-           Cabinet-Level coordinating position: Watt has assumed enormous importance for overall Administration coordination of resources and development policy from his stature as chairman of the President’s new Cabinet Council on Natural Resources and the Environment. Through his close personal friendship and long-standing collaboration with Environmental Protection Administrator, Anne Gorsuch, and his rapport with Energy Secretary Edwards, Watt has begun to emerge as one of the single most effective “constituency-oriented: officials in the entire Administration. Edwards recently submitted his Department’s new policy plan, National Energy Policy Plan-III to Congress, which explicitly acknowledges the primary positive role of Watt’s Interior Department in energy development. This follows the privately expressed intent of the Reagan White House and Watt to quietly shift emphasis for national energy policy out of the Carter-Schlesinger Energy Agency, back into Interior, where many of the crucial functions historically originated.

    From his Cabinet Council function, Watt has had strong policy shaping input into the heated fight looming over Congressional review of the Clean Air Act, formally administered by Gorsuch’s EPA. Watt’s role was also evident in the announcement by EPA Administrator Gorsuch to hold hearings on possible repeal of the 1972 Nixon ban on use of Compound 1080 to kill coyotes. Gorsuch cited sheep and cattle rancher complaints of losses from the predators of “well in excess of $100 million.” Interestingly , the original ban was the nefarious work of Nathanial Reed , who was assistant Secretary of Interior under Nixon. Reed, who is in the forefront of attacks on Watt, delivered this anti-Watt tirade in a recent speech to the Sierra Club. This is not too surprising when we find that the same Reed was responsible for the secret “deal” with the same Sierra Club in 1972 by which he would secure a ban of all toxicants from the predator management program, despite issuance of an official study, the Cain Report, which recommended retention of Compound 1080.

-           Took teeth out of strip mining reclamation act: In an executive reorganization move announced in late May, Watt announced that he was shifting responsibility for enforcement of provisions of the Strip Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 back to the relevant state agencies and out of federal hands, in effect. He abolished the regional offices of the Office of Surface Mining, laid off 400 of its enforcement personnel, closed two technical centers and announced a shift of the office to a role of “assistance, advice and review.” The Carter era law and it’s enforcement by zealous pro-environmentalist administrators has virtually halted economic coal development in major areas of the country by restrictions which, among others, required mined lands to be restored to “original contours,” a prohibitively costly and often self-defeating means by which strip mining efforts have been slowed.