same day that President Biden called for a 
reliable supply chain of critical minerals during his Securing Critical 
Minerals virtual event, the Department of the Interior announced 
creation of the Interagency Working Group on Mining Regulations, Laws 
and Permitting. The specter of major changes to the regulatory 
framework for mining projects is certain to cause investors to rethink 
the U.S. a prime jurisdiction for mining investment at a time when the 
U.S. is exceedingly over reliant for mineral imports from geopolitical 
adversaries. Why would the department seek to initiate these actions, 
potentially freeze investor confidence, at a time when mineral demand 
is expected to skyrocket?

    1. What are the next steps for the Interagency Working Group?

    2. What opportunities will there be for continued engagement with 
stakeholders moving forward?

    3. What engagement has occurred with States?

    4. When does the Interagency Working Group expect to complete its 
work and provide recommendations?

    5. I understand there are roundtable discussions planned with 
various stakeholders. Please provide the dates and locations for any 
proposed roundtables.

    Answer. The Interagency Working Group on Mining Regulations, Laws, 
and Permitting (IWG) has conducted extensive outreach throughout the 
year and is reviewing tens of thousands of comments received in 
response to a Request for Information published in March 2022, 
including hundreds of letters with specific recommendations from Tribal 
Nations, State governments, the mining industry, environmental and 
conservation organizations, academics, and others. The IWG held 
meetings with the leadership and members of the Interstate Mining 
Compact Commission, Environmental Council of the States, Association of 
American State Geologists, and National Association of State Trust 
Lands, in addition to discussions with individual state officials upon 
request.
    The IWG is currently working to complete a report to Congress of 
its findings. The report will provide recommendations about any 
substantive changes needed to meet the Country's need for mineral 
resources, including critical minerals, while respecting our 
obligations to Tribal Nations, protecting the environment, supporting 
communities, and addressing legacy mining issues.
    Question. The Department recently touted its efforts to 
reinvigorate renewable energy projects on Federal lands. To accomplish 
this, the Department developed organizational enhancements and improved 
process efficiencies for optimizing Federal permit coordination for 
renewable energy projects.
    Why are the same type of efficiencies used to permit renewable 
energy projects not used to permit domestic energy and mineral 
projects, particularly those that are the front end of the supply chain 
for renewable energy technologies?
    Answer. Critical minerals are key inputs to manufacturing advanced 
technologies including renewable energy generation and storage. In 
response to recommendations from the 100-Day reviews directed by E.O. 
14017, America's Supply Chains, and Section 40206 of the Bipartisan 
Infrastructure Law (BIL), the Department has established an Interagency 
Working Group to comprehensively review hardrock mineral laws, 
regulations, and permitting requirements. As part of this whole-of-
government effort, the Department has hosted extensive public input and 
comment sessions on potential hardrock mining reforms and intends to 
publish a report with legislative, regulatory, and policy 
recommendations in fiscal year 2023. Regarding domestic energy, the BLM 
continues to approve oil and gas applications for permits to drill 
(APD) and industry currently has in excess of 8,000 approved APDs 
available to them for domestic production.
    Question. Have there been any new coal leases or lease 
modifications approved, either for thermal or met coal, under your 
leadership at the Department of the Interior?
    Answer. Since 2021, the Department has approved one 630-acre 
Emergency Bypass lease issued in North Dakota for lignite thermal coal.
    Question. Are there any outstanding coal lease or lease 
modification applications currently pending before the Department of 
the Interior? If so, how long have those applications been pending?
    Answer. Currently there are 16 Lease By Applications (LBAs) and 3 
Lease Modification Applications (LMAs) before the BLM. However, eight 
of the LBAs are on hold by the applicant's request or the Federal 
acreage is part of the land exchange in Section 1255 of the Dingell Act 
and will be turned over to the State. In the case of lease applications 
for Federal minerals that are part of the Dingell Act, the LBAs are put 
on hold until the surface and mineral estate are transferred to the 
State (see John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management and Recreation 
Act, Public Law 116-9, Section 1255, Exchange of BLM and School 
Institutional Trust Lands Administration land), at which time the State 
assumes all responsibility for the leasing decision and associated 
environmental analysis. The others are in various stages of NEPA 
evaluation, cost recovery MOUs, in bankruptcy court, part of legal 
action, or the BLM has requested more information from the applicant 
and is waiting for a response. BLM is evaluating the impact of the 
recent court order reinstating Secretary Jewell's coal leasing 
moratorium on the pending applications. All these factors make the 
timeline for LBAs and LMAs highly variable and in many cases outside 
the control of the Department of the Interior. The table below 
summarizes pending coal actions and provides the case number for ease 
of reference.

