The Bureau of Land Management Is Moving Back to Washington

Politics|The Bureau of Land Management is moving backmost to Washington.

• Sept. 17, 2021, 5:06 p.m. ET

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced Friday that the Bureau of Land Management volition determination its office backmost to Washington, a reversal of a heavy criticized Trump medication determination to relocate the nationalist lands bureau to Grand Junction, Colo.

More than 87 percent of the unit of the agency, which oversees lipid and state improvement arsenic good arsenic recreation connected millions of acres of national lands, near the bureau erstwhile its leaders established the caller headquarters, successful a gathering shared by Chevron and an lipid and state lobbying association. Critics contended that was the eventual motive down the determination to Colorado, driven by an medication promising to “drain the swamp” of Washington bureaucrats.

In announcing the instrumentality to Washington, Ms. Haaland said that the past fewer years had been “incredibly disruptive” to the agency, and said the B.L.M. indispensable person “the due operation and resources” to code clime alteration and grow entree to nationalist lands.

“There’s nary uncertainty that the B.L.M. should person a enactment beingness successful Washington, D.C., similar each the different land-management agencies, to guarantee that it has entree to the policy, fund and decision-making levers to champion transportation retired its mission,” she said successful a statement.

Ms. Haaland said the Grand Junction bureau volition stay intact and “will turn and grow arsenic the bureau’s authoritative Western headquarters.”

Democrats and biology groups applauded the move. Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado, said helium was “disappointed” that his authorities was losing the office but called the instauration of a caller Western bureau “a precise affirmative development.”

Republicans called the dual-office compromise a discarded of national taxation dollars. Senator Steve Daines of Colorado, a Republican, accused the Biden medication of taking the bureau successful the “wrong direction” by moving those who marque decisions astir nationalist lands farther distant from the resources they manage.

“Clearly, they are much funny successful ballooning the D.C. bureaucracy than successful making authorities enactment amended for the people,” helium said.