This Week at Interior April 5, 2024

I'm Matt Brown, the Complex Manager at the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Complex, and you're watching This Week at Interior!

This Week at Interior  

Secretary Haaland visited Pennsylvania this week, where she announced more than $244 million in funding from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to address dangerous and polluting abandoned mine lands in Pennsylvania communities. During the visit, Secretary Haaland, Lieutenant Governor Austin Davis and Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement Principal Deputy Director Sharon Buccino toured a neighborhood in Bovard, an area dealing with subsidence due to historic coal mining.

Interior this week announced the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval of the New England Wind offshore wind project – the nation’s eighth approval of a commercial-scale, offshore wind energy project under President Biden’s leadership. The project, situated approximately 20 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, is expected to generate up to 2,600 megawatts of electricity, sufficient to power more than 900,000 homes with clean renewable energy.

Secretary Haaland this week took action to protect the Thompson Divide area in central Colorado, one of the state’s most cherished landscapes, known for its ranching heritage and grazing lands, important wildlife habitat, recreation opportunities and clean water. A new Public Land Order withdraws more than 220,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service land from new mining, mineral and geothermal leasing for the next 20 years. Colorado’s farmers, ranchers, hunters and anglers have worked to protect the area’s streams, aspen groves, and ecosystems for generations.  

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Michael Brain, and Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton headed west this week, to highlight the President's Investing in America agenda when it comes to securing critical water access. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Brain visited the Kern Fan Groundwater Storage Project in Bakersfield, California, to highlight a $3.9 million investment for small storage water projects. In Arizona, Commissioner Touton joined Tribal, local and state leaders to announce a $25 million investment to protect and maintain the Yuma East Wetlands and Topock Marsh. And in California the leaders announced a $19 million investment from the Investing in America agenda to install solar panels over irrigation canals in California, Oregon and Utah, simultaneously decreasing evaporation of critical water supplies while advancing clean energy goals.  

Interior this week announced that up to $320 million is available through the President’s Investing in America agenda through the Bureau of Reclamation to assist federally recognized Tribes and Tribal organizations plan and construct domestic water infrastructure. The Inflation Reduction Act invests an overall $550 million to expand domestic water supplies in historically disadvantaged communities.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management this week signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States Coast Guard. The new agreement strengthens federal collaboration in support of the Biden-Harris administration’s priority to deploy clean energy to combat the global climate crisis.

And our social media Picture of the Week, welcome to the night at Arches National Park in Utah. During International Dark Sky Week, the gravity-defying arches, rock formations and some of the darkest night skies in the nation make Arches an ideal place to observe the unspoiled views of the stars glittering above.  

Make sure you follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

That's This Week, at Interior!