                             Pending Coal Lease and Lease Modification Applications
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                                                  Application
                  LBA                            LMA                      Status                   Received
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COC-71978                                                    Hold-Applicant Request.........          10/12/2007
COC-78449                                                    Hold-Applicant Request.........            4/6/2017
KYES-55296                                                   On Hold-Mine is on standby.....            7/3/2007
ALES-55797                                                   Met Coal-HQ BLM NEPA Review....           8/13/2009
ALES-56519                                                   Hold-Applicant Request.........           9/22/2010
ARES-57757                                                   NEPA Ongoing...................          12/21/2012
WVES-59357                                                   Consent-USACE Surface                     7/30/2018
                                                              Management.
MTM 105485                                                   Cost Recovery..................           2/13/2013
NDM 111186                                                   NEPA Ongoing...................           5/17/2019
NDM 111489                                                   HQ BLM NEPA Review.............          10/30/2019
                                                 MTM 110693  Cost Recovery-RMP Litigation...           6/17/2021
OKNM- 127509                                                 Hold-Applicant Request.........          10/27/2011
                                                OKNM- 91569  Cost Recovery..................           12/3/2012
UTU-080043                                                   Hold-Dingell Act...............            3/1/2002
UTU-093214                                                   Hold-Dingell Act...............           3/28/2018
UTU-092226                                                   NEPA-Part of Settlement                   7/10/2019
                                                              Agreement.
                                                 UTU-077114  NEPA-Part of Settlement                    6/7/2019
                                                              Agreement.
WYW164812                                                    Request Status Update from                10/7/2005
                                                              Applicant.
WYW184599                                                    Hold-Applicant Request.........           8/24/2015
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Question. What the current status is of the ongoing Federal coal 
review and what are the anticipated next steps in the review, including 
timing of those steps? How is the Department taking into account the 
comments and economic needs of Federal coal states and tribes who would 
like to develop their natural resources?
    Answer. On August 12, 2022, the District Court for the District of 
Montana Great Falls Division (Case 4:17-cv-00030-BMM Document 23) ruled 
the NEPA analysis used for lifting the coal leasing moratorium enacted 
by Secretary Jewell (Secretary Order 3338) was insufficient and the 
Court reinstated the coal leasing moratorium until the NEPA 
deficiencies are addressed. The BLM is currently working to develop a 
path forward for the Federal coal program.
    Question. It has been over a year since Executive Order 14008 
launched an effort to conserve at least 30 percent of our lands and 
waters by 2030. Unfortunately, there is widespread confusion regarding 
what Federal agencies will actually count as conservation, what will 
account for local and state conservation programs, and how land use 
designations that overlap with management plans for various activities 
will be factored. Compounding these uncertainties is the issue of 
multiple use and how industries that rely upon Federal lands will be 
treated, many of which have been fully engaged in conservation 
partnerships and effective voluntary conservation activities for 
decades, demonstrating that development and conservation are not 
mutually exclusive.
    When will the Department of the Interior be able to provide the 
Committee with a definition for what is considered ``conservation'' 
under the initiative?
    Answer. The principles of the initiative and initial general steps, 
including development of the American Conservation and Stewardship 
Atlas, were outlined in our report, issued last May, titled Conserving 
and Restoring America the Beautiful. That report also outlined our 
recommendations for early focus of the initiative. We are coordinating 
with the Departments of Agriculture and Commerce, and the Council on 
Environmental Quality, on development of the Atlas. We have undertaken 
broad public engagement as we move through the process, including a 
public comment period that closed in early March. We expect to be able 
to release a ``beta'' version of that Atlas by the end of the year and 
will continue to update the Committee from there.
    Question. How will the Department quantify how much existing U.S. 
lands and waters under Federal stewardship count as currently being 
``conserved''?
    Answer. Under the initiative we expect a flexible, inclusive 
definition given the many uses of land and waters that can be 
consistent with the long-term health of ecosystems and many types of 
conservation that exist on Federal, Tribal, State, and private land and 
waters. It will also help to address to the impacts of climate change 
and environmental injustices. We have undertaken broad public 
engagement, including a public comment period that closed in early 
March and are coordinating with the Departments of Agriculture and 
Commerce, and the Council on Environmental Quality, on development of 
the Atlas.
    Question. Will lands currently subject to multiple use be 
considered ``conserved''?
    Answer. As noted in the previous response, the Atlas will reflect 
the many uses of land and waters that can be consistent with the long-
term health of ecosystems and help address the impacts of climate 
change and environmental injustices.
    Question. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced a notice of 
intent on the Federal Register in November 2021 to solicit comments to 
inform the BLM's preparation of Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) 
to address the management of Greater Sage-grouse and sagebrush habitat 
on BLM-managed land in the States of California, Colorado, Idaho, 
Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming 
through a land use planning initiative. Comments closed in February 
2022.
    What other opportunities will BLM provide the public to maintain 
involvement with the NEPA and land use planning processes?
    Answer. After the BLM and its cooperating agencies prepare the 
Draft EIS, the BLM will seek public input on the document during a 90-
day comment period. After the comment period, the BLM will review all 
the public input and adjust the EIS, as necessary. The resulting Final 
EIS will then be provided for public review during a 30-day protest 
period.
