This Week at Interior March 31, 2023

This Week at Interior

The Secretary kicked off the Department’s new "Investing in America" tour this week, which will showcase the far-reaching opportunities created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. At the annual International Offshore Wind Partnering Forum in Maryland, the Secretary, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Liz Klein and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement Director Kevin Sligh highlighted the Interior Department’s leadership in creating a clean energy future.  

Infrastructure Coordinator Winnie Stachelberg continued the tour with travel to West Virginia. She and Department officials met with stakeholders and toured work funded through the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to clean up orphaned oil and gas wells and remediate abandoned mine lands. The Law is providing over $165 dollars in initial investments to the state to accomplish this work, which will create jobs and stimulate economic opportunity in coal communities.  

The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement is allocating more than fourteen million dollars from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to reclaim abandoned mine lands in Tennessee and Utah. Millions of Americans nationwide live less than a mile from an abandoned coal mine. This funding will enable states to remediate abandoned mines that are leaking methane – a key contributor to climate change. 

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in Montana and the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah will join six locations currently participating in the Tiwahe Initiative Social Services Demonstration Program. The Bureau of Indian Affairs launched the initiative to protect and promote the development of prosperous and resilient Tribal communities. BIA announced this week that an additional ten Tribes and Tribal organizations were selected to receive one-time funding of one-hundred-thousand dollars each to implement programming or support the development of a Tiwahe plan. 

The Bureau of Land Management is investing one-hundred-thousand dollars towards completing restoration and improvement projects in the Lacks Creek Management Area in northwest California. The projects will support fire resilience and advance Tribal co-stewardship … with forestry crews from the Hoopa Valley Tribe completing projects on public lands within the Tribe’s ancestral homeland. Projects will include hazardous fuels reduction, prairie and oak woodland restoration, and maintenance of previous fuels treatments. 

And our social media picture of the week, the name armadillo means “little armored one” in Spanish. That’s very fitting for the only mammal with natural armor. The armadillo uses its long sticky tongue, sharp claws and keen sense of smell to hunt down ants and other underground insects. 

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That's This Week, at Interior.