© 2024 Boise State Public Radio
NPR in Idaho
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Apple's latest iOS (17.4) is preventing our livestreams from playing. We suggest you download the free Boise State Public Radio app & stream us there while we work to troubleshoot the issue.

New Head Of Interior Adjusts To New Role

EarthFix

Sally Jewell’s transition from CEO of REI to head of the Interior Department in Washington D.C. has required her to make more than a few changes.  

Some of them are personal. Consider this: Unlike cool and mild Seattle where she used to live, Washington D.C. is hot and sticky. Now, Jewell is living in a row house with flower pots on the roof. And yes, theaccomplishedmountaineer says, she misses the Cascades.

“Oh totally, are you kidding me?” Jewell says. But she’s quick to express her admiration for what pass for mountains near her new home town. “I’ve been to some lovely mountains in the East. It’s just that they used to be taller than the mountains in the West, but they got worn off.”

Jewell is in the midst of her first return to the Northwest since she was sworn in April 12 as the 51st interior secretary. She made a two-appearance stop in Portland. At her first event on Thursday, Jewell announced roughly $4 million in grants to give young people summer jobs in conservation and trail building work.

On Friday she was joined by Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber at a signing ceremony for an agrement to speed up permitting of energy generation and power transmission in the Northwest.

As interior secretary, Jewell is now the county’s top steward of more than 700 million acres of forest, rangeland, and offshore oil and gas leases controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM.

But during her first short press conference in Portland, Jewell revealed little about how she will strike a balance between conservation and energy development on those lands.

Jewell’s portfolio includes vast reserves of federal coal on BLM land in Wyoming and Montana. Those federalcoal leases have sparked controversy after companies have proposed building new terminals in the Northwest to export the coal to Asia. Continue reading....

 

You make stories like this possible.

The biggest portion of Boise State Public Radio's funding comes from readers like you who value fact-based journalism and trustworthy information.

Your donation today helps make our local reporting free for our entire community.