    Question. Will there be a Governor's consistency review on any 
proposed land use plan amendment/final EIS?
    Answer. Yes, the BLM will provide the Proposed RMP Amendment/Final 
EIS to all the affected Governor's offices for a 60-day consistency 
review.
    Question. What is the timeline of activities related to the 
finalizing activities under the November 2021 solicitation?
    Answer. The current schedule has the BLM working with its 
cooperating agency partners to prepare the Draft RMP Amendment/Draft 
EIS and anticipates providing the document for public review and input 
in July 2023. Following the 90-day comment period and time for 
reviewing received comments, preparing responses, and updating the EIS, 
we expect to publish the Proposed RMP Amendment/Final EIS in February 
2024, making it available for a 30-day protest period and 60-day 
governor's consistency review. Pending resolution of any potential 
protests or issues raised by governors, we expect to publish the 
decisions in June 2024. As with similar planning efforts, these dates 
are our best current estimates, but could be subject to change to adapt 
to changing conditions.
    Question. The BLM announced in August 2021 and published a notice 
of intent stating it will begin re-initiation of consideration of 
whether a proposed 10-million-acre mineral withdrawal of Federal land 
from location and entry under the Mining Law to conserve priority 
greater sage- grouse habitat is necessary.
    What is the current status is of the consideration of a mineral 
withdrawal?
    Answer. In 2021, the U.S. District Court in Idaho vacated the BLM's 
2017 cancellation of its NEPA efforts to consider a mineral withdrawal 
providing additional conservation in some priority greater sage-grouse 
habitats. To comply with the court order, the BLM has reinitiated the
    NEPA process, beginning by reviewing the 2016 Draft EIS and 
updating the information and analysis to reflect new science and 
results from monitoring.
    To ensure the BLM is considering the most current information, we 
have contracted with the USGS to update the 2016 Mineral Potential 
Report, in particular to consider the potential for critical minerals 
within the proposed withdrawal areas. A draft report has been 
completed, which the BLM is currently reviewing to provide comments 
back to the USGS. Once those comments have been addressed, the USGS 
will issue the updated report as final.
    The BLM is concurrently reviewing new science on greater sage-
grouse that has been published since 2015 to assess whether the 
proposed areas for withdrawal are providing the conservation benefit 
anticipated in 2015.
    Question. What are the anticipated next steps in the review?
    Answer. When the mineral potential report is final, that 
information will be combined with the biological analyses to update the 
alternatives from the 2016 Draft EIS. The BLM will then conduct an 
analysis of the refined range of alternatives to consider the impacts 
of a proposed withdrawal of some, none, or all of the sagebrush focal 
areas that were initially recommended for withdrawal. In coordination 
with cooperating agencies, including State, local, and Tribal 
governments, the BLM will prepare a Draft EIS that includes the updated 
alternatives and associated impact analyses. The Draft EIS will be 
provided for public review and comment in 2023.
    Question. How are you taking into account the comments and economic 
needs of states and tribes who would like to develop their natural 
resources?
    Answer. The BLM has renewed cooperating agency agreements with 
State, local, and Tribal governments to assist in preparing the 
Sagebrush Focal Area Potential Mineral Withdrawal EIS. Those 
cooperating agencies will be able to provide valuable input on local, 
social, and economic conditions and the associated effects of the 
alternatives on local economies. The BLM will use their input to 
analyze the impact of the various alternatives on social and economic 
conditions. This will be informed by the mineral potential report, 
which will form the basis for preparing a reasonably foreseeable 
development scenario based on mineral availability, mining sector 
trends, and economic conditions and will include the economic potential 
for development of any recoverable material. The data will be presented 
in the NEPA documents and will be considered before any final decisions 
are made by the agency.
    Question. The Federal government relies on private parties to 
explore Federal lands to locate and develop minerals that are essential 
to our quality of life, national security, and economic 
competitiveness. Access to exploration activities for these minerals is 
essential to the development and production of minerals. Put simply, we 
need more mines on public lands to demand for domestic critical mineral 
production.
    How will the Department promote access to mineralized lands for 
development?
    Answer. Under the Mining Law of 1872, hundreds of millions of acres 
of public lands may be accessed freely and without prior authorization 
for the purpose of entry and location, allowing exploration and the 
staking of claims for valuable mineral deposits. The Bureau of Land 
Management (BLM) processes new claim filings and annual claim 
maintenance fees, ensuring that those claims are available for 
exploration and development under applicable laws. The BLM also reviews 
mining notices for exploration work and reviews and approves plans of 
operation for larger-scale exploration and commercial mineral 
development. The BLM continues to expeditiously review and approve new 
mineral exploration and development work to provide access to mineral 
deposits and allow for development in a way that prevents unnecessary 
and undue degradation of public lands.
    Question. Does the Department consider the anticipated mineral 
demand for clean energy technologies as a determining factor before 
taking administrative action that would preemptively block or 
negatively impact development of a mine project?
    Answer. The BLM processes all mine plan applications in accordance 
with applicable laws and ensures that any exploration or mining 
operations do not cause unnecessary and undue degradation of the public 
lands. The Mining Law of 1872 does not require operators to report the 
quantity or type of minerals that are produced by their operations to 
the BLM.
    Question. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) 
provided over $11 billion for coal abandoned mine land funding and the 
Department released draft guidance in May of 2022 for select states and 
Tribes on how to apply for 2022 grants pursuant to this funding. Given 
that the guidance expands the scope of eligibility to non-coal AML 
projects, how will DOI ensure adequate oversight of states and Tribes 
with these new funds while increasing the efficient use of taxpayer 
dollars? Also, please provide an update on the timing of the rulemaking 
that would establish requirements and obligations for states and Tribes 
to receive this funding.
    Answer. The Draft Guidance published in May 2022, by the Department 
of Interior's (DOI) Office of Surface Mining and Enforcement (OSMRE) 
did not expand nor propose to expand the scope of eligibility for use 
of the IIJA funds to non-coal AML projects. Title VII, Section 40701 of 
the IIJA states the following:

