Alternative facts at Interior

So many of President Trump’s Cabinet appointments have been so alarming that nominations to posts further down in the pecking order might seem a bit anticlimactic. What’s the use of getting worked up over subordinate positions? There has got to be a point at which consternation over the president’s choices yields to exhaustion.

And then comes a nominee like David Bernhardt, Trump’s pick for deputy secretary of the Interior.

Bernhardt is a bad choice, a fact that should have become clear during last week’s Senate committee hearings. An attorney for partisans in California’s water battles, he comes laden with conflicts of interest.

Bernhardt repeatedly sued the Department of the Interior on behalf of the Westlands Water District, the politically powerful San Joaquin Valley irrigation agency that has fought federal protections for California salmon and other endangered species. He also had a major role in drafting legislation to undermine those protections. His firm is a top lobbyist for Cadiz Inc., which wants to pump Mojave Desert groundwater and send it by aqueduct to Southern California cities.

If he is confirmed, he will be in a position to align the department behind the interests of his former clients. Granted, he could still recuse himself from those issues, but if he’s going to be silent on the very programs in which he has the most expertise, why appoint him to the post in the first place?

Bernhardt has pledged to recuse himself for one year from matters related to former clients — “unless I am first authorized to participate.” Presidents may grant waivers that allow former industry insiders to oversee implementation of regulations that they once lobbied for or against. Trump may be the first president, however, who has tried to prevent public disclosure of such waivers. Thankfully, the Office of Government Ethics has, so far, rejected Trump’s requests. But Bernhardt’s conflicts and the administration’s quest to keep waivers under wraps make a toxic combination.

Scientific expertise plays a crucial role in management of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, where biologists’ opinions about the volume of water needed to sustain endangered fish help determine how the state and federal government divvy up water among competing interests. It is bad enough that Bernhardt helped draft legislation that could potentially weaken the clout of those opinions. During his confirmation hearings, Bernhardt hinted that, regardless of the science, he would follow the “particular perspective” of the Trump administration.

Adherence to alternative-fact scenarios is the last thing we need in an agency mandated to make policy decisions based on scientific evidence.