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President proposes major reorganization
Interior would incorporate National Marine Fisheries Service, some Corps functions in an attempt to streamline agency services Alan Bailey Petroleum News
resident Donald Trump has proposed a major reorganization of the executive branch, including the merging of some responsibilities from other agencies into the Department of the Interior, the Interior has announced.
The changes would involve the transfer of the National Marine Fisheries Service from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Department of Commerce. Within Interior, NMFS would merge with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The civil works component of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would also move into Interior, while some environmental cleanup programs overseen by the Corps of Engineers would move into the Environmental Protection Agency.
Some Interior environmental cleanup programs would be consolidated into the Superfund program, administered by the Environmental Protection Agency. The Superfund is a program for cleaning up contaminated sites and responding to environmental emergencies.
Agency consolidation The concept behind the merging of NMFS and Fish & Wildlife is the consolidation of the administration of the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act: Both agencies, for example, issue incidental harassment authorizations for projects that may impact certain species of marine mammal.
Corps of Engineers environmental programs targeted for transfer into Interior include programs for flood and storm damage reduction and for aquatic ecosystem restoration.
Interior says that the proposed changes would enable more consistent agency policies, more rational public policy outcomes, and an improved service to the public.
“President Trump is a businessman who knows that an effective operation needs to be organized for success, which is exactly why he is leading this commonsense reorganization of the executive branch,” said Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. “By merging agencies that handle similar, if not the same, functions we would be able to greatly improve services to the American people and better protect the land and wildlife under our care.”
Zinke is also engaged in an initiative to consolidate Interior’s large number of regions into just 12 regions, and to push more decision making into the field, particularly in the west of the country.
“This will allow government agencies to work more collaboratively on everything from wildlife and habitat management to expanding recreation access on public lands, to environmental reviews and permitting infrastructure projects,” Zinke said.
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