        This section appropriates $11,293,000,000 billion in funds for 
        deposit in the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund . . . Grants 
        under this section must only be used for activities described 
        in subsections (a) and (b) of section 403 and section 410 of 
        SMCRA.

    Thus, this new funding source may only be spent on eligible 
abandoned coal mine projects as set forth under the referenced 
provisions of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA). 
The Final Guidance published on July 21, 2022, provides, consistent 
with the requirement of Section 40701, for the use of IIJA grant funds 
on priorities resulting from legacy coal mining that pose a threat to 
public health, safety, and the environment (including acid mine 
drainage projects), water supply restoration projects and coal AML 
emergency projects.
    DOI-OSMRE has put a series of measures in place to ensure adequate 
oversight of State and Tribal implementation of the IIJA with this new 
funding. Actions taken and anticipated include, recruiting and hiring 
additional staff with the relevant skill sets across OSMRE's 
headquarters and regional offices to ensure effective execution of the 
program. OSMRE, among other things, is developing a training program 
for State and OSMRE employees engaged in IIJA implementation, reviewing 
state and Tribal Reclamation Plans to ensure consistency with the IIJA 
provisions, developing performance metrics to ensure the objectives of 
the IIJA are met, and requiring information in grant applications on 
specific projects, beginning in fiscal year 2023. The Final Guidance 
document is available to assist States and Tribes in meeting the IIJA 
objectives with detailed requirements and expectations for successful 
implementation of the IIJA AML program.
    Further, DOI-OSMRE has built in efficiencies to ensure the proper 
use of these taxpayer funds by basing the design of the IIJA program on 
the existing AML-fee based program in several respects. Examples 
include, directing IIJA funds only to eligible States and Tribes with 
approved Reclamation Plans, requiring separate grant applications for 
the IIJA grants and the traditional AML-fee based grants, ensuring 
enhanced reporting transparency to enable the tracking of IIJA fund 
expenditures, and leveraging existing internal control measures such as 
periodic drawdown reviews and Single Audit Compliance reviews to 
minimize the potential for waste, fraud and abuse.
    OSMRE continues to evaluate the need and the timing for IIJA 
rulemaking.
    Question. In February 2022, the Department submitted a request to 
the Court to remand the ROD/EIS for the Ambler Access Project. In that 
request, the Department expressed a commitment to completing the 
necessary consultation, analysis, and supplemental work in a timely 
manner. It is now August 2022 and it appears that no significant 
progress has been made in this process.

