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The Republican chairman of a congressional panel investigating a 3-million-gallon spill of toxic wastewater from an inactive Colorado gold mine said Tuesday the mine was purposely breached by a government cleanup team. The assertion by House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop of Utah contradicts claims by the Obama administration that the cleanup team was doing only preparatory work at the Gold King mine. Once it was breached, wastewater loaded with lead, arsenic and other contaminants fouled downstream rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. Bishop cited an email in which an Interior Department official said the spill last August...

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, wants the names and other redacted information revealed in an ethics probe of the Bureau of Land Management law enforcement supervisory agent once in charge of Utah and Nevada. Details of the more than yearlong probe by the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General were released in a February report, but key names were blacked out — including that of Dan Love, who the Deseret News confirmed was at the center of the probe. In the report, the inspector general substantiated that ethics breaches had occurred and ... Bishop asked for the full report by no...

"Any perceived benefits from the designation of huge landscape monuments need to be weighed against the impacts suffered by those who have traditionally used the lands," Kathleen Clarke, the former Bureau of Land Management director and now head of the Utah Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office, told a House Natural Resources subcommittee. "Landscapes don't disappear, but jobs and artifacts do." {snip} The testimony comes as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, as ordered by President Donald Trump, is reviewing the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase designations and other national monuments named in the past 21 years. Zinke must report back recommendations by...

After weeks of delays, House Republicans are moving forward with legislation to help Puerto Rico manage $70 billion in debt. A revised bill introduced late Wednesday would create a control board to help manage the U.S. territory’s financial obligations and oversee some debt restructuring. Though it is the third version of the legislation, those objectives remain unchanged. House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop, R-Utah, has led negotiations on the bill and has worked closely with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., congressional Democrats and the White House. The aim has been to write legislation that could pass both the House...

(CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), part of the Interior Department, will decide by September 30 whether to list the greater sage-grouse as an endangered or threatened species under the 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA).The stakes are huge: Greater sage-grouse (or prairie chicken) habitat covers 165 million acres across 11 western states, but that is only half of what it used to be, the federal government says. At one time, the greater sage-grouse population likely numbered in the millions, but it is now estimated to be in the 200,000 to 500,000 range.The enormous sage grouse habitat also is home to...

The U.S. Senate has approved of a $109 billion bill that provides two years of funding for transportation and transit projects around the country. The bill may or may not be taken up by the U.S. House Representatives depending on if they choose to write a separate House bill, but hopefully what will be left out of any final version is an amendment by Montana U.S. Sen. Max Baucus. His amendment funds the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) to the tune of $1.4 billion for fiscal years 2013 and 2014 — quite a jump from the $323 million it...

Senator-elect Mike Lee has tapped one of Utah’s most prominent lobbyists to lead his Washington staff and coordinate his transition from candidate to senator. Spencer Stokes doesn’t officially become a Senate staffer until Jan. 5, but he plans to bounce between Utah and Washington in the coming weeks as he tries to hire staff, set up the Senate office and ramp down his lobbying activities. “It will be an exciting time to be back in D.C.,” said Stokes, who believes American voters used November’s election to protest government overreach. He said Republicans are now positioned to make an impact on...

The Congressional Western Caucus, headed by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, have just released a report titled “The War on Western Jobs.” From the report’s introduction: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the West reported the highest regional jobless rate in August, at 10.8 percent. The western region has maintained the highest regional unemployment for the past year. At the same time, six of the top twelve states with the largest declines in the employment to population ratio since the recession began in 2007 are western states. According to The Associated Press Economic Stress Index,...

"Of the 264 million acres under BLM management, some 130- to 140-million acres are worthy of consideration as treasured lands. These areas [are] roughly equivalent in size to Colorado and Wyoming combined." -BLM's Treasured Lanscapes paper

America ought to possess a clearly defined and laid out set of municipal jurisdictions; the states having one level of control in governing, while the federal branches of government have their own, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) said at The Heritage Foundation Bloggers Briefing on July 27, 2010. Rep. Bishop is on the Tenth Amendment Task Force in Congress. Back in 2007, a quarter of a million people working for the federal government set down and established official bylaws and regulations on the American public, with approximately four thousand joining them in this task each year, Rep. Bishop pointed out. “We...

Shortly after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, a secret government report highlighted a way terrorists might easily enter the United States carting weapons of mass destruction. It wasn't by air or sea. The classified analysis pointed to an arid and sparsely populated stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona teeming with drug runners. "This area has become very active with smuggling and encrypted radio traffic," says the report titled "Threat Assessment for Public Lands" completed by the Interior Department in late 2002. "This would be an ideal area to smuggle a weapon of mass destruction." The report, marked...