From The New York Times (John M. Broder):
“I’ve had a glorious and joyful run,” he reflected on Thursday about his four years at the top of the Department of the Interior and, before that, his four years in the Senate. “Coming to work, I’ve just been living the dream every day.”
Mr. Salazar, 58, took over an agency that had been the scene of rampant financial scandal and political malpractice in the Bush administration and succeeded in restoring a measure of ethics and morale. He had the good fortune of suffering his greatest setback — the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that laid bare persistent flaws in the agency’s regulation of offshore oil and gas operations — relatively early in his tenure.
He hired an experienced former federal prosecutor, Michael R. Bromwich, to revamp the discredited Minerals Management Service, whose mission was to prevent such drilling disasters. Its successor agencies, although still short on money and staff, have tightened oil and gas permitting and regulation and have managed, so far, to remain scandal-free.
Mr. Salazar also escaped without serious harm from a second serious miscalculation — allowing the Shell Oil Company to begin exploring for oil and gas off the North Slope of Alaska before it had the equipment, personnel or management skill to handle the challenges of working in the Arctic environment.
Though Shell had repeated accidents and delays, no one was injured and no oil spilled, in part because the regulators at the Interior Department blocked them from drilling into oil-bearing zones.
“We told Shell that we were proceeding with the utmost caution and would be watching them every step of the way,” Mr. Salazar said in a farewell interview in his expansive corner office. “The 2012 season was one in which much was learned but where we also stuck to the bright line of their meeting the requirements of their permits.”[…]
Mr. Salazar said that among the unfinished items on his agenda was an effort to expand the public lands under permanent protection. Bruce Babbitt, interior secretary under President Bill Clinton, criticized President Obama in February for lagging behind his predecessors in setting aside lands for conservation. Last month, the president designated five sites to be protected as national monuments, including parts of the San Juan Islands in Washington State and 240,000 acres of the Rio Grande del Norte in New Mexico.