    1. When does the department intend to initiate the necessary work?

    2. And will there be a schedule for work to be completed?

    3. Does BLM Alaska intend to select a third-party contractor to 
conduct the necessary work on the Ambler Access Road Project 
supplemental EIS? If so, when will that contractor be selected?

    4. BLM Alaska has delayed approvals for scientific, cultural 
surveys, and non-ground disturbing field activities this summer. With a 
very short window during the summer months in Alaska to conduct this 
work, the project could be set back an entire year. Additionally, the 
delays have already caused significant financial damage to the project. 
Does the BLM intend to provide approval for any of this important work? 
If so, when will these approvals or denials be conveyed to the project 
proponents?

    Answer. The Ambler Access project was remanded to the BLM by the 
U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, based on the Department 
of the Interior's request for a voluntary remand to address certain 
procedural and legal defects. Following a period of intensive review 
and planning among the BLM, the project proponent, stakeholders, and 
Tribes, the Bureau began the supplemental environmental impact 
statement (SEIS) process by publishing a notice of intent in the 
Federal Register on September 20, 2022. The notice kicked off a 45-day 
scoping period, ending November 4, 2022. In parallel with the scoping 
period, BLM is pursuing the necessary procurement steps to engage the 
services of a third-party contractor to prepare the SEIS. We expect to 
release the solicitation early in fiscal year 2023.
    Since the court required that the BLM maintain the ``environmental 
status quo'' until the obligations outlined in the voluntary remand 
were met, the BLM was unable to approve ground- disturbing field work 
for this project in 2022. However, limited ground disturbing activities 
were approved contingent upon completion of a 28-day notice to the 
Plaintiffs; this requirement was met on September 19, 2022. We will 
continue to work closely with the proponent, Tribes, cooperators, and 
all other interested parties as the 2023 field season approaches.

                          SUBCOMMITTEE RECESS

    Senator Merkley. This hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:29 a.m., Wednesday, July 31, the hearing 
was adjourned, and the subcommittee was recessed, to reconvene 
at a time subject to the call of the Chair.]