(3 of 5)
Over eleven years Watt held Washington jobs that honed his expertise and his ideology. As a U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbyist, he worked to defeat all manner of environmental regulation. In the Nixon and Ford Administrations he served a well-rounded apprenticeship: as an Interior deputy in charge of water management, as director of the department's land-buying Bureau of Outdoor Recreation and, finally, as a federal power commissioner. As a result, Secretary Watt's technical mastery of his job is positively staggering.
In 1977 Watt returned West to become the first president of the Denver-based Mountain States Legal Foundation, a "public interest" law firm underwritten by conservative Western businessmen. Under Watt, Mountain States went to court to fight against discount utility rates for elderly and disabled people in Colorado, federal strip-mining regulations, a plan to designate part of a Wyoming oilfield a protected wilderness area and a National Park Service ban on motorized rafts in the Grand Canyon. "When Jim believes he's right, he's a man of action," says Lawyer William Mellor III, who worked for Watt in Denver. Another Mountain States lawyer, Kea Bardeen, explains Watt's rationale: "He believes that if you make a decision and it's a mistake, you can always go back and fix it."
In the conservation vs. development debate, the impact of today's policies will not be fully apparent for decades. It is that very uncertainty that has led Interior policymakers to err on the side of preservation and caution. Because Watt's radical course carries with it the risk of irrevocability—lands cannot be unsold, offshore oil wells undrilled nor sullied wilderness made virginal again—his department is no longer a quaint political backwater. For better or worse, Watt's Interior stewardship may be the century's most significant. Among his controversial moves:
Offshore Oil Leasing. Watt is opening up to oil companies nearly all 1 billion acres of U.S. coastal waters, 25 times that offered since the program began in 1954. Critics say that the risks of oil spills and other environmental damage will be grave and that the massive enterprise is beyond the oil industry's technical and financial means.
Land Leasing. Under Watt the federal acreage leased for oil exploration has more than doubled; land leased to coal companies has quintupled. Conservationists worry, for example, about the lease hastily granted last fall for drilling beneath New Mexico's Capitan Wilderness. Critics also say it is unwise to auction coal properties during a market glut.
Wilderness. Under current laws, the 80 million acres of pristine U.S. wilderness will be permanently closed to any new mining and drilling leases after next year. Watt has proposed modifying the ban: in 18 years all wilderness lands would become available for exploitation. (Last week the House unequivocally rejected Watt's plan. It voted 340 to 58 to outlaw most wilderness leasing immediately and the remainder on schedule, in 1984.)