▶ 0:30:56>> the committee will come to order. We will hear today from secretary burgum as we discuss the fiscal year 2027 budget for the department of the interior. Welcome, Mr. secretary. I will begin with my opening statement, followed by ranking member heinrich's association, then we will turn to secretary burgum, followed by questions from members of the committee.
▶ 0:31:25I want to note that senate democrats are having a policy retreat so for this hearing ranking member heinrich has requested we recognize democrat senators based on order of seniority rather than being subject to the rule. Republican senators will be recognized based on the order of seniority for those who are here at the gavel and those arriving afterwards. Democrats will not be subject to that one.
▶ 0:31:57Mr. secretary, president trump campaigned on a promise to unleash american energy. In delivering on that promise runs directly through the department that you lead. In so many respects. When you assumed office you inherited a department that had been alienated against its own purpose. Certainly against that particular purpose.
▶ 0:32:24Under your predecessor, the biden administration did everything in its power to dampen energy production and narrow access to federal land. Lease sales were canceled or in many cases delayed. Permits were slow walked and in some cases revoked. The biden administration did not be the federal estate as a natural -- national asset to be actively managed.
▶ 0:32:53It was treated with suspicion and access became conditional, revocable, and increasingly rare. We were sold a lie that demand could be managed from above. That supply would quietly just a political preference and the consequences could be deferred. Predictably, supply chains drifted further overseas, leaving us more exposed to decisions made abroad, outside of our control.
▶ 0:33:21Wildfire threats grew more severe and coordination remained fragmented and slower than the scale of the problem under today's circumstances require. The boom in artificial intelligence coupled with the development of advanced manufacturing proved how untenable the previous administration's approach was. For these reasons I was relieved to see your fy 2027 budget request shows a dramatic departure from that approach.
▶ 0:33:52What are your proposed budget, there is a renewed emphasis on unleashing american energy and america's mineral dominance. Lease sales are being put back on a predictable schedule pursuant to the working families tax cut act. Permits for oil and gas projects are no longer the insurmountable barrier that they want served as.
▶ 0:34:15Mining in the united states is gaining ground from coal to critical minerals that underpin modern manufacturing energy systems and technologies. These efforts will reduce our dangerous dependence on foreign adversarial nations, instead favoring american workers and american ingenuity. Mr. secretary, you have any accomplish and it's already under your tenure.
▶ 0:34:42You still have monumental tasks ahead every day. Last year more than 5 million acres burned, causing billions of dollars of damage and placing entire communities at risk. Interior's unification of federal welfare programs into a single fire service acknowledges the current system has not been working as it should.
▶ 0:35:07For too long responsibility has been split across agencies with overlapping authorities, with inconsistent priorities and no clear chain of command. I look forward to hearing more about your plan for how this structure will be used, how it will improve coordination and accelerate response while bringing accountability to a system that has too long fallen far short.
▶ 0:35:33I want to commend your work in leading the country's commemoration of america's 250th anniversary, or as king charles put it yesterday, semiquincentennial. It's a word that really makes an appearance in the english language. That is why we call it america 250. That is easier to say. That forces us to look back at what made this country possible.
▶ 0:35:59We are a nation of builders, producers, and those who refused to except limits by circumstance or our own reluctance. The decisions made in this department sit squarely in that tradition. If we fail, we fall behind. If we get it right, we shape our destiny on our own terms, for our own betterment and the betterment of those who will come after us.
▶ 0:36:23I have utmost confidence in you and your ability to get the job done and get a john wright -- get it done right. I look forward to your testimony
▶ 0:36:32Today Sen. Heinrich: Thank you, chairman. The budget proposal we are discussing today tells us a lot about what this administration's priorities are. I was very pleased to see you have abandoned last year's proposal to get rid of many units of the national park system. But even though you have agreed to keep our park units, this budget request makes clear that this administration is not committed to keeping the parks service intact.
▶ 0:37:05Today Sen. Heinrich: This budget would decimate the management of our national parks and monuments. While you have said the cuts are not targeting staff physically located at park units, the management of our parks relies on the entire workforce of the national park service. It does not matter of a particular biologist or botanist or historian works at one specific park or supports multiple parks from a regional office.
▶ 0:37:34Today Sen. Heinrich: Eliminating those positions means our national parks will go without the science-based management and conservation that they need and the american people have frankly come to expect. The damage this proposal will do to our public lands does not end with the parks. At the bureau of land management, this is administration we cut the land resources account by 48%. That is just a fact.
▶ 0:38:03Today Sen. Heinrich: The wildlife management, aquatic resource program by 70%. It would cut management of national conservation lands, including our national monuments, recreation areas, and national trails by 75%. I would point out that those national monuments are major drivers of economic development in my state. I don't know anyone in new mexico that thinks we spend too much money on wildlife. We may spend too much money on a war in iran, but we don't spend too much money on wildlife.
▶ 0:38:36Today Sen. Heinrich: People often say that budget proposals in washington are a statement of our values. You find the things you care about -- fund the things you care about. This administers and does not prioritize national parks, public lands come about remembering until your nation's history, does not value our wildlife and it does not prioritize our tribal communities.
▶ 0:38:58Today Sen. Heinrich: It also tells me this administration is not serious about permitting reform, because defining the agencies that issue permits for new energy projects means permits do not get issued. Creating redtape rather than cutting it. Even the courts have said the department of interior needs to stop illegally stalling wind and solar projects and yet there are still no projects moving to construction.
▶ 0:39:26Today Sen. Heinrich: Instead of trying to appeal this recent decision or defy it, the department of energy needs to comply with the court order. Start approving permits for clean energy projects on federal lands. If there is any hope of congress passing bipartisan permitting reform, that the administration needs to make use of the permitting system that we have instead of trying to break it. I know the american people care about all of these things.
▶ 0:39:54Today Sen. Heinrich: I'm confident the disregard this administration has for our public lands and waters will not be allowed to degrade and destroy our national heritage. Thank you, chairman.
▶ 0:40:05Chair Lee: Thank you. Secretary burgum, we will turn to you for your opening statement and your written statement will be in the record.
▶ 0:40:14Sec. Burgum: Thank you for the opportunity to be with you today, ranking member heinrich and a sting with members of this committee. Thank you for the opportunity to test a promote -- to testify. And discuss what our team is doing to make america safer, stronger, more beautiful, and more prosperous. The department of interior touches the lives of millions of americans across 14 time zones.
▶ 0:40:43Sec. Burgum: We manage america's vast energy supply and natural resources. We honor federal trust responsibilities and our unique relationship with tribal nations. We deliver water to the west, fight fires, enforce the law, stewart are treasured wildlife refugees and national parks. Our efforts injure border security. The department of interior manages 41% of the southwestern border and the safety of the indian country.
▶ 0:41:10Sec. Burgum: This portfolio is part of america's treasured balance sheet. Tens of trillions worth of assets that belong to the american people and should be responsibly managed, conserved, and as the law states, put to use for their benefit. While the prior administrations have handcuffed americans out of their land and water, the trumpet administration is doing the opposite.
▶ 0:41:33Sec. Burgum: Responsibly unlocking it, both access and prosperity through recreation and sustainable use including by our hunters and anglers who we know financially support conservation more than any other groups. This budget reflects president trump's priorities to pursue american energy dominance, deliver services more efficiently, uphold law and order, and make federal lands safe and accessible for all americans. All of which will make life more healthy and more affordable for families across the country.
▶ 0:42:03Sec. Burgum: Under this administration interior has committed to increasing energy development on public lands and waters, reestablishing our position as dominant in critical minerals and protecting national security. Energy dominance can be defined as the ability to sell energy to our friends and allies so they don't have to buy from those raging -- waging war against us and waiting terrorism against us.
▶ 0:42:29Sec. Burgum: It also means we have supplied to keep energy prices at home so americans can prosper. We have eliminated burdensome and counter productive regulations that undermined efficiently and management, overstep legal boundaries, constrained economic development. We have done this while maintaining appropriate protections for our wildlife and the environment.
▶ 0:42:51Sec. Burgum: Ongoing regulatory forms to cut redtape will deliver better outcomes of the american people and tribal nations and secure the financial returns in a sustainable way for the american people on their federally owned land and mineral assets. Those returns on those assets can help solve the enormous backlog of deferred maintenance we had as a country that never seems to get funded through appropriations.
▶ 0:43:19Sec. Burgum: Last month the department held record lease sales of the national petroleum reserve in alaska, generating record revenue and creating opportunities for those native alaskans that live in the north borough. Following congress' direction, we were scheduling and holding energy lease sales according to the law to increase supply and lower costs for americans. The department estimates revenues in any 27 will exceed nearly $20 billion.
▶ 0:43:49Sec. Burgum: That makes the department of interior unusual across the federal budget in that we will have more revenue coming in and expenses going out. We believe as we can manage this department in a way to have the revenue go up, they have more resources -- financial resources to manage our natural resources.
▶ 0:44:09Sec. Burgum: Again, uniquely, the revenues this year in this budget will offset operational costs for the department and think of us as a cash flow positive that contribute back to the american people and the treasury. The department is also reducing costs by making our operations more effective and more efficient. This budget includes three unification proposals. I say unification, not consolidation, because we are unifying without cutting corners.
▶ 0:44:40Sec. Burgum: We are unifying to improve efficiency. Two of those include unification's across departments coordinated by the white house and with the support of the multiple departments. A further one is just within our own department.
▶ 0:45:00Sec. Burgum: One of the two, the further strategic unification while and fire programs in the new fire service considers the unification of the parallel and often redundant work -- that was the first one.
▶ 0:45:16Sec. Burgum: The second one is the unification of the parallel and often redundant work of the fish and wildlife service and noaa under the endangered species act and marine protection act, combining the activities into the fish in my life service so there is one place for people to go if they are trying to find out where a mammal or a fish might be endangered as opposed to having it go to two separate agencies.
▶ 0:45:43Sec. Burgum: The reunification of the department's existing offshore management bureaus is something that occurs within our own department. We are combining them back into a single entity, the marine minerals administration, streamlining offshore energy and resources will deliver greater value for the american public in ensure safe expeditions and early development of the outer continental shelf.
▶ 0:46:09Sec. Burgum: While keeping the revenue coming from those offshore resources which was a concern over a decade ago into this separate organization. These unification efforts will streamline bureaucracy and make our work to fight fires, manage our force, protect wildlife and the environment, and manage mineral resources faster, smarter, and more effective.
▶ 0:46:31Sec. Burgum: The budget advances kid ministry to priorities including upholding trust responsibilities, empowering indian country, conserving america's wild life and natural resources, and making public lands accessible to all americans for hunting, fishing, recreation, and other uses. We are expanding efforts to cooperate with tribes and federal agencies to fulfill federal trust response abilities by committing to open-door engagement, transparency, and sustained communication with all 575 federally recognized tribes.
▶ 0:47:00Sec. Burgum: In 2027, the department will continue to advance tribal sovereignty, promoting economic opportunities, reducing probate backlog and combating violent crime and the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous people. Millions of americans visit the interior managed lands each year, fueling a boom about recreation economy and supporting jobs and small businesses nationwide. It's estimated the outdoor recreation economy is not reaching $1.3 trillion and employs 3% of the american public.
▶ 0:47:33Sec. Burgum: 220 -- the 2020 seven budget focuses on the continued maintenance and beautification of interior's assets. One big ask I would have of this important committee is for your full support for the expeditious reauthorization of the great american outdoors act legacy restoration fund which was passed by congress and signed by president trump in his first term.
▶ 0:47:57Sec. Burgum: I reauthorization for additional five years would again help us protect these important resources and tackle the growing deferred maintenance backlog. Through this fund the department invests and assets so visitors can enjoy our national parks and public lands for years to come.
▶ 0:48:19Sec. Burgum: In addition, as we celebrate america's 250th, the budget focuses resources on visitor facing operations at parks, wildlife refugees and across public lands. This will help improve visitor experience, tourism, create jobs, generate revenue for our important partners in local interest communities while promoting responsible stewardship of our natural resources.
▶ 0:48:42Sec. Burgum: The budget also includes a new proposal, the presidential capital stewardship program for prey construction and beautification and deferred maintenance for projects in and around the large national capital region to address years of inadequate maintenance.
