00:00Thank you, Director. Thank you for being here. I have to say I do agree with the former President
00:08Kennedy as well as our Ranking Member. We need to maintain a living balance. That is
00:12why I appreciate you working with us, particularly in Nevada, because you know the footprint
00:18BLM has in Nevada. I do want to talk a little bit about the resource management plan modernization
00:23in Nevada for that reason, because I think this is part of that living balance.
00:28Last year, I sent a letter supporting efforts by BLM's state office in Nevada undertaking
00:32that statewide resource management plan to allow for a comprehensive science-based approach
00:38to determine management for BLM lands across the whole state, and would thus be able to
00:43incorporate entire ecoregions, competing land use needs, and varied stakeholders.
00:51The effort is important, as you well know, in Nevada, because there's about 48 million
00:55acres of BLM-managed land in my state. That's three-fifths of Nevada's total landmass.
01:02Currently, there are 12 resource management plans in effect, with some completed over
01:0936 years ago. These plans are out of date. They're impacting BLM's multiple-use management
01:14mission across Nevada.
01:18Several rules are being processed at the department level that have significant impact to how
01:23the lands are managed in my state, which is very confusing for our state, local users,
01:28our local stateholders, and local governments, including, let me just name a few, the oil
01:33and gas leasing rule, the solar PIS, the public lands rule. I can go on and on. There's over
01:3912 of them.
01:40I've been asking this, and I hope your answer today is similar to, at the end of the day,
01:47what I'm looking for is an alignment of all of this so that our stakeholders know what
01:54to anticipate. My question for you is, how are you managing the alignment for these nationwide
02:00rules with the particular needs in my state and other Western states that are dealing
02:05with these as well?
02:06Senator, thank you for the question. It gets at the through line to our work, which is
02:12managing for landscape health and doing so in a responsible way that is fair to the American
02:19taxpayer. You'll see how the renewable energy rule, for example, lists priority criteria
02:30for helping to drive where development goes. It incentivizes that development by dropping
02:37fees by 80%. That, coupled with the public lands rule that ups our game on using science
02:46and data to inform our decision making, to make those decisions more durable, those then
02:53would be driven by resource management plans that allocate uses across the landscape.
03:01I think that the statewide RMP for Nevada, I'm hoping it will be a model for the BLM.
03:07We've not done that anywhere else where we have one big overarching RMP. We're committed
03:14to seeing that through and perhaps having Nevada lead the way like it is on renewable
03:19energy.
03:19Do you have a time frame? Anticipate when that's going to be done?
03:23These processes take time and we are behind. I inherited a backlog, tens of millions of
03:31dollars of backlog of planning. It's in the mix and it's a priority. It will be moving
03:37forward here.
03:39I appreciate that. Keep in mind, all of the clean energy projects, the economic development,
03:44the environmental protection, all of the above is put on hold at times waiting for the BLM
03:50to respond in this resource management guide that I think is important for the reasons
03:54that you've just said.
03:56The chart that the chairman held up earlier, if we have up-to-date resource management
04:00plans, that makes our decisions more durable.
04:03Let me jump really quickly to protecting Ash Meadows. Ash Meadows in Southern Nevada is
04:11a National Wildlife Refuge and the Devil's Hole Unit of Death Valley National Park in
04:16Nye County. It's a spectacular resource. The fish there is being threatened by a proposal
04:23to drill into the sensitive groundwater, which would dry up seeps and springs that are at
04:28the core of the refuge.
04:29I toured this last month and let me just say, every community leader that lives in that
04:34area, they're unanimous to see the department move forward with withdrawal as quickly as
04:40possible, land withdrawal, to protect this area.
04:44I get that Ash Meadows is managed by a different agency, but the withdrawal comes within BLM's
04:51responsibility. Can I get your commitment to work with me and our constituents in working
04:56on that withdrawal to protect not only the fish there, but that whole wildlife refuge?
05:02Senator, I commit to you that I'm going to come and visit it and learn about it firsthand
05:07so that I can speak with the secretary about it. She, of course, is the person who has
05:12the authority to do mineral withdrawals, but I commit to you that I will dig in and
05:16learn about this issue.
05:17Finally, I'm going to submit for the record, affordable housing. Thank you for the work
05:21that you're doing in Nevada around affordable housing. I would like to know, though, the
05:25most recent agreement that was entered into, and thank you, with HUD, is it working? Maybe
05:30we can have a follow-up on that. I know my time is up.
05:33Thank you, Senator. That agreement happened because you asked me about it in my confirmation.
05:37Thank you.
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