J. Steven Griles

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J. Steven Griles was confirmed as Deputy Secretary for the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) on July 12, 2001. In this position, Griles serves as second in command at the department, which administers more than 500 million acres of federal land, is responsible for endangered species protections, and oversees the conservation and development of the nation's water and mineral resources.

The glowing biography of Griles on the Department of the Interior's website strives to portray him as a strong environmental advocate in his role as Deputy Secretary. According to the biography:

"[As Deputy Assistant Secretary during the Reagan administration he] developed infrastructure to ensure a balance between public accessibility and resource protection with the Virginia state park system. During his tenure, educational facilities, nature centers, additional trails, qualified staff and other resources were enhanced. Steve expanded and strengthened environmental controls of coal mines and worked to strengthen Virginia environmental laws and enact tough new environmental standards to protect Virginia's streams and rivers from mining activities through enactment of the Virginia Surface Mining and Reclamation Act… As Deputy Director [of the Office of Surface Mining] he installed performance-based standards to assure greater environmental protection and higher compliance. " [1]

These complimentary phrases belie his actual record. Described as "an arrogant booster of the very energy cartel he was meant to regulate" and "a congressional investigation waiting to happen" by Jeffrey St. Clair in Counterpunch, Griles is a well-known coal, oil and energy industry lobbyist who has engaged in significant conflicts of interest in maintaining his strong lobbying ties as Deputy Secretary. ("Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside Man, " June 28, 2003)

Griles has moved between government and industry more than once in his career. In 1970 he was the executive director of the Virginia Department of Conservation and Economic Development. During the Reagan administration he joined the Department of the Interior for the first time, where he served under Secretary James Watt. While at the Interior Department, Griles was the deputy director for the Office of Surface Mining (1981- 1983), deputy assistant secretary for Land and Water (1983 - 1984) and the assistant secretary of Land and Minerals Management (1984 - 1989).

During this period Griles was responsible for a number of damaging policies that benefited industry to the detriment of the environment. In particular he:

  • was heavily involved in efforts to downplay the risk of oil spills associated with proposed drilling off the California coast (this included attempting to cover up a damaging Fish and Wildlife memo that stated the risks of drilling off the coast of California) [2]
  • reduced the amount corporations have to pay in royalty rates charged for extracting underground coal from 8 percent to 5 percent
  • sold titles to federal oil and shale tracts for $2.50 an acre (far below their market value). A private company bought a 17,000-acre claim for $42,000, which it sold months later for $37 million. [3]
  • exhibited an extemely combative attitude toward congressional oversight. He even tried to use the Freedom of Information Act to find out how much money and time the GAO used to investigate his actions related to some coal leases in western Colorado.[4]

After leaving the Interior Department, Griles held a number of industry lobbying positions:

  • Senior vice president of public environmental and marketing activities for the United Company. 1989 - 1995 (coal, oil and gas, cogeneration, gold mining and manufacturing)
  • Principal with National Environmental Strategies (NES), 1995 (energy and mining)
  • Founder of J. Steven Griles and Associates, his own lobbying firm, which represented over 40 coal, oil, gas and electric companies and trade associations, including: Arch Coal, American Gas Association, National Mining Association, and Occidental Petroleum Corporation

[5]

Returning to the Interior Department as second in command in July 2001 Griles continued to work closely with former industry clients in clear violation of two separate recusal agreements. Numerous phone calls and dinner dates with former industry clients were revealed in documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.[6] Griles met with a number of his former clients and top White House officials on "the 'definition of fill' rulemaking, the new source review component of the Clean Air Act and the development of thousands of coal bed methane wells in the West. According to Environmental Media Services, Griles calls these meetings "social and informational."[7] He also attempted to pressure the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) into changing its analysis criticizing a coal bed methane project in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana.[8] [9] Friends of the Earth, which exposed the story, noted that before his appointment to the Interior Department, Griles had worked as a lobbyist on behalf of several coal bed methane companies involved in drilling gas wells on public lands in the basin.[10]

Additional ties to industry include the receipt of $284,000.00 a year as part of a $1.1 million payment for his client base from National Environmental Strategies (NES), the oil and gas lobbying firm Griles worked for. As deputy secretary of the Interior, Griles is charged with overseeing and revamping environmental regulations that affect the profits of his former clients and NES's current clients. [11] Since assuming office Griles has:

  • pushed rollbacks in environmental standards for air and water;
  • advocated increased oil and gas drilling on public lands
  • tried to exempt the oil industry from royalty payments
  • sought to create new loopholes in regulations governing stripmining.[12]

Griles also sat on the President's senior policy group for the "Clear Skies" initiative, a misleading euphemistic name for a policy that is notorious for easing restrictions on corporate polluters, participating in at least 11 of its meetings. Edison Electric Institute, a former Griles client, was reported to have been present at one of those meetings.[13]


In Griles' headlong rush to implement industry's agenda, the true purpose of his position, that of a protector of the environment, has been lost. Kristen Sykes, the Griles watchdog at Friends of the Earth noted that "[there are] over ten pages of energy meetings that he has had since he's been at the Interior Department…You don't see meetings on what are we gonna do about our visitor centers that are crumbling in our national parks. You see meetings with Alaska officials about drilling in the arctic. You see meetings about oil and gas development in Wyoming. This is not an agency that is created just to implement the President's energy plan. It's to protect our lands for future generations." [14]

Far from protecting our lands, Griles has used his position to exploit them to benefit his former industry clients. Griles' repeated meetings with past clients in spite of his recusal agreements finally prompted an investigation by the Inspector General of the Department of Interior in 2003.[15] [16] But this is nothing unusual for the current Interior Department, where former lobbyists are the rule and environmentalists are an endangered species. As Bill Moyers noted in a special investigative report on Griles: "[W]hen it comes to representing the interests of industry inside the department, J. Steven Griles has lots of company. To be sure, you can grow dizzy just thinking about Interior's revolving door."[17]


External links

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