▶ 0:48:57Sec. Burgum: The program will support the president's make america beautiful again agenda and projects will improve safety and accessibility, rehabilitate historic buildings and landscapes, improve infrastructure including the highways and underground infrastructure, and enhance the overall visitor experience of washington, D.C. and surrounding area.
▶ 0:49:19Sec. Burgum: The iconic monuments and landscape supported by these projects will continue to be protected by the united states park police, a separate law-enforcement group of the five groups that are part of interior. The U.S. park police was founded by george washington in 1791. Under prior administrations this force had been essentially defunded.
▶ 0:49:40Sec. Burgum: Under president trump leadership the park police has expedited the hiring of more than 300 new officers to help keep our nations capital and national park safe and beautiful. The budget includes an increase of $111 million for these officers, the equipment and tools they need to operate to keep our national capital region fully staffed and safe.
▶ 0:50:05Sec. Burgum: This budget puts america first and americans first while ensuring peace and prosperity for our future. I deeply appreciate this committee's support for the department's mission and I look forward to working closely with each of you to advance the president posing priorities -- the president's priorities.
▶ 0:50:24Chair Lee: We will now begin our five-minute rounds of questions. Since january 1, more than 23,000 fires have burned over 120 million acres nationwide -- 1.8 million acres nationwide. The failure of past and ministrations to conduct active land management has helped turn the west into a giant tinderbox. Under your leadership changes are finally happening.
▶ 0:50:51Chair Lee: How will the -- explained to us how the U.S. wild land fire service will improve interior's ability to mitigate risk and streamline operations and get the wildfire crisis under control.
▶ 0:51:10Sec. Burgum: There are four separate firefighting units within the department of interior. They are held within four of our bureaus. We have a separate one for the national parks, U.S. fish and wildlife bureau, indian affairs and bureau of land management. In some cases these are large. Land management in many states manages forests larger than the U.S. for service. The budget also includes the unification -- represents the unification of the firefighting portion of the U.S.
▶ 0:51:39Sec. Burgum: For service which currently resides under the usda to have that for firefighting group also come under this structure. That is reflected in the budget. What we have across these five firefighting groups today is we have got courageous young men and women well trained and capable to go out and fight fires. Think of it as the army, navy, marines, air force, coast guard. We don't have a joint chiefs of staff.
▶ 0:52:07Sec. Burgum: We find ourselves when the fire does not understand the difference between state land, private land, national park service land. Fire does not care. We get to the top of the chain and without a joint chiefs of staff we don't have the ability to make decisions about deploying aircraft appropriately and expeditiously. We have not had leadership and some of these organizations.
▶ 0:52:30Sec. Burgum: The leadership would be a hotshot firefighter on the frontline who reports to a firefighter but at some point they were point to a land manager that might say I'm constrained in my budget. I have a fire here but I have to let it burn because I have no budget for being able to do any kind of force management. Right next door if we might have someone else who says it's 90 degrees out and the wind is blowing 70 miles an hour. We have to take an approach of extinguishing the fire.
▶ 0:53:00Sec. Burgum: We have to focus on suppression we have another group focused on containment. This happened last year where we had fires that burned out of control adjacent to each other on federal lands. With this proposal we proceeded within our department and hired ahead of the national wildland fire chief with great experience. He's been making the rounds with congress. We are happy to set up meetings with any of you or your staff for him and myself or the deputy secretary to talk about this.
▶ 0:53:32Sec. Burgum: In addition to this unification we are taking a look at pay, retirement benefits. We have had folks that get trained, join one and then decide I get better pay and the other agency. I will switch to that one. We have to be unified across all this.
▶ 0:53:47Sec. Burgum: The support from the front lines is high and I would say the implementation we are moving ahead on into this season gives us the ability to say if we put out orders now the wild eyed -- wildland fire chief reports to me, not somewhere else in five different locations. This year with this incredibly dry year in the west we are under full suppression.
▶ 0:54:11Sec. Burgum: If there is a fire of when the issue went out a few weeks ago, there's a fire, we are putting it out. We can't waste human resources and financial resources in aviation resources this spring open some of the fires will go out on themselves. This is a long overdue -- it's been talked about for decades and we would love to have the full support of the committee.
▶ 0:54:34Chair Lee: I like the joint chiefs of staff analogy. The war on fires. President trump's budget includes a provision to reauthorize the legacy restoration fund, but with needed reforms. Our land management agencies have a deferred maintenance backlog that adds up to more than $30 billion, which is an increase from when the lrf was created.
▶ 0:55:04Chair Lee: Current law provides permanent funding to buy more land and increase the federal estate, only growing the maintenance needs. We could get even further behind. Mr. secretary, as we discussed reauthorizing the legacy restoration fund, will you work with us to make sure it the deferred maintenance backlog decreases?
▶ 0:55:29Sec. Burgum: Absolutely, sir.
▶ 0:55:30Chair Lee: Thank you for your commitment to the colorado river issues we face. The outcome of ongoing negotiations have had -- will have a massive impact on utah and the west. Will you commit to being transparent and working with the upper basin, including providing maximum possible notice for actions impacting the colorado river? Specifically in the upper basin?
▶ 0:55:59Sec. Burgum: Absolutely. We have taken unprecedented action. We have had the seven governors of the states all in my office with exception of one that had to remote in. We've had two video calls with all seven western states governors. We are talking sec. To governors as we try to address these issues and we will keep that transparency and regular communication up.
▶ 0:56:23Chair Lee: Senator heinrich.
▶ 0:56:25Sen. Heinrich: Thank you, chairman. First I want to say I very much appreciate your testimony with respect to reauthorizing the great american outdoors act restoration fund. That is one of the most ubiquitous bipartisan policies that the committee has produced in the last decade. We look forward to working with you on that.
▶ 0:56:53Sen. Heinrich: I am concerned that over the last year we have seen a halloween out of the department of interior. Nearly 20% of the department of interior staff have been either pushed out or have left or have retired. Yet the department recently offered another round of deferred resignations. I hear from my state on the ground about not being able to get messages returned, phone calls back, permits approved.
▶ 0:57:28Sen. Heinrich: Why is the department continuing to offer buy outside deferred resignations one that only deepens our ability -- the existing staff shortages and more importantly the ability for people to actually actively manage these landscapes?
▶ 0:57:43Sec. Burgum: I would just say I reject the overall thesis that somehow -- no one has been pushed out. The only way people left is with voluntary retirement programs.
▶ 0:57:58Sen. Heinrich: I have personal friends who feel pushed out.
▶ 0:58:01Sec. Burgum: People may feel that way --
▶ 0:58:05Sen. Heinrich: When they got the fork in the roy email from someone who is not even in the government anymore, people got the message.
▶ 0:58:13Sec. Burgum: All of those initial doge things from the initial first weeks of the thing, those were all stop by unions and courts and they were offered their jobs back. Us rehashing --
▶ 0:58:27Sen. Heinrich: They got the message that they were not welcome and many moved on and they were our most experienced folks.
▶ 0:58:35Sec. Burgum: It is true that across the federal government, the federal government employees, like many states, have a massive number of people that are at or above retirement age. That is a case. When people have taken the voluntary retirement, we have an organization when you have that many people stacked at the top it does not create a lot of opportunity for young people moving up. The flip side is people are saying now I opportunity to stay and have a long career in this agency.
▶ 0:59:07Sec. Burgum: To your specific question about the recent thing, there were groups of people less you that did not have the opportunity to take the voluntary retirement. That was a small group. We started with 65,000 people. The group that were offered and considered this round were about 1500 people that were never it offered the opportunity last year. Of those that excepted, rejected over 500 because we have the ability to say if you take it, we determined with the park superintendent you are essential.
▶ 0:59:38Sec. Burgum: Sorry, you cannot take the early voluntary retirement. The number of the folks working in areas like communications, like human resources where we were substantially overstaffed. When I got in we could not find a how many people worked in hr or worked in comps or how many people actually worked in the department. There was no I.t. Systems. We had over 2000 people working in hr. That is one for every 30 people.
▶ 1:00:09Sec. Burgum: I don't blame them. I blend the fact we have underfunded not just -- underfunded I t so badly that people and have the tools to do their jobs but we are working to fix that as well. This is the last round of voluntary we are doing as the group, about 1000 people, will take early retirement. None of those are related to frontline jobs in parks.
▶ 1:00:30Sen. Heinrich: I'm running out of time. You have burned 80% of my time so I appreciate your response. One more issue before my time is expired. Last week a federal judge determined wind and solar companies are likely to prevail in their lawsuit against the trump administration's policies blocking those energy projects. The judge placed a preliminary injunction on your department and plummeting policies designed to block new energy projects coming online.
▶ 1:01:02Sen. Heinrich: Will you comply with that judge's order?
▶ 1:01:06Sec. Burgum: First of all we disagree vehemently with the district D.C. judge's view that somehow having appropriate reviews of energy projects in our internal procedures is going to --
▶ 1:01:20Sen. Heinrich: Appropriate reviews are one thing. The chairman used the phrase permits were slow walked. We are not seeing permits move off your desk. Permits are being slow walked. There is an injunction. Are you going to imply with that judge posey order? -- judges order?
▶ 1:01:41Sec. Burgum: As I said, we disagree with this.
▶ 1:01:43Sen. Heinrich: I will be very blunt. If permitting reform is a priority, the permitting system has to work. If you want members of my caucus to support permitting reform, we have to know balls and strikes are going to be called. That there is not a thumb on the scale of the system. That confidence does not exist right now, secretary.
▶ 1:02:11Sec. Burgum: I would be thrilled if there was going to be unanimity about not having a thumb on the scale.
▶ 1:02:17Sen. Heinrich: Let's do that together.
▶ 1:02:19Sec. Burgum: We came out of four years of that. As we try to get back to a balanced --
▶ 1:02:24Sen. Heinrich: Both sides are going to say they had their some on the scale -- there thumb on the scale. Let's make this a system where you can't do that.
▶ 1:02:36Sec. Burgum: I think that would be fantastic. I would love to have your support to do that. To be clear on this court order, it is absurd to me that a court would say we can review projects. That's basically what it says. That's an internal executive branch element.
▶ 1:02:55Sen. Heinrich: At some point you have to make a decision. We have six projects that have gone through the entire review. They are all just lacking your signature. That is not review. That is by definition slow walking.
▶ 1:03:12Chair Lee: Senator barrasso.
▶ 1:03:15Sen. Barrasso: Thank you very much. I want to thank you for all you are doing. I want to thank you and your team are offering efforts to amend the rock springs rmp. Thank you for working with the stakeholders in wyoming for the plant that considers the state's priorities. I wanted to talk about the overpopulation of wild horses. There are 7000 wild horses in excess in southwest wyoming.
▶ 1:03:46Sen. Barrasso: This overpopulation is a terrible impact on the health of the landscape. The biden administration canceled and delayed horse gathering for two years. This set wyoming back in our bureau's mission to manage the wild herds. 2025, land management and asked a plan to remove over 3000 wild horses in this area of wyoming and congress has provided the funding to do it.
▶ 1:04:15Sen. Barrasso: On friday, april 24, last friday, the blm field office announced they will not be able to start these gatherings until august of 2027 due to pending litigation. Can you describe what is going on and bring us up-to-date?
▶ 1:04:28Sec. Burgum: You understand the tremendous issue we have not just in wyoming but other western states where we have a growing can out of control wild horse issue which is affecting the landscape, affecting ranchers, affecting the economics of local communities.
▶ 1:04:50Sec. Burgum: This has been a long-standing problem that was made worse during the prior administration for not doing things like horse gathers. Whether it is horse gathers, fertility treatments, sales that are subsidized to families. There are all kinds of approaches but we are doing everything we can to get back to the lawfully required level of these things. It is a -- one of the serious issues we have in the west right now.
▶ 1:05:20Sen. Barrasso: I'm wondering if you can start rounding up horses based on the appropriate management levels while the rfp is being amended as a possibility?
▶ 1:05:32Sec. Burgum: Absolutely.
