Salazar to face many energy issues as Sec. of Interior

DENVER - President-elect Barack Obama is expected to officially announce Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar as his pick for Secretary of the Interior on Wednesday morning. That means Salazar will play a key role in the administration's energy policy.

If he assumes the role of Secretary of the Interior, Salazar will run agencies like the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

"The federal government owns outright roughly half of the land in the American West," said Federico Cheever, a professor at the University of Denver. "The Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior is one of the most powerful and most influential positions in the federal government."

Salazar is a fifth-generation Colorado farmer and practiced water and environmental law in the private sector for 11 years before going into politics.

"Historically Colorado has had a very close relationship with the Department of the Interior through every administration," said Cheever.

Cheever says this relationship will come at a critical time for a state trying to find its way in what figures to be a new energy economy.

"We [the West] are traditionally energy producing states. We want to stay energy producing states and the way to do that is to diversify," said Cheever.

Western states, including Colorado, are also tied to oil and gas.

"I don't think anyone thinks we're going to stop using oil and natural gas over the next 10 years," Cheever said.

That means finding the right balance will be a large challenge for Salazar.

"The fight's going to be: How expensive do you want to make oil and gas production?"

Cheever says Salazar will not be a pushover in the position.

"I think some environmental groups, specifically issue-specific groups, will be a little disappointed in this decision," he said.

"This is a key moment in the relationship between the Department of the Interior, the West and the new energy economy," Cheever said.

Because the Interior Department also runs Fish and Wildlife, the post carries with it responsibility over the country's management of the Endangered Species Act. That means one issue a number of Coloradans will try to press Salazar on is whether wolves should be re-introduced into Rocky Mountain National Park. That is what happened in Yellowstone during the Clinton Administration.