Colorado Environmental Coalition

U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar has agreed to accept a Cabinet appointment as President-elect Barack Obama's interior secretary pending the outcome of a background check, multiple sources told The Denver Post on Monday.

Democratic sources who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak on Salazar's behalf said that the first-term senator interviewed for the position last week and is all but certain to be appointed to Obama's Cabinet.

Speaking to the media in Chicago on Monday, Obama said he would name the interior secretary later this week.

Salazar's pending selection was revealed on the same day Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet learned that he would not be offered the job of education secretary.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — One Interior Department scandal featured sex, drugs and influence peddling. Another involved politics trumping science in endangered-species rulings.

Then there are the agency's intractable problems, such as the $8.7 billion maintenance backlog for national parks or a 12-year-old class-action lawsuit on behalf of Native Americans.

The Interior Department manages 507 million acres, equal to about one-fifth of the country. But in recent years, it has had difficulty managing itself.

When Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado takes over as interior secretary next month, he'll assume responsibility for a department beset by turmoil. He'll oversee everything from oil- and gas-leasing decisions to relationships with American Indian tribes.

(Photo/Bureau of Land Management Colorado field office)

Even as Republican state lawmakers gear up to make Colorado a more oil-shale-friendly business climate, a group of national and regional environmental groups Tuesday announced their intent to sue the federal Bureau of Land Management over so-called “midnight” leasing regulations pushed through by the Bush administration.

A group that includes the Center for Biological Diversity, Colorado Environmental Coalition and the Sierra Club Tuesday sent a notice of intent to sue to outgoing Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne and U.S. Bureau of Land Management Director James Caswell outlining alleged violations of the Endangered Species Act.

Specifically, the groups contend the BLM’s

WASHINGTON, D.C. — One Interior Department scandal featured sex, drugs and influence peddling. Another involved politics trumping science in endangered-species rulings.

Then there are the agency's intractable problems, such as the $8.7 billion maintenance backlog for national parks or a 12-year-old class-action lawsuit on behalf of Native Americans.

The Interior Department manages 507 million acres, equal to about one-fifth of the country. But in recent years, it has had difficulty managing itself.

When Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado takes over as interior secretary next month, he'll assume responsibility for a department beset by turmoil. He'll oversee everything from oil- and gas-leasing decisions to relationships with American Indian tribes.

"I can sum up our priorities in one word: energy," said Elise Jones of the Colorado Environmental Coalition. "We'll be working on both sides of the question - the clean-energy side and cleaning-up-the-dirty side."

The noisiest work likely will be around the legislature's review of new rules for the state's oil and gas industry - rules passed unanimously in December by the eight-member Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

Industry representatives and some Republican lawmakers have promised to take a hard look at the rules, which they argue are too stringent and could discourage natural gas drillers from coming to the state.

"The uncertainty in these rules will certainly affect investment, which directly relates to jobs - there's no question about that," said John Swartout with the Colorado Oil & Gas Association.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — One Interior Department scandal featured sex, drugs and influence peddling. Another involved politics trumping science in endangered-species rulings.

Then there are the agency's intractable problems, such as the $8.7 billion maintenance backlog for national parks or a 12-year-old class-action lawsuit on behalf of Native Americans.

The Interior Department manages 507 million acres, equal to about one-fifth of the country. But in recent years, it has had difficulty managing itself.

When Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado takes over as interior secretary next month, he'll assume responsibility for a department beset by turmoil. He'll oversee everything from oil- and gas-leasing decisions to relationships with American Indian tribes.

U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar has agreed to accept a Cabinet appointment as President-elect Barack Obama's interior secretary pending the outcome of a background check, multiple sources told The Denver Post on Monday.

Democratic sources who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak on Salazar's behalf said that the first-term senator interviewed for the position last week and is all but certain to be appointed to Obama's Cabinet.

Speaking to the media in Chicago on Monday, Obama said he would name the interior secretary later this week.

Salazar's pending selection was revealed on the same day Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet learned that he would not be offered the job of education secretary.

U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar has agreed to accept a Cabinet appointment as President-elect Barack Obama's interior secretary pending the outcome of a background check, multiple sources told The Denver Post on Monday.

Democratic sources who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak on Salazar's behalf said that the first-term senator interviewed for the position last week and is all but certain to be appointed to Obama's Cabinet.

Speaking to the media in Chicago on Monday, Obama said he would name the interior secretary later this week.

Salazar's pending selection was revealed on the same day Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet learned that he would not be offered the job of education secretary.

Governor Bill Ritter was hoping that the compromise solution of partly opening the Roan to drilling which he proposed in December would stick. In part we think he was influenced because oil prices were approaching $100 per barrel in December of last year. With oil prices now near $135 per barrel, it'll be a risk for Democrats to weigh in on the subject one way or another.