▶ 1:05:32Sen. Barrasso: I want to move to the colorado river basin. The seven states of the upper basin includes wyoming, colorado, new mexico, utah. The upper and lower basins has still not come to a consensus agreement through negotiations due to determine -- to determine the operations of lake powell and lake mead. We need a short-term and long-term solution to provide westerners certainty.
▶ 1:06:01Sen. Barrasso: On april 17, the bureau of reclamation published its 24 month study showing lake powell will reach critical elevation as early as the summer. The planning on releasing an additional 66,000 thousand to one million acre-feet of water. Is there any plans to restore the water being released in the flaming gorge?
▶ 1:06:29Sec. Burgum: As we work through the emergency situation and the orders that were not recently that were related to the 20 year compact which had a drought response procedure, we are following those in the final year of the compact. The refilling of glen canyon will take additional moisture coming from someplace. We would love to recharge the whole system.
▶ 1:06:57Sec. Burgum: I'm happy to work with the upper basin and everyone we can but we have a situation where we have got more water allocation then we have water. It will be a challenging year. We've seen that and the inability for the seven states to come to an agreement.
▶ 1:07:11Sen. Barrasso: You look at the history of this, 104 years into the compact. It was based on this understanding of how much rain would -- they would expect. The use of wet years which was a mistake over 100 years ago and they never foresaw 40 million people drawing from this, whether it is las vegas or phoenix. They made early mistakes that we are having to deal with. I understand the lower basin met with the bureau last week.
▶ 1:07:40Sen. Barrasso: Is the department committed to the seven state basin solution and will the agency be willing to meet with the upper basin as well?
▶ 1:07:48Sec. Burgum: Yes and yes.
▶ 1:07:49Sen. Barrasso: In terms of permitting, congress is engaged in serious conversation about permitting reform. What do you view as a top priority in permitting reform?
▶ 1:08:00Sec. Burgum: I believe having the reform is unleashing the capital. There's an estimated $1.5 trillion approved by states and universities and small businesses and corporations waiting for a permit at the state, local, and federal level. We could supercharge our economy and get back to the great things.
▶ 1:08:20Sec. Burgum: We have to figure out a way to not use the creep of regulations not passed by congress, whether that was around esa or nipa to weaponize regulations that did not come from congress to stop or delay or hold a projects.
▶ 1:08:37Sen. Barrasso: Thank you, Mr. secretary.
▶ 1:08:40Chair Lee: Senator hirono.
▶ 1:08:43Sen. Hirono: Thank you, Mr. chairman. When you were before this committee earlier you were asked information about who has been fired, who has been retired, etc. We did not get the information from you. I think a number of us are asking for this information. You have a department that has had around 70,000 employees, correct?
▶ 1:09:15Sec. Burgum: It was hard to find out the exact information but the closest we could come to was around 65,000 a year ago.
▶ 1:09:18Sen. Hirono: That's a lot of employees. How many people have been fired, early retirement? Where are we in terms of the number of employees you have? A bunch of them work for the park service and all those kinds of areas that have been tremendously cut. Why don't you provide us with the information today?
▶ 1:09:45Sec. Burgum: I would be happy to get back on the number of people who took early retirement, the early voluntary retirement. You used the word fired. The only time someone would have been fired as if they somehow had an action. We are talking a small number of people who would have been fired.
▶ 1:10:01Sen. Hirono: You mean if people were fired, they were fired for cause?
▶ 1:10:06Sec. Burgum: Yes.
▶ 1:10:08Sen. Hirono: You were asked last time. Why are you not prepared to give us the information today? Especially the people who are working for our national park services, these are the people who interact with the public. I would like to know what kind of cuts have been imposed on those services as a result of cuts to the workers, the workforce.
▶ 1:10:35Sec. Burgum: The goal is to have no cuts to services and know because the hours or whatever because we had so many people working in the park service that did not work in the park. It took us two months to find out the number. The estimate was 26,000 people working for the park service. The hr systems that were never funded were so disparate -- there was no information.
▶ 1:11:01Sec. Burgum: We are still trying to find out about 2% of the 65,000, we don't know which units they are attached to. There was so tiring were people working from home and sometimes we are sending a check --
▶ 1:11:17Sen. Hirono: I find that unacceptable that you don't know what is going on in your own department. Of critical interest are the people employed at interior that deal with the park services. We still don't have that information.
▶ 1:11:42Sen. Hirono: Earlier this year I joined a number of my colleagues and sending a letter to you expressing concern about efforts by the national park service to erase history on sites that discuss things such as native american history and slavery. The removal of the slavery exhibit at the president's in philadelphia.
▶ 1:12:00Sen. Hirono: Your response, which I only recently received yesterday, fails to answer any questions we asked and instead you state that nps is entrusted with preserving and interpreting our nations heritage and must ensure park materials accurately reflect american history and not partisan ideology. Is slavery a partisan ideology?
▶ 1:12:26Sec. Burgum: Let me start with the examples you have.
▶ 1:12:32Sen. Hirono: The question I'm asking is a yes or no question. You said you were removing this information because you don't want any --
▶ 1:12:43Sec. Burgum: I'm responding to the statement you made which is false.
▶ 1:12:46Sen. Hirono: , answering the question asked you now?
▶ 1:12:50Sec. Burgum: It's based on a false premise.
▶ 1:12:53Sen. Hirono: Is slavery a partisan ideology that requires a removal of information on slavery in your parks?
▶ 1:12:59Sec. Burgum: You're basing this on the day that somehow something has been removed. I would invite you and your staff to go to the website. You can see the information is still there. Some of these examples floating around the media that say things of been removed have not been removed. In the case of philadelphia, there is a weird injunction where we can't put the new signage up. Yet what is on the new signage, which is not hiding any points of our history, is available for anyone to read.
▶ 1:13:29Sec. Burgum: I would invite you to read the language we have and see if it is objectionable. Of course it is not an ideology.
▶ 1:13:41Sen. Hirono: Is your answer slavery is not a partisan ideology?
▶ 1:13:43Sec. Burgum: There is a double negative there. The characterization that somehow there is a desire to whitewash history and hide aspects of our history is just simply false. Also it has to do --
▶ 1:13:59Sec. Burgum: Why is it --
▶ 1:14:02Sen. Hirono: Why is it you just can't say slavery is not an ideology -- I partisan ideology? The japanese americans during world war ii. Is that partisan ideology that required the removal of such information?
▶ 1:14:16Sec. Burgum: I don't believe any of that information has been removed. We are having a theoretical discussion.
▶ 1:14:23Sen. Hirono: This information was removed.
▶ 1:14:26Sec. Burgum: If it, has been I would like specific examples.
▶ 1:14:31Sen. Hirono: I'm in claiming my time, please.
▶ 1:14:35Chair Lee: Wrap it up if you can.
▶ 1:14:37Sen. Hirono: I basically have serious concerns about what is happening in the interior and all the programs that relate to alaskan natives, american indians and native hawaiians and all those kinds of programs and what's happening to the cost of those programs. I have serious concerns about your leadership at interior. Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 1:15:01Chair Lee: Sen. daines: good to have you back on the hill. I want to talk about our national parks. Angus king and I are the cochair of the subcommittee and we don't actually call ourselves the ranking member or the chairman. We are always cochairs. The national parks will be the most bipartisan issue on capitol hill. They are the gems of our public life. Montana is blessed to have some of the crown jewels as part of the park service.
▶ 1:15:31Chair Lee: You will not find a topic that brings congress together more and supporting our national parks. I'm glad to see president trump fully support the reauthorization of the legacy restoration fund for the budget. Behind me is a quote from president trump's budget brief. "congress must take the direction of president trump, reauthorize this by america's 250th anniversary." that is scheduled for july 4.
▶ 1:16:02Chair Lee: Senator king and my bipartisan america the beautiful actos joseph that. Our support is only growing. As of this morning we have 52 cosponsors, evenly divided. Bring them on like noah's ark, 2 x 2. 26 republicans and 26 democrats. Perfect equilibrium as we go forward. My question for you, do you agree we must reauthorize the legacy restoration fund?
▶ 1:16:30Chair Lee: Will you work with me to get that bill on president trump's desk by july 4?
▶ 1:16:34Sec. Burgum: 100% agree. Myself and the department will work with you. This is an essential piece of legislation and I agree with your timeline. This will be a gifted united states of america to pass this again before our 250th birthday celebration on the fourth of july.
▶ 1:16:51Sen. Daines: Thank you for your leadership on this. When president trump signed the outdoors act in his first presidency, many called it the greatest conservation win in 50 years. We want to keep that moving forward and thanks for your support. I want to talk about rural water. It's the lifeblood of rural communities. We have over 41 inches of rain a year. A little more than seattle does, believe it or not.
▶ 1:17:21Sen. Daines: Back where we are from a and montana, our average rainfall can be 12 to 15 inches a year. It's a semiarid environment. I'm working on bill stuff fund -- bills to fund irrigation for communities in eastern montana. By lower yellowstone conservation act will make sure farmers and ranchers are not strapped to the financial burden of federal endangered species management.
▶ 1:17:50Sen. Daines: My water system realization act will ensure the completion of a water system in northeastern montana. I will release a bill to begin construction of the dry red water project. These are in the weeds but someone who's been the governor northa dakota, these are lifelines for our ag community in have clean water to drink. It's sometimes a third world kind of problem and some of these underserved areas across states like montana.
▶ 1:18:21Sen. Daines: To help towns, this will need your support to complete. I have worked on the st. Mary project and the milk river irrigation system to have the necessary funding to fix and upgrade the 100-year-old infrastructure on the highline. Here's my question. Yesterday sent a letter asking you to utilize an unspent reclamation funding from a historic working families tax cuts to support the st. Mary project.
▶ 1:18:51Sen. Daines: Would you work with me to get the money to the highline to help farmers and ranchers and communities?
▶ 1:18:59Sec. Burgum: Thank you for sending the letter. I heard about the letter that had come in and it's great we got some unspent dollars. I look forward to talking with you and working with your staff about the merits of the project. It sounds like a good one.
▶ 1:19:15Sen. Daines: It is and we are depending on unspent funds like that to be a lifeline to keep us going in parts of our state. We had a good discussion when you are in montana about completing the last indian water settlement. Last night we had an amazing event at the white house. We had many supreme court justices there.
▶ 1:19:40Sen. Daines: Just as gorsuch -- justice gorsuch is a leader on tribal rights and tribal water rights to go back to the trees that predated statehood -- the treaties that predated statehood. I cannot stress the importance of the act to pass. It's the last water compact we have. Whiskey is for drinking but waters were fighting. We have got to get these issues solved.
▶ 1:20:09Sen. Daines: Montana's highlight is one of the largest spring wheat producers in the country. We don't finish the settlement, production is at risk. President trump thankfully has been a champion for our farmers and ranchers in completing the fort belknap water settlement would be a feather in the cap for this administration. Secretary burgum, they are sticky issues to resolve. Sometimes century fights. We are very close and I credit the leadership of fort belknap.
▶ 1:20:41Sen. Daines: Tribal politics can be very interesting back home. The tribe will be the first to admit that. They have found a path forward here. They are taking courageous steps to frame a water settlement that we can agree with. I could not agree with it for 10 years. You are conflating issues. They cleaned it up. It's about water only. Now you have an ally to get this done. We can't wait any longer. I went to work with the secretary to get it done this year.
▶ 1:21:08Sen. Daines: Thanks again for all you are doing in your leadership at interior. I'm grateful for your service.
▶ 1:21:13Sec. Burgum: We know that president trump loves to get deals done. I will just say on behalf of senator hoeven and I, anytime you want to put up a chart that shows north dakota is the number-one spring wheat producer in the country, I'm happy to do that. Shaded counties would demonstrate that fact.
▶ 1:21:34Sen. Daines: I know my audience. I was going to say go bison.
▶ 1:21:41Chair Lee: Senator king.
▶ 1:21:46Sen. King: , thank you for your endorsement. Are you in favor of the americas beautiful act?
▶ 1:21:53Sec. Burgum: I'm sorry, senator.
▶ 1:21:56Sen. King: Your endorsement of the refunding of the lrf. Do you endorse the america the beautiful act of senator daines and I?
