Word: interior
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Interior's Watt: determined, righteous and on the move
...determined to carry out last November's election mandate. Each seems, however, to interpret the mandate as his very own, as an individual summons to overhaul his special part of the System. No one is more zealous than James Watt, 43, the lanky, brusque Secretary of the Interior. His soft voice and thick glasses make him seem a little like a benign mortician, but that could be misleading. For Jim Watt has all the self-righteous conviction of the born-again Christian that he is, and his goal is no less ambitious than converting America's soul about...
...short months the thick-skinned man who manages 550 million acres of public land has stunned environmentalists and lawmakers with the way he has decisively altered policymaking at Interior. Watt has accelerated the sale of oil and gas leases, moved to expedite the surface mining of coal, opened up wilderness areas to allow exploration of strategic minerals, halted the acquisition of more lands for national parks. He says he wants a bold, sensible program that will renew the country's growth. Says one of Watt's top aides, Stan Hulett: "Nobody could have survived making these proposals...
...show his impatience with poor performance. Wary colleagues sensed long ago not to swear in his presence. He neither smokes nor drinks-no coffee either. His unbending sense of propriety is so well known that, although Watt claims he never uttered a word about it, rumors swept the Interior building that women workers should wear skirts, not slacks...
...stressed America's need to break its dependence on foreign resources, to search now for oil and minerals in order to prevent the inevitable panic rush on lands later if those resources were shut off. He insists that regulatory interference has blocked such development, that the Interior Department has been arrogant and offensive, a poor landlord. Watt has already cut way back on enforcement and investigative personnel, and conservationists are frankly worried. Says one: "Now the environmental reviews and other checks simply won't get done. That's how these developers will get past the regulation barricades...