By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

This week, progressive western thought leaders met in Las Vegas at the Project New West summit to debate what an equitable, diverse, and successful future of the West might look like. One of the biggest themes of the conversation was jobs — driving them to and keeping them in the region. Participants on panels discussed high-tech, green tech, renewable energy, and other quintessentially American jobs. Another important sector that was discussed and is critical to western growth is the conservation economy — recreation, tourism, restoration, and other mechanisms that protect landscapes while creating