Wrong choice for the interior
While President Trump signals that more offshore drilling lies ahead and his interior secretary studies erasing preservation protections, another move is troubling environmentalists and veterans of California’s water wars.
David Bernhardt, a former lobbyist for the giant Westlands Water District, is facing Senate hearings that could lead to his selection as the Interior Department’s No. 2 figure. His nomination would be a Trumpian slap at this state and the rest of the country.
The nominee comes with ample credentials, but they’re all the wrong ones. His has served as the department’s top lawyer under President George W. Bush and then left to work as a legal adviser to timber and mining firms. In California, he worked for Westlands, the nation’s largest water district, which battled federal agencies for more flows during the drought. In November he dropped that work when he joined the Trump transition team vetting interior staffing.
Bernhardt’s selection mocks Trump’s pledge to avoid Washington insiders and corporate figures. Instead of an outright ban on lobbyists, the Trump team is opening the hiring door in exchange for a promise of recusal from work involving a former employer.
In Bernhardt’s case, it’s hard to know where the line would be. Since leaving his job as department solicitor, he joined a top-ranking law firm as head of its Washingtonbased natural resources division. That job led to his work for Westlands, the agency supplying water to the arid western side of the Central Valley near Fresno.
In the fish versus farm fight over critical water flows, he’s a paid partisan for agriculture. Steeped in state water conflicts, he could play a major role in steering water allotments to major farms, an outcome that could overturn years of work toward a more balanced solution.
His law firm also represented the Cadiz venture, which proposes pumping underground water in the Mojave Desert and will need Interior Department approval.
This tangled background drew instant rebukes that could roil his confirmation hearings this month. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who has immersed herself in water politics, said she has “serious concerns about the nomination of Mr. Bernhardt due to his numerous conflicts of interest,” citing his Cadiz links especially. Reps. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, and Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, both weighed in against the pick.
As the top deputy, Bernhardt would set day-to-day policy, staffing and budgets. His work would range across all of this country’s outdoors and the rules to manage them. He is the wrong choice for this important duty.