▶ 1:22:07Sec. Burgum: Yes.
▶ 1:22:10Sen. King: I appreciate that. I take it from your testimony earlier you are in favor of a bipartisan permitting reform project here in the senate?
▶ 1:22:22Sec. Burgum: Absolutely.
▶ 1:22:23Sen. King: I want to share with you as one who has been involved for 10 years and a former developer so I know all about permitting reform, or have experienced the frustrations, the most significant obstacle to getting that done is you.
▶ 1:22:41Sen. King: It is your role in putting your film on the scale of multiple projects sitting on your desk.
▶ 1:22:55Sen. King: As one who has been at the center of these discussions, will be no preventing the form until this administration -- permitting reform until this administration stops playing one side.
▶ 1:23:12Sen. King: We would be foolish to pass permitting reform that allowed fossil projects to move through the system and allow projects fully you him think of your desk desk. I'm in favor of permitting reform but not until this administration stops the role that you have been playing thus far. I understand about the prior administration.
▶ 1:23:40Sen. King: That is a good argument for quitting this arrangement where one administration says no to certain forms of energy and another says no to the other. We have to stop that and make the permitting process neutral, fact-based, consistent and predictable. Do you understand? >> yes, I do. >> I appreciate that. I think we can make some progress on permitting reform but I can assure you there will not be the votes unless we can have some assurance.
▶ 1:24:13Sen. King: It would really help if you would move those permits that are sitting on your desk. That would be a gesture of good faith because my concern is we can pass a statute and you would not follow that either. Show us that you are committed to this even the process by moving those permits that are sitting on your desk.
▶ 1:24:37Sen. King: I think that would be a major step forward and getting to the place where we could do permitting reform. Energy dominance, you used that term three or four times. If $4.30 gas and six dollars diesel was energy dominance, I would rather go back to what we had before.
▶ 1:25:00Sen. King: What is going on because of the illegal war in iran is drastically effecting our national security and will continue to do so and affecting the people of america. It seems to me the situation we are in now is a real lesson on the importance of weaning ourselves from fossil fuels.
▶ 1:25:23Sen. King: As you know, oil is a worldwide commodity and the price is not set in maine or north dakota or texas. It is on a worldwide basis and that is what we are suffering from now.
▶ 1:25:39Sen. King: I believe and I would like your view that a more diverse energy source, particularly one that is based upon resources that will control rather than -- resources that we control rather than a worldwide price would be beneficial to the country. Your thoughts?
▶ 1:25:59Sec. Burgum: Having secure supply chains is essential. The idea that going down the path of wind and solar makes things more affordable is not true.
▶ 1:26:12Sen. King: Wind and solar are the lowest energy sources for cost today by a factor of two.
▶ 1:26:23Sec. Burgum: I disagree. We have no ability to dispatch wind and solar. If you have wind and solar as part of the mix, the over rotation of those and prematurely shutting down the base load, every state that has a renewable target has electricity prices about 50% higher.
▶ 1:26:43Sen. King: Your state is 35% wind. 300 megawatts of battery storage is being stored in north dakota which has the effect of mitigating the intermittency issue with wind and solar. It is happening all over the country. The expansion of the battery capacity in the last 18 months has been fantastic.
▶ 1:27:06Sen. King: This idea that wind and solar are not baseload, they are baseload if there is sufficient storage and the storage is definitely coming even in north dakota. I don't understand why you continually say wind and solar are not reliable.
▶ 1:27:23Sen. King: When your own state is the sixth highest wind source state in the nation and it is saving you from the currently exorbitant cost of fossil fuels.
▶ 1:27:38Sec. Burgum: In north dakota we expanded baseload as well as the shrinking baseload at the same time that we were adding renewables. Understand there are times in north dakota where the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.
▶ 1:27:51Sen. King: That is where batteries and storage come in.
▶ 1:27:55Sec. Burgum: The batteries you are talking about relative to the amount of energy we have, the battery storage could be doubling but right now it is less than one hour's of storage worldwide. One hours worth of power on all of power on all the batteries in the world added up.
▶ 1:28:12Sen. King: I am not talking about worldwide. I'm talking about the united states and the vast expansion of battery capacity. In california they are finding that the duct curve is being leveled out because they have excess capacity during the day, they put it in storage and when the nighttime comes, the storage operates. It is a very cost-effective solution that is expanding dramatically. I understand about baseload. I used to be in the energy business.
▶ 1:28:40Sen. King: I also understand about storage and intermittency and dealing with intermittency. I also understand about the importance of having indigenous resources rather than depending upon a worldwide commodity that is crushing the american people right now.
▶ 1:28:52Sec. Burgum: The last thing I would say is I understand that you understand more about this demi moore of of the people -- more about this than most of the people in the senate. I don't understand why it low cost. Most of these projects dropped off the queue because you talk to the company's building them, they were harvesting tax credits not generating electrons.
▶ 1:29:22Sec. Burgum: The market does not support your statements.
▶ 1:29:23Sen. King: A fair response would be let's end energy subsidies generally. We are paying $3 billion per year in subsidies for oil and gas.
▶ 1:29:33Sec. Burgum: I can hear the talking point but nobody can ever produce.
▶ 1:29:39Sen. King: I would be glad to supply it for you. It is tax breaks for the oil industry going back to 19 kino six including the oil depletion allowance and specialized depreciation but I will supply that for you.
▶ 1:29:51Chair Lee: These are all reasons why we have to focus on permitting reform and the ongoing effort for permitting reform. It makes sense for both ends of the political spectrum. Senator hyde-smith.
▶ 1:30:04Sen. Hyde-Smith: . Thank you, Mr. chairman. Thank you for being the secretary that you are. I appreciate the very good job that you are doing. The department's fiscal year 2027 budget request includes a plan to unify the bureau of ocean energy management and the bureau of safety and environmental enforcement into the mining minerals administration.
▶ 1:30:32Sen. Hyde-Smith: I commend the department's efforts on doing that and to improve the efficiency across all three of the agencies. It is such a smart idea but it is important that the department continues to build and prioritize the safety of the offshore oil and gas workforce. I represent mississippi. We are on the gulf of america. We have so many constituents who work in this area.
▶ 1:31:00Sen. Hyde-Smith: Family after family has been affected by things that have happened out there as they were at work. Mr. secretary, how does the department believe this plan will maintain and improve the safety of offshore rigs and will you speak also to the status of the 11th national outer continental shelf programs? I have a nephew who works in the gulf so this is important to me.
▶ 1:31:27Sec. Burgum: In terms of the leasing program we are happy to follow the law in terms of holding lease sales and having that be a predictable thing because when it is predictable, then companies can do research and invest their capital that helps communities and help suppliers. It helps our energy security is a nation.
▶ 1:31:49Sec. Burgum: In terms of the two organizations coming together, those folks are often colocated. They were arbitrarily divided some years ago. They often are in the same places.
▶ 1:32:06Sec. Burgum: We believe we can work together on safety and regulations and improve the efficiency on how we deliver that and people in both of these organizations are excited about the opportunity to work together again. We kept the revenue portion off which was part of the criticism from when they originally separated because there was a concern that somehow where the revenue was being counted for how people were doing safety inspections, so there is no conflict of interest. Revenue goes to a separate organization.
▶ 1:32:40Sec. Burgum: The regulatory and safety teams when they are traveling to an offshore rig, we could have more people available to do inspections than what we have right now because before we had the duplication of two different groups. It is a smart step forward in terms of delivering on the environmental protection and safety.
▶ 1:32:59Sen. Hyde-Smith: Thank you because it is critical for my state. Turning to the national park service, I want to thank the department for the work that you have done to install a new superintendent in the pittsburgh -- vicksburg national military park. That is one of the most visited sites in the entire country and lee are very proud of that and I appreciate your effort to make sure that continues.
▶ 1:33:23Sen. Hyde-Smith: We look forward to his leadership, looking forward to working with him to continue improving one of mississippi's greatest attributes. Mississippi is home to the largest portion of the natchez trace parkway. Along the trace there is no shortage of areas to sightsee and camp.
▶ 1:33:47Sen. Hyde-Smith: The trace continues to see the fallout from the 2023 drought and pine beetles that devastated the trees across our state. Any highway, any area of the state that you can go to, you can find evidence of that.
▶ 1:34:03Sen. Hyde-Smith: As the park service continues to work through backlogs, what is the status of maintenance along the trace and how can we work together to improve the cleaning up along this very important parkway that we drive 50 miles an hour on and no faster?
▶ 1:34:22Sec. Burgum: As you know we have a massive backlog on deferred maintenance and part of that relates to roads. One of the things coming into this job, those who know me se s know that I served as governor. You become governor on day one and you go to the head of d.o.t. And go, how many miles of road do we manage? How many miles do we snowplow? How many of those roads need to be repaired?
▶ 1:34:53Sec. Burgum: We have more roads across national parks and wildlife refugees than many states. I would say most states. 20% of federal land, all of those roads that are federal roads and this department has never received the funding to maintain those roads the way they need to. They will have a washout in the state of washington or something and we are running around changing -- chasing emergency funds.
▶ 1:35:19Sec. Burgum: We should just count on the fact that we will need what we need for maintenance and we need to count on having emergency. The chronic underfunding of assets and resources, passing the lrf to help us tackle that deferred maintenance would be o awesome. There is a lot of support for reauthorizing lrf.
▶ 1:35:49Sec. Burgum: Let's go because that would give us the ability to tackle that. We are trying to set up what I call a d.o.t.. I want to have a head person of all the roads across the federal agencies so we can actually start to have the data so that we know how to prioritize the repairs of these roads. Not just an emergency conditions but to make sure they do not get to that shape in the first place.
▶ 1:36:09Sen. Hyde-Smith: Thank you very much. I'm out of time.
▶ 1:36:13Chair Lee: Senator cortez masto.
▶ 1:36:18Sen. Cortez Masto: Thank you for being here, secretary. I appreciate the work around the unification of the wildland fire services and federal agencies. I am hopeful to get a proposal and some specifics so if your office is linked to brief us on this issue, that would be helpful.
▶ 1:36:37Sen. Cortez Masto: I just had a meeting with my fire chiefs and there is concern about wildfires to the last particularly going into a season with a lot of drought and we want to make sure our federal partners are there. Would you be willing to brief or send somebody to brief?
▶ 1:36:53Sec. Burgum: Absolutely. I would be happy to. Critical for your state right now.
▶ 1:36:58Sen. Cortez Masto: Let me jump back to permitting and solar projects. Are you willing to process solar and wind project permits?
▶ 1:37:08Sec. Burgum: Yes.
▶ 1:37:08Sen. Cortez Masto: Prior to the injunction there was news reports indicating that some projects had begun moving through the permitting process but your department did not share a list of those. Can you give us a list of those that have already started moving through the process of wind and solar?
▶ 1:37:27Sec. Burgum: Happy to share with other -- whatever public information is available on status and permitting. One of the things which would be great is allow companies across all kinds of permits whether it is water permits or whatever it is to get to a dashboard and know where they stand.
▶ 1:37:45Sen. Cortez Masto: That would be helpful because I have met with many developers who are struggling to figure out how to advance to the process since you issue debt july 15 memo. Developers are being told they have to be represented by republican lobbyists if they want their projects approved. I think that is inappropriate. I hope that is not the case. Whatever transparency you can provide would be beneficial.
▶ 1:38:09Sec. Burgum: I agree.
▶ 1:38:10Sen. Cortez Masto: I will jump to the colorado river because this is important for us as well. In the midst of this historic drought two weeks ago your bureau of reclamation announced that they were taking action to ensure that lake powell does not reach deadpool by transferring water from upstream. Just talked about that. Let me talk a little bit about this, it could reduce the drought and the water shortage we are seeing.
▶ 1:38:40Sen. Cortez Masto: It could reduce hydropower generation at hoover dam by 40%. That could increase costs for 1.5 million people across nevada, california and arizona at a time when prices are already skyhigh. My question to you is knowing that this is occurring and knowing what is happening along the colorado river, what we need to do is focus on conservation and smart water programs.
▶ 1:39:06Sen. Cortez Masto: Why does the interior's budget cut funding for their bureau of reclamation by 22% and why does it to zero out all the water smart programs that fund water recycling, reuse screens, drought response will be energy efficiency programs.
▶ 1:39:23Sec. Burgum: There is obvious concern about having less hydropower at a time where we need energy addition, not energy subtraction. There is an obvious issue there. The amount of water that is in the system that originates --
▶ 1:39:40Sen. Cortez Masto: I know all of that but why would you cut the programs necessary to keep the water in the system?
▶ 1:39:46Sec. Burgum: Looking at some of those programs again it is a question of what is the federal share versus the state share versus the local share. Some of those programs are debated.
▶ 1:39:58Sen. Cortez Masto: Let me, there are several of us base in state senators and we met with individuals with your bureau of reclamation who are doing an incredible job. It is a tough job they are dealing with now. They recommended to us, senators from the basin states, that congress invest more in desalination plants, regional water reuse facilities and agricultural conservation.
▶ 1:40:26Sen. Cortez Masto: But the budget is cutting all of this. How are we to believe that you really are going to focus on how -- the concerns we have along the colorado river right now?
▶ 1:40:36Sec. Burgum: I challenged the governors when we were on the call. Many of these states are fast-growing. They have tremendous resources.
▶ 1:40:48Sen. Cortez Masto: What I'm hearing is you are trying to say that the state should pick up the load and put more money into addressing the colorado river issues and conservation?
▶ 1:40:57Sec. Burgum: As we look across the nation and as a former governor, I never thought the federal government should be the one that paid for all the water in our state.
▶ 1:41:05Sen. Cortez Masto: So you are saying you should transfer through the state. That is helpful.
▶ 1:41:09Sec. Burgum: I am not saying that. I'm saying there has to be a balance. If the state wants more water, projected building nuclear, rejected building additional electricity, rejected building natural gas and rejected building desalination and says that the upper basin should release more water when they had more opportunities to work on supply with the enormous resources they have in these large economy states --
▶ 1:41:37Sen. Cortez Masto: Let me respond to you because I heard you say this earlier. Very clear so everybody knows this in this room and listening online. In nevada after the 15 million acre feet of water along the colorado river at the time of the agreement we only got 230,000 acre-feet of water. We have done a good job with conservation, of reducing our water. We recycle close to 100% of our water.
▶ 1:42:07Sen. Cortez Masto: We have done everything we can and we still do not use our allotment. All we are asking is everybody else to do the same thing. If you are looking for a state that is a model on how to do this, it is nevada. I am asking you and everyone else to start looking at internally within their own conservation opportunities and that is where the federal government came in.
▶ 1:42:28Sen. Cortez Masto: That is where the federal government, we all agree, working together putting in the bipartisan infrastructure package to put dollars there to help these states look at conservation and smart water programs and you have just cut those all out. And that is my concern. If we will address this issue, we need to work together and you need to work with us and not against us and not play favorites. I know my time is up.
▶ 1:42:50Sec. Burgum: I just want to say nevada has done a great job on conservation as has some of the other states. In terms of nevada not receiving the full allocation, nobody is picking on nevada. As was stated at the beginning by senator barrasso when this whole thing got set up, there is more water allocated than there has ever been water in the colorado river so every state can say they did not meet their allocations because we took a pie that was not as big as we thought it was and we have been dividing it up for decades and
▶ 1:43:21Sec. Burgum: Now we are facing the music of that reality. I appreciate the collaboration. Nevada has done some amazing work and it is an example. We built a big economy in southern nevada with very little water. Way to go.
▶ 1:43:34Chair Lee: Senator hoeven.
▶ 1:43:38Sen. Hoeven: Thank you, Mr. chair. Mr. secretary, thank you for being here. You are also the chairman of the national energy dominance council. Is that correct?
▶ 1:43:47Sec. Burgum: That's true.
▶ 1:43:52Secretary -- Sen. Hoeven: And the goal of the national energy dominance council is not just energy security for this nation but energy dominance and also the goal of the trump administration. You are aware of our project in north dakota, you are aware of that?
▶ 1:44:15Sec. Burgum: Yes.
▶ 1:44:19Sen. Hoeven: I believe this project will double the life of our electric energy and more than double the amount of oil and gas. So far we have produced about 6 billion barrels of oil. You know very well having been governor there. We are generating 1.1 million barrels per day. But that number is going down.
▶ 1:44:40Sen. Hoeven: The whole point here is we need to use enhanced oil recovery to start increasing that number from 1.1 million barrels per day back toward the 1.5 million barrels we were producing and hopefully take it beyond and not just produce 6 billion more barrels, millions -- billions of cubic feet of natural gas for this country as well as for export, and we need enhanced oil recovery to do that.
▶ 1:45:09Sen. Hoeven: We cannot find enough wells -- we cannot punch enough wells to increase. We need to have an enhanced oil recovery. We only produce about 12% of the oil that is in the shelf. We put together to jumpstart and really make this cracked the code 2.0, a large-scale demonstration project. It is $157 million.
▶ 1:45:39Sen. Hoeven: $76 million is invested by five different oil companies involved. $45 million from the state of north dakota. Now the department of energy is stepping up with $36 million. That is $157 million large-scale project to say co2 from our electric plants and to not only double their life but to double production.
▶ 1:46:02Sen. Hoeven: My questions for you are do you support this project and two, will you help us accomplish it and three, why is it important not just for north dakota before this country?
▶ 1:46:14Sec. Burgum: The answer was yes we support it and senator hoeven you have always been a champion of innovation. There is a big opportunity here for not only to increase production but to take care of concerns about emissions. Your cracked the code 2.0 does both of those things simultaneously so that is fantastic.
▶ 1:46:40Sec. Burgum: When we find ourselves dependent on those that are waging war against us, russia funds the war against ukraine in europe with their oil sales. Our borrowed funds terrorism. Now it is the irgc, a terrorist group with an oilfield funding attacks on their neighbors. It destabilizes the world, creates a risk premium that raises the cost for everyone and the U.S. is in a position today to sell energy to our allies and we don't have to buy it from people who are waging war against us.
▶ 1:47:09Sen. Hoeven: Of course there is an incredible need for electricity, for data centers, for a.I.' jus to be competitive in the global economy to keep prices down. If this works in north dakota just like when we developed the bakken, it is going to work in the permian basin, eagle ford and across the country.
▶ 1:47:39Sen. Hoeven: Isn't that what energy dominance is all about?
▶ 1:47:41Sec. Burgum: It is also about winning the a.I. Arms race and to do that we need electricity because we are leading in chips and software. China is beating us in terms of their ability to generate more electricity. They added 94 gigawatts of coal to their grid. It is an opportunity for us, one of our quickest ways to produce electricity is to capture all the low cost natural gas and convert that to power.
▶ 1:48:13Sec. Burgum: Converting electricity to light and heat has been wonderful. We have never been able to convert electricity into intelligence before. That is going to have a remarkable productivity impact on the economy and have more low-cost intelligence, not just low-cost energy.
▶ 1:48:27Sen. Hoeven: Thank you, Mr. secretary and thank you for your leadership.
▶ 1:48:32Chair Lee: Senator padilla.
▶ 1:48:34Sen. Padilla: Thank you. Mr. secretary, thank you for being here. I have a couple of energy and water issues to get to but my first topic is the area of conservation.
▶ 1:48:47Sen. Padilla: As we discussed prior to your confirmation and during her confirmation hearing, I'd take tremendous pride in the chuck walla national monument and the boundaries working together with developers and many others. That is why we have such broad bipartisan support for this national monument.
▶ 1:49:12Sen. Padilla: During her confirmation hearing I asked you and you committed on the record to meet with tribal representatives to understand this monument and its history and significance. The five tribes have since created an created a tribal commission. Have you had a chance to meet with him and will you commit to meeting with them?
▶ 1:49:31Sec. Burgum: I have not had a chance to meet with them but I an interested in hearing their point of view.
▶ 1:49:40Sen. Padilla: That's important because there is chatter that may be chokwala being on a list of monuments that you are looking to revisit and possibly undo. For the record I will remind us that Mr. steve spears their presumptive blm director sat in that very seat just a few weeks ago I committed to honoring the monument. I hope that you do as well.
▶ 1:50:12Sen. Padilla: I want to associate myself with comments from senator king and his advocacy for the role of wind and solar. California is a proud example of how you can increase renewable energy sources together with battery storage technology. By the way, throw in some aggressive energy efficiency policies and you can bring down a mission bring down costs and improve the resiliency of the grid. I thank you for the potential of that combination.
▶ 1:50:44Sen. Padilla: Also the concerns raised by senator cortez masto when it comes to water, california also prides itself as a long-standing water efficiency and conservation efforts. I don't think you meant to suggest that states that are growing, whether it is in population or economy, should not seek to partner with the federal government or count on the federal government as a partner in meeting the energy and water needs. One more comment before my first question.
▶ 1:51:13Sen. Padilla: I have to tell you, it is pretty damn frustrating when I read about this administration's approach to offshore wind particularly off the coast of california. It makes no sense for a administration that wants to be energy dominant as electricity prices are skyrocketing and demand growth is increasing. To pay developers to stop building energy projects that can add more electrons to the grid.
▶ 1:51:45Sen. Padilla: Off the coast of california it is not just offshore wind opportunities. If you are seeking to promote offshore drilling off the coast of california and elsewhere. I will remind us all about the national commission on the bp deepwater horizon oil spill and offshore drilling report.
▶ 1:52:06Sen. Padilla: Remember the deepwater horizon in 2010 that made recommendations on the roles and response abilities of the former mms be separated into three entities with clearly defined statutory authorities. But the president's budget proposal to combine boem and bsec returning us into the inadequate regulatory structure that we had prior to deepwater horizon. You are also proposing to cut a lot of important entities.
▶ 1:52:33Sen. Padilla: How is it that you want to significantly increase offshore oil drilling while bringing in the regulatory and safety mechanisms to keep our environment, economy and our people safe?
▶ 1:52:46Sec. Burgum: First of all, we are not ratcheting anything in. What you are describing, that is not happening.
▶ 1:52:54Sen. Padilla: The proposed budget cuts combined funding for the environmental protection and enforcement by one third, most $50 million out for operation safety and regulation funding. This comes at a time when you are trying to push more offshore oil drilling.
▶ 1:53:10Sec. Burgum: With the combining of bowman besse we can increase the number of inspections, increase safety and maintain everything that we do to do all the things that you are describing and report posted deepwater horizon was about that the money that was flowing in was somehow corrupted the people who were doing the regulatory and safety work. It was broken into three organizations.
▶ 1:53:40Sec. Burgum: We are only merging two together where we can gain those efficiencies without any sacrifice to what we're doing. I would ask your staff to talk to people who know bowman besse. They are excited about getting together and doing a great job.
▶ 1:53:53Sen. Padilla: Why also cut onnr by 16%?
▶ 1:54:03Sec. Burgum: When we cut places that do just business processing, it is because we have invested too much in people and not enough on the I.t. Side of things. Anytime we cut a person that somehow magically we are at the perfect number of staffing, that is not true. The people are viewing as a catastrophe where the numbers of headcount that we were at four years ago.
▶ 1:54:28Sec. Burgum: No one was saying that we had too few people back in 2021 but now that we try to get back to those numbers with better I.t., people act like the sky is falling.
▶ 1:54:37Sen. Padilla: We will follow-up with your team to get the information including a request and any comprehensive analysis that you depended on to make these determinations of people versus I.t. Or how best to balance the two.
▶ 1:54:52Sec. Burgum: Relative to california, california at one point was producing 25% of the world's oil. It was self-sufficient and now california itself is a national security risk. 63% on the california website at the time of this recent conflict was being imported from foreign countries. The highest level of dependence on foreign countries, the number one importing oil into california was iraq.
▶ 1:55:20Sec. Burgum: The nation got free of being dependent on oil from the pop river but not california because they were blocking every pipeline that would bring in natural gas from other locations and the high price of fuel in california today, california has more internal combustion powers -- more internal combustion cars than any other state in the nation.
▶ 1:55:42Sen. Padilla: We have the largest economy of any state in the nation.
▶ 1:55:47Sec. Burgum: If you have a large number of cars, why would you shut down refineries from eight to seven to six? There are ships coming in everyday with refined product from the other side of the world to california so people can fill up their gas tanks and we don't have to be dependent on the rest of the world. California certainly does not have to be.
▶ 1:56:06Sen. Padilla: That's while you're investing in the transportation sector, looking at the -- that is why we are investing in the transportation sector but your counterparts in the cabinet are looking to decimate investment r&d and deployment of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. An all of the above approach, right? That is what we heard the administration say at the beginning but that has narrowed down to strictly fossil fuel.
▶ 1:56:31Sec. Burgum: When I say all of the above, I am talking about all of the above that is affordable, reliable and secure and does not require -- energy can be produced without having sex having tax subsidy -- energy can be produced without having tax subsidies.
▶ 1:56:55Sec. Burgum: >> first of all, I want to know that you recently came to pennsylvania, visiting steam town, a national historic site in scranton. I hope you enjoyed the visit. As we celebrate the anniversary of our founding, the department of interior has the responsibility of helping tell our country countries the story and ensuring that we reserve the sites that has made our country so special -- helping tell our country's story and ensuring
▶ 1:57:28Sec. Burgum: That we reserve the sites that have made our country so special. I look forward to discussing how the budget will help that. I want to thank you for your leadership. The energy we are producing in pennsylvania is providing the power. I know you visit those energy sites but I want to extend an offer anytime. We would love to have you come by. There is so much talk about. It brings me to my first question. Proper staffing at the national park site has been a priority of mind especially as we get ready for america 250.
▶ 1:57:57Sec. Burgum: We are home to 20n nps sites in northeastern pennsylvania to the johnstown flood national memorial. In 2024 8 million park visitors spent an estimated 425 million while visiting national park service lands in pennsylvania.
▶ 1:58:21Sec. Burgum: With so many people particularly this year expected to visit these sites, how will the department work to assure proper staffing and the resources necessary to ensure visitors, many not from pennsylvania, many visiting pennsylvania, have a quality experience?
▶ 1:58:37Sec. Burgum: Thank you for your leadership. Last fall we posted 5005 hundred seasonal fires. That is up from the prior year. In part to get ready for america 250. In addition to that, we significantly change those summer higher authorities locally from six months to nine months.
▶ 1:59:00Sec. Burgum: Many of these locations you are talking about all the way through with the polar express train in december. Having a seasonal that has to be done working at the end of october when you have a busy season in november and october. Giving them the nine month capability is going to really expand. It is like a 50% increase in the work hours, man hours of the staff so that is a big push.
▶ 1:59:28Sec. Burgum: Across the national park service, it may not be well known but if there is a position open there is a system where someone around the country can go, I want to live in pennsylvania. I'm going to apply. It is this federal thing and seniority. Then they get there and they don't have a place to live and they cannot afford to live.
▶ 1:59:48Sec. Burgum: Reinstated local hiring authorities for folks who hire us from those communities that already have their own housing and they can essentially jump to the final line so we can compress the hiring from 12 months to a few weeks if we have qualified people. And we have over 500 permanent positions that we are also trying to fill right now. Speed that up with local hiring. >> that is encouraging.
▶ 2:00:20Sec. Burgum: I would like to spend a minute talking about the american bountiful protection program. Pennsylvania has a number of data fields including gettysburg and ford mifflin -- a number of battlefields including gettysburg and ford gettysburg and fort mifflin/ .
▶ 2:00:56Sec. Burgum: Can you speak about how that funding will help protect these battlefields and raise public awareness of the importance of battlefield preservation? >> it's critically important. We have active archaeology going on. We are still in many cases collecting the catalog. The legislature you are doing to protect these asides is important. I look forward to working with you on it. >> thank you. Thanks for being here.
▶ 2:01:26Chair Lee: Senator cantwell.
▶ 2:01:30Sen. Cantwell: . I wanted to bring a community issue in the national recreation area in central washington. You were able to sit national park service and interior staff to visit there last thursday. I appreciate that. We think we rival the alps. It is spectacularly beautiful. I see somebody in the back nodding.
▶ 2:02:00Sen. Cantwell: It is unbelievable the access to this area. But we had a devastating 2024 fire that called floodwaters to run down the mountainside -- that caused floodwaters to run down the mountainside. What we are trying to do is get a plan.
▶ 2:02:27Sen. Cantwell: It has been months trying to get the focus and we get that it is a very remote part of our state but nonetheless it is part of a giant recreational ecosystem. It is almost like a crown jewel within the cascades. I am highlighting that you helped us get a temporary road. Park service was able to contract with the army corps.
▶ 2:02:51Sen. Cantwell: This last part of the temporary road has to get done and then we need to get a permanent solution. My questions are can you commit to working with that community to complete the remaining contemporary road and continue working with us to design the hurdles to implement a long-term solution for this region?
▶ 2:03:15Sec. Burgum: Yes and yes. We have an issue where we have federal and private and we are working with the private folks across these different land ownership so we can get a permanent solution.
▶ 2:03:32Sen. Cantwell: You are committing to that. I appreciate that. You are happy to visit, I am happy to go with you.
▶ 2:03:42Sec. Burgum: One of the things that think about is we don't have a d.o.t.. We don't have funding for all the roads and we don't have an emergency fund but every year there is some road that washes out somewhere any national park and a piece of legislation would set up an emergency road fund and that would be a great thing.
▶ 2:04:03Sen. Cantwell: I have 10 projects like that in the state of washington devastated by fire. When you have mountains and fire and you have rain, a lot of washouts. Happy to work with you on that. I want to turn to lw kyiv.
▶ 2:04:23Sen. Cantwell: We have had a lot of conversations about staffing at parks but the president played such a key role when we got the land and water conservation fund done as did my colleague senator daines and senator gardner who served on this committee. The president said I am calling on congress to send me a bill that fully and permanently funds lwcf. When I sign that into law, it will be historic and beautiful to our public lands.
▶ 2:04:53Sen. Cantwell: My point is the land and water conservation making that permanent was about getting the funds to go to acquisition. I am a huge supporter of this. We just lost jim whitaker, the great american, the first american to summit mount everest but more importantly, the founder of rei. Rei is accessed, an economy, third behind finance and healthcare. Guess what it takes?
▶ 2:05:25Sen. Cantwell: A recipe of continuing making investments in public lands. Lwcf was about making $900 million in mandatory funding in the dingle act and this demonstrated the support and the president's support for that so I'm confused why we seem to be with your order changing that, not fully funding the public land aspect. This was your order 34.42.
▶ 2:05:57Sen. Cantwell: I am asking if you will work with me to make sure we actually fund the mandatory spending. That was the key part of the debate. The president bought into that. We have a tweet from him saying he bought into it. I know some of my colleagues here, I understand the chairman's long frustration about this issue. But I also know what the bill did and I know what the president said.
▶ 2:06:22Sen. Cantwell: Now I am asking you whether you support making sure that your budget really does uphold that law.
▶ 2:06:28Sec. Burgum: We will always follow the law.
▶ 2:06:31Sen. Cantwell: That is what you said when I asked you at your confirmation that lwcf, I say can you give us an interpretation of how this affects that, your executive order?
▶ 2:06:48Sec. Burgum: Again, as I have encouraged members of this committee and others on the lrf part of this, that is where we have the greatest need. Everybody has a repair issue. We never have enough dollars to do that. That is key. The lwcf does direct those dollars. We had that debate last year. I am not having that debate now. We will follow the law.
▶ 2:07:18Sen. Cantwell: What does that mean? Do you think that land acquisition is part of lwcf and that is part of your responsibility and you will carry it out?
▶ 2:07:27Sec. Burgum: I believe it is and when the federal government funds acquisitions but does not fund maintenance, that we are creating a bigger problem on the back end.
▶ 2:07:37Sen. Cantwell: The whole point of the great outdoor act which we need to renew the first part of it, -- is about doing both. I'm just trying to get your commitment to the fact that acquiring more land is a great economic recipe for communities particularly when they don't have any and it becomes great recreation and creates jobs and helps the economy.
▶ 2:08:02Sec. Burgum: I believe we have a $1.3 trillion recreation economy but it is case-by-case on whether it is good or bad for the economy to move stuff from the primary state to the federal state. It is not always an economic good. At the federal government usually takes care of it.
▶ 2:08:20Sen. Cantwell: I'm talking about whether you add land in lois county and grow an economy where people want to have tourism. I will see you about this and we can have a longer conversation. I do think there is a conflict still here. I can see my time has expired. I hope you will support our state. We have less snowpack which means we have warmer conditions for aquifer storage.
▶ 2:08:49Sen. Cantwell: I am for doing something about that but we have less electricity. I would hope that we can work together on some of these. It cannot just be I am against anything that is solar or wind. We have to get electricity onto the grid in the northwest. Thank you.
▶ 2:09:04Chair Lee: Senator murkowski.
▶ 2:09:07Sen. Murkowski: Thank you, Mr. chime in. Mr. secretary, good to see you again. I had an opportunity to go into detail on things including starting by thanking you for your work and all of the attention on alaska. I know you are coming in the next month so thank you for that.
▶ 2:09:29Sen. Murkowski: We are now in the authorizing side of things and I would be remiss if I did not state that once again when we talk about energy dominance for this country, it is our extraordinary resources when they come to boil, gas -- oil, gas, minerals and what we have abundantly which is the wind and the solar.
▶ 2:09:59Sen. Murkowski: I just introduced a geothermal bill yesterday that I would hope some of my colleagues would join me with because I am really excited about this next generation technology and how we can access this so I get really excited about it. When we look at what is happening in iran right now, we are all talking about what is going on with the price of oil.
▶ 2:10:19Sen. Murkowski: It does remind me that it was my effort along with senator heitkamp about one decade ago that we were able to live that oil export ban which has allowed this country to surge up in a way that has been phenomenal and that has actually helped to ameliorate some of what the rest of the world is seeing with these price increases. We do good work here in this committee and we will continue to do so working with you.
▶ 2:10:51Sen. Murkowski: I want to talk about some things that I hope are relatively noncontroversial. Stream gages. We need to understand our water and water resources. I listen to my friends that are challenged in their state with drought. We don't have that. As we look to develop certain areas, we need to know and understand our water capacity and understand the monitoring.
▶ 2:11:19Sen. Murkowski: I appreciate usgs's increase first dream gauge monitoring. -- increase for strain -- increase for strai stream gae monitoring. We are very under monitored in this state.
▶ 2:11:45Sen. Murkowski: I just want to throw this out for you because we have had a discussion about different ways that we can deal with the employee maintaining these gauges that can be, it can be costly and challenging. It I'm wondering whether you think there is an opportunity to address some of these working with our tribes. I don't expect you to say yes but I hope you will entertain it with some of your folks.
▶ 2:12:06Sec. Burgum: I think I can jump to yes. We are going back to the future. The U.S. weather service collected weather data around this country largely by volunteers. In our state 40 years ago it would have had 100 families that were at a little weather monitoring station in their backyard.
▶ 2:12:28Sec. Burgum: A lot of that as they stopped doing it, their kids stopped doing it, but using tribal communities in remote areas, unit Dr. andrew -- you met Dr. andrew.
▶ 2:12:44Sec. Burgum: We created a less than $100,000 per unit thing with an acronym called presence where we could have a solar powered remote stream gauge that was solar paneled that can automatically send the data. We did not need a clipboard or a canoe, all of the things you need to write down the information. It would automatically report it.
▶ 2:13:14Sec. Burgum: To add 500 of these in remote areas in north dakota so there is a product that we actually helped create what we can distribute and collect the data that can be installed and supported by local community members. We cannot do modeling on water if we don't have data. The size of alaska, we have so little data really in terms of what is actually happening.
▶ 2:13:33Sen. Murkowski: Let's explore some of these ideas and particularly with compacting if we can. I want to comment quickly on hazards. In alaska we are the most seismically active state in the country.
▶ 2:13:50Sen. Murkowski: I am worried about the reduction in funding for early earthquake warning and I am also concerned about the landslide hazard mitigation account. It is effective eliminated that it is effectively eliminated. Senator cantwell has. Experience deadly landslides in her state.
▶ 2:14:20Sen. Murkowski: You will see it an appropriations perspective is leaning in on these hazard accounts. I wanted to put that in front of you. I asked you last week about the america 250 funding. We thought we had taken care of that in last year's budget. $150 million for america 250. We have only received $25 million so far. I don't know if you have an update on that.
▶ 2:14:47Sen. Murkowski: I notice in your written testimony you make reference to working with freedom 250. But I'm still concerned about this additional $25 million that was to be directed to america 250.
▶ 2:15:04Sec. Burgum: That one, we can get back to you. We are working closely with the white house on that so we will get back to you.
▶ 2:15:12Sen. Murkowski: As a member of the commission I know that there are others who are anxious for some kind of an answer. Thank you.
▶ 2:15:19Chair Lee: Senator hickenlooper.
▶ 2:15:22Sen. Hickenlooper: Thank you. I warned you that you would have a challenging job. I appreciate your service. We have never seen a worst drought year in my lifetime in colorado. The snowpack gauge in the mountains, over the last 100 years they have kept records and the average has been 240 inches. The all-time low was 182 inches.
▶ 2:15:55Sen. Hickenlooper: This year it is 60 inches. That is 100 years where the low was 182 inches. We look at the issues around water for ranchers and farmers. Fertilizer since the war started is up 30%. Diesel was up 50%. I want to ask you if you have any advice for farmers. I have a lot of farmers trying to decide whether they are going to plant and take that risk. What would you advise me to say them?
▶ 2:16:25Sec. Burgum: Obviously farming is a challenging business. Having come from a big agricultural state, those planning decisions are sometimes made long in advance but the increase in inputs and not the proportion increase in your outcomes make it extra challenging.
▶ 2:16:48Sec. Burgum: We also know that agriculture depending on what part of agriculture you are in, the government plays a big role in subsidies across that. I know there have been discussions on whether it is tariffs really for other parts that the department is working on to get through aberration that we have where we are going to have higher prices.
▶ 2:17:12Sen. Hickenlooper: A real historic discrepancy. You mentioned tariffs. Most of these commodity markets are struggling based. Higher costs going in. Much more uncertainty in what they are going to sell. I want to talk about the colleybille river funding. The drought, you know this better than anybody. We are really struggling in the lower and upper basin.
▶ 2:17:40Sen. Hickenlooper: We got word that the discrepancy between spending in the upper basin and lower basin has continue to diverge. Historically according to the original compact both the upper basin and the lower basin were going to end the same water. That has been distorted over the years for a variety of reasons, not bad reasons but a variety of reasons. They have used more of the water but it should still be under equity.
▶ 2:18:10Sen. Hickenlooper: Your staff shared plans that there will be $350 million for lower basin projects compared to just $100 million for upper basin projects. I think at this point there is roughly $2 billion in the draft funding so far that has gone to projects and priorities led by my friends in the lower basin. It $45 million to the upper basin.
▶ 2:18:36Sen. Hickenlooper: $2 billion to the upper $2 billion to the up lower basin, 45 a into the upper basin. We have a bunch of projects that are stuck in limbo. Are there any plans to release bucket two funding which was appropriated for the upper basin project so we can see at least somewhat more proportional investment in the upper basin?
▶ 2:19:00Sec. Burgum: That one I would want to get back to you with specifics versus just to make a general comment on that. I understand the point you are making and I would be happy to dig into that.
▶ 2:19:15Sen. Hickenlooper: It problematic. Senator cortez masto mentioned this already. Given the severity of the drought, this is unlike anything we have seen to go from an average of 240 inches of snow pack, and then go down to the all-time lowest which is 182 inches and this year it is 60 inches. One third of the all-time low.
▶ 2:19:44Sen. Hickenlooper: I am worrying whether the budget cut to zero out the bureau of reclamation's water smart program which helps farmers and ranchers get more water they can use. I am not sure what the other higher priorities are. I guess everything else is a higher priority. It is a hard thing for me to go back and say to the farmers and ranchers of colorado.
▶ 2:20:11Sec. Burgum: I would also say understanding the dynamic and nature and budgeting process at the federal scale. When some of the decisions were made to recommendations were made months ago, people thought that we were still going to have an opportunity for a lot of precipitation in march and april and none of them materialized. We are operating with different data now than when those decisions would have been made.
▶ 2:20:39Sen. Hickenlooper: I appreciate that. This is all hands on deck for all of us.
▶ 2:20:44Sec. Burgum: Absolutely it is. We have been working on it for a year and a half. It is a tough set of cards when they over allocated the water for 80 years and then you have a pocket that is smaller and every answer includes everybody getting less than they want. The only thing we are sure of is there is not enough to go around and with the drought, it is compounded after this year.
▶ 2:21:07Sen. Hickenlooper: We need a mediator between the upper basin with the lower basin. I am sure you are working on that. I hope you are.
▶ 2:21:15Sec. Burgum: We are working very hard on that and trying to balance power generation, agriculture, municipal, industrial. This is a complex set of things with no agreement. We executed the authorities we have under the drought authorization under the compact and we just said that here is what are releases are going to be so that farmers and communities can start planning.
▶ 2:21:41Sec. Burgum: We have brought that up almost a month because normally those decisions would not have been made until the month of may. There is no more data to the leg. -- there is no more data to collect.
▶ 2:22:01Sen. Hickenlooper: I appreciate the urgency and recognition that there has been a dramatic disparity in where federal funding has gone. Thank you.
▶ 2:22:09Chair Lee: Thank you. Senator risch.
▶ 2:22:13Sen. Risch: Thank you. Mr. secretary, thank you for coming today. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the fact that the last secretary of the interior from idaho passed away last weekend. A great guy, U.S. senator for one term. A governor and under george w. Bush was the secretary of interior.
▶ 2:22:37Sen. Risch: He was a really likable guy and liked by people on both sides of the aisle and was a real people pursing -- people person. We are going to miss him. We in idaho have a huge number of federal acres, ove of federal acres, o two out of every three acres is owned by the federal government. One of the things we are interested in is forest fires.
▶ 2:23:07Sen. Risch: There has been discussion about reorganizing the way to fight fires. There are five agencies that fight fire. We have some members that are very interested in that. I don't think there is a magic silver bullet for this but the way we have been doing it really needs to be looked at. There is no question that there is going to be able to be some inefficiencies that can be derived from the way we are doing it.
▶ 2:23:34Sen. Risch: Boise, idaho is home to the national interagency fire center which does a great job. Everybody I have talked to says there is no reason to think that it should be moved or anything like that. We also have 10 rangeland fire protection areas. I don't know how much you are familiar with them. We cover 9.3 million acres.
▶ 2:24:03Sen. Risch: These are collaboration between the blm and the landowners and it has been incredibly successful in idaho. I encourage you to look at those and see about other areas that actually can take advantage of those. Beyond that let me just say that because we have so much acreage that is federal, there is constant tension between the federal agencies and the land users.
▶ 2:24:29Sen. Risch: The ag people and everyone who uses the land. Under your administration I can tell you I have a great appreciation for whatever you are doing that is convincing your people that they work for us, for the people.
▶ 2:24:52Sen. Risch: You yourself have been personably available whenever I have had an issue and that goes down the line with your management team and with people that are on the ground. Thank you for that. Keep up the great work. We will never have everybody satisfied but when there are problems, they need to be addressed. If you have done a great job of addressing it. Both yourself and the people who work for you. Keep up the good work. Thank you so much.
▶ 2:25:15Chair Lee: I would just commented that with the new national fire chief that we have for the U.S. wildland firefighting is going to be based in boise, idaho. One of the examples of interagency coordination that we want to retain is the group that was operating out of boise working on the interagency. The other thing on technology, last year during fire season, I was talking to your governor.
▶ 2:25:47Chair Lee: He pulled out his phone and said here is a map of idaho and here is where all of the fires are and were all on federal land. Here is the map of the fires on state land and all of the state land fire had been put out by state firefighters. We have to do a better job of coordinating with state and local and other interagency's.
▶ 2:26:08Chair Lee: The last personal thing I would say is in just 18 months ago before I left office as governor we had a wildland fire that started and we knew right handlt with our national guard. We had no fixed wing aviation. It ultimately ended up burning 128,000 acres but we called for the support from the federal aviation saturday morning at 6:00 p.m.
▶ 2:26:36Chair Lee: And the feds showed up on tuesday after two rangers had lost their lives trying to save horses and livestock and huge livestock loss, grazing loss across all of that. And your fellow senator tim sheehy at that time, just before he was elected, had a contract aviation group in the ground the whole time in bozeman, montana.
▶ 2:27:07Chair Lee: And we could not get a decision. Because the lack of a joint chiefs of staff, great firefighters on the ground, joint chiefs of staff, no one can make a decision for three days on whether to send a scooper over to put out a fire. I experienced it as a governor and I talked -- we can do a much better job of coordinating with the state and local. >> there are 100 stories like that out there.
▶ 2:27:37Chair Lee: We kept track of it really well. The most obvious difference between the federal fire and estate fire is the state fires are on ground that is actively managed in the fires are much easier controlled than state land and they are the federal land. >> before you lead, served as governor and I was not aware of his passing.
▶ 2:28:06Chair Lee: He is one of my favorite governors. Would you please give my best to his family? >> I will tell patricia you asked.
▶ 2:28:14Sec. Burgum: I would acknowledge that we did acknowledge former secretaries passing with their condolences but also recognition for his service to both state and country. >> surprise, surprise, I am going to ask about the colorado river.
▶ 2:28:38Sec. Burgum: This is important to all of us pretty specifically I want to talk about the release of the water from the reservoir over the next year. Cutting releases from to the minimum allowed through september. I'm glad to see the chairs recognizing the need for agency support. Questions run implementation.
▶ 2:29:02Sec. Burgum: Since you plan to move the entire one million -- is the interior plan to move it entirely? Which would end first, the releases or the -- there is a linea that could potentially dump more water in. We would love to see that happen. What would be the plan for that?
▶ 2:29:23Sec. Burgum: The plan we announced last week was based on the current conditions but the numbers we put that showed the potential between 600,000 acre-feet and one million was to give that flexibility that if we end up with more water in the system, if we could have sheep are objectives with lower with the upper basin we will do that. You will be week by week, month by month as we see. Pray for rain.
▶ 2:29:53Sec. Burgum: We've got to get some summer moisture to get more flexibility. If there is no change, we will be there one million end of that range versus the lower end.
▶ 2:30:04Sen. Gallego: Ascender cortez masto mentioned earlier, you acknowledged 1.5 one million acre-feet could cause an additional 40% reduction to hydropower generated capacity at hoover dam. As early as this fall. Something that is concerning.
▶ 2:30:26Sen. Gallego: Energy prices climbing at more than twice the rate of inflation, to constituents -- to quantify the potential rate impacts to arizona customers or anyone infected by the cuts in the near term, what is your -- pricing increasing resulting from this loss?
▶ 2:30:46Sec. Burgum: There may or may not be rate increases come just lack of power generation. One great thing about hydro, we have the ability to turn it off on short cycles. We could run the dam more water releases from 5:00 p.m.-11:00 p.m. When everyone came home and turn the air conditioning on during the hottest days and ratchet it down overnight.
▶ 2:31:15Sec. Burgum: That is one of the great things -- when you have water behind a dam, it is not just a battery, it is to special power. We have some flexibility. The teams we have are going to have a year where they're making more adjustments based on load management they might in some years where they just turned it on and let it run. The good news is we have a great team running and operating those dams and we have some flexibility. It also depends on the power purchase agreements between each of those dams and utilities.
▶ 2:31:49Sec. Burgum: It may or may not be passed on in terms of higher rates. On any given point during the day if it is not the summer peak state and not the peak winter day, there is excess power generation in the system. Hopefully we just don't run into no water on the hottest days of the year the summer on those high heat days. If we can get through the sink at end the fall, we commit to get through it without spikes in power prices.
▶ 2:32:12Sen. Gallego: $15 million in this budget flicks urgency of funding before the enforceability deadline of april 2020 nine. If funding is not appropriated by then it would avoid the title settlements. Understanding the years of work that went into that, can you speak to the imports of funding trouble water rates settlements in your plan?
▶ 2:32:39Sec. Burgum: I can speak to their importance, but I will -- on that particular grant and the deadline you described, it was not on my radar so that is one I'm going to have to dig into.
▶ 2:32:52Sen. Gallego: Not specifically come just in general.
▶ 2:32:56Sec. Burgum: As I stated earlier, we have an opportunity to negotiate some of the settlements that have been outstanding for years and years and years in some cases decades. As senator daines described earlier, if there are some deals we can reach where we can get the settlements, that would be fantastic.
▶ 2:33:15Chair Lee: Senator king.
▶ 2:33:19Sen. King: Thank you. You mentioned in your comment this is preliminary about china, I think the figures I have are 78 gigawatts of additional coal last year which is a lot of power. To put that in context, china added 430 gigawatts of solar and wind last year, five times as much as cold. I'm wondering if they don't know something we don't know. Let's talk about the national park service.
▶ 2:33:49Sen. King: You and I talked about this before. National park service budget is cut by one third. About $1 billion, which is one day of the iran war to put it in a context. I don't understand why. In terms of the overall budget, in terms of what is being proposed for expenditures in many other areas, why are we cutting the most popular program the federal government runs?
▶ 2:34:15Sen. King: I understand there's always room for rightsizing and analysis of staffing and those kinds of things, but this is not a gotcha question. I'm puzzled why they would cut by one third the funding of one of the most important agencies that we have in terms of direct interface with the public? It is not just about people at the parks. They need the backup from the rest of the organization.
▶ 2:34:44Sen. King: Why such a major cut in -- why such a major cut?
▶ 2:34:49Sec. Burgum: You said a number of things that are qualifying but I think there is a belief we can deliver the services that people desire and the outcomes people are looking for. One thing I found as governor and finding in this role is there is a high degree of interest in inputs and less interest in outcomes.
▶ 2:35:10Sec. Burgum: If you said the goal is, secretary, please deliver higher customer satisfaction at all of your parks, go get it done as efficiently as you can, we would have citizens satisfied. Just always about the spending break like a bigger input somehow implies a better outcome.
▶ 2:35:30Sen. King: Has been an outside consultant's study of the staff size or internal study or -- if there has been such, I would like to see it. You probably knew I was going to bring this chart. This is ftes in the national park service going back 10 or 15 years. Here's where we are now. We were understaffed back then. We were understaffed.
▶ 2:35:56Sen. King: The number we were working from was 23000 and now we are down to about 15,000 I think. This is where we are going. Again, if there is a study or a rational basis for the cuts being made, I just don't see it. Share it with us. Not right now, but --.
▶ 2:36:18Sec. Burgum: I was nominated or asked during the committee confirmation if I knew how to hire a consultant. We are tasked with actually --.
▶ 2:36:33Sen. King: Has there been an internal study? Sec. Burgum: yes.
▶ 2:36:38Sen. King: Could you share that with the committee?
▶ 2:36:42Sec. Burgum: Whatever is public. I'm looking at the gold line and I cannot believe that is an accurate number. We had 5500 positions open right now that we've extended from six months to nine months.
▶ 2:36:54Sen. King: Those are the temporary positions.
▶ 2:36:56Sec. Burgum: In the park service has always been built around people that are part-time "summer was quote nine months but they come back year after year after year. We don't need people working 12 months a year. Many of our parks are closed during the winter.
▶ 2:37:11Sen. King: You have sort of challenged yourself. Let sue a customer satisfaction looks like in a year or two after this level of cuts. We will have this discussion next year. I would like to see some data from the parks on customer satisfaction and visitor satisfaction and those kinds of things. There's been a lot of talk about maintenance and deferred maintenance.
▶ 2:37:34Sec. Burgum: I would like the data because I'm not sure what scale you're using that shows that dramatic drop. The light on that chart does not match anything I know about our staff.
▶ 2:37:45Sen. King: This is based on your own personnel numbers. I think 2900 cuts this year. Anyway, we will work on that. Those are good numbers. Let's see what customer satisfaction looks like. The next point read maintenance. You have talked about it and how bad deferred maintenance is buried cutting it in the parks by 38%. What the heck?
▶ 2:38:11Sen. King: All this talk about maintenance and how we got to have maintenance and doing everything and your budget cutting by more than one third. Explain that when.
▶ 2:38:18Sec. Burgum: Your question implies that somehow is the federal government doing projects inside of a park today is like super efficient and could not be done better. I can tell you my own experience, we had a road washout in north dakota at theater roosevelt national park. It happened when I was governor. I visited with three different secretaries of interior that went to the role here at the federal level in the road still was not open. I got invited to the ribbon-cutting this year.
▶ 2:38:48Sec. Burgum: I said I think I can pass on it because I went half a dozen times as governor wondering why it was going to take $53 million to rebuild a two mile stretch of road. I was told when I was there at the visit when there were still performance away from opening they said, sir, you need to understand, the weather conditions here in the state are very difficult to build roads. I had the dot reporting eight years. We built roads in the same conditions. We built hundreds and hundreds of miles every summer we rebuilt roads.
▶ 2:39:19Sen. King: Again, let's see --
▶ 2:39:20Sec. Burgum: This should have cost may be $10 million. $10 million for a couple of miles. It was $53 million in 6.5 years. That was considered maintenance. I'm trying to make sure the taxpayer dollars gets spent. We did a project last year in shenandoah when it washed out and reopened in 60 days.
▶ 2:39:44Sec. Burgum: Opened in time -- way to rebuild the whole road and did not cost $53 million. You can reduce these numbers. If we put in the right practices, to deliver the outputs you are seeking.
▶ 2:39:57Sen. King: One short question, $10 billion fund for washington maintenance and purification. The estimate I've seen is there is $2 billion of deferred maintenance in washington. What is the extra $8 million for comment more precisely, is any of the money to be directed to the arch that has been proposed at the end of memorial bridge?
▶ 2:40:27Sec. Burgum: No dollars that are in that project for future theoretical proposed projects. The $2 billion I think is grossly understates what we have. Do you like a state. It is not just the national mall, it is for the greater capital region. That is a region.
▶ 2:40:52Sen. King: Your saying it is for existing facilities.
▶ 2:40:56Sec. Burgum: I believe if we got together we would come back and said the numbers not high enough read on the news when that pipe broke and was stumping raw sewage into the potomac, I mean, huge empire mental disaster which everybody on this committee cares about. We get a call and they're like, oh, did you know that is a national park service land? No, because we don't have an inventory of the assets we have.
▶ 2:41:22Sen. King: Your testimony today is none of that $10 billion is for new construction of new monuments, correct?
▶ 2:41:28Sec. Burgum: Correct.
▶ 2:41:30Chair Lee: A couple of follow-up points. Mr. secretary, sometimes you refer to the federal estate in terms compared to a balance sheet. Would you agree if we focus only on acquiring more land as we have a maintenance backlog that control off the balance if we acquire new land the expense of maintaining the land we've already got.
▶ 2:41:58Chair Lee: In other words, need to maintain a balance between land acquisition and land maintenance.
▶ 2:42:03Sec. Burgum: Yes. It is a popular thing for everybody to propose or upgrade designation to make something federal, but we are adding to the cost basis whenever we add -- of course we have some states like yours, sir, already 60% of federal.
▶ 2:42:20Chair Lee: 67%.
▶ 2:42:24Sec. Burgum: You are among the highest but it varies by state. To have -- there has to be some recognition of the impact the federal ownership has whether it is the lack of local property taxes or whether it is federal regulation that has often restricted development, economic development. It varies widely across states and I think we need to make sure we have flexibility.
▶ 2:42:53Sec. Burgum: This was a nation built around having powers delegated to states. The federal government owns two thirds of the state, in my mind it is a challenge. People that live and work on the land in those states care deeply about it. Everybody knows the people they work in their own state. I don't think there's a risk on land management if we have people closer to the ground making those decisions.
▶ 2:43:20Chair Lee: You are also right that it impacts states differently, particularly if you live anywhere to the west of colorado's eastern boundary, you have a lot more federal land than any state further east does. In the maintenance backlog, it is an issue and has gotten worse.
▶ 2:43:44Chair Lee: When president trump signed the great american outdoors act into law in 2020, the backlog stood at $18 billion within the department of the interior. The latest estimates put it at nearly double that, around $35 billion. The facts are clear, the maintenance backlog ballooned under president biden. The trump administration is working to make sure that projects are on time and on budget and the president's budget proposal reflects that.
▶ 2:44:16Chair Lee: One of the other reasons why this is important, particularly in a state like mine were two thirds of the land is owned by the federal government, relates to something you mentioned a moment ago which has to do with property taxes. The states and their subdivisions like counties, often where property tax collection occurs, they are not allowed to tax federal land.
▶ 2:44:42Chair Lee: Because they are not allowed to tax federal land, this program exists called pilt designed to offset the revenue loss. Was grateful to see the president's budget proposal includes a continuation of that because it would be bad if they lost it.
▶ 2:45:05Chair Lee: It also emphasizes an underlying problem within pilt, which is states -- most states in most circumstances, there are some communities that make up differently depending on a number of factors that are taken into account in the pilt formula, but received pennies on the dollar for federal land on boundaries that we cannot tax compared to what we would be collecting even if we were taxing that land at the lowest rate, like the greenbelt rate as
▶ 2:45:35Chair Lee: Described in many states. As a result, it results in a real inequity here because even within a state like mine that has a lot of federal land like two thirds, in some counties in our state, often the poorest counties in our state, some counties where federal land is 80%, 85% plus of the land and if those counties in particular, they really suffer under this
▶ 2:46:05Chair Lee: Where they are getting pennies on the dollar compared to what they would get. Many have underfunded schools, search and rescue operations, farm police department, even in communities where the federal land itself is leading to the circumstances that require some of the services. This is an issue that does tend to unite members of this committee across political lines .
▶ 2:46:30Chair Lee: Will you commit to work with us to try to reform the pilt program to make sure it addresses the loss of property taxes that many of our county's face?
▶ 2:46:38Sec. Burgum: Yes.
▶ 2:46:40Chair Lee: Much appreciated. Anything to add? I want to thank you for your testimony and for appearing today and for all of your service on behalf of the country. We are very, very grateful. That concludes today's hearing. Any senator who wants to submit additional questions for the record may do so. The deadline will be 6:00 p.m. Tomorrow.
▶ 2:47:09Chair Lee: Senators will have until 6:00 p.m. Next tuesday, april 28, adding statements. Thank you again, Mr. secretary for coming. The hearing stands --
▶ 2:47:21Sec. Burgum: I want to thank you and the ranking member wicker and for the discussion and professional way you hold these hearings. I do want to say to the ranking member hoeven from your home state, which of course is a huge part of america's energy production, that we did inherit when I took office, a 5600 backlog of permits to drill coming out of the las cruces office area that covers the permian.
▶ 2:47:51Sec. Burgum: We have reduced that backlog a 91%. So bringing --
▶ 2:47:57Sen. Heinrich: Even carlsbad.
▶ 2:48:01Sec. Burgum: Carlsbad. My bad. A play on words. This that we tackled that without having -- great work of the team driving at you and getting it down. None 1% reduction. When we hold the lease sales, and we have at least a whether it is in alaska or the goal for new mexico, that revenue sharing, some of it comes to the fed because to the state in the tribes. We are driving that forward.
▶ 2:48:33Sec. Burgum: The other thing I know came up was probate. We have uncovered we had 47,000 unresolved probate cases and indian affairs and sitting on almost 700 million dollars that the federal government is holding in trust that belonged to tribal families. An asset from one of their loved ones had died. This backlog, there staring at a decades long approach we are not just throwing bodies, we are throwing business process, throwing ai, doing everything we can to try to reduce that down.
▶ 2:49:04Sec. Burgum: If any of your teams want to get a separate briefing on that, we have a team, dashboards. We are tackling some of these massive backlogs that have grown over the decades to do a better job of trying to serve all the people we serve.
▶ 2:49:19Chair Lee: That is important to those families and those communities. It is an example of where justice delays in zapping justice denied -- in zapping justice denied. Thank you. The hearing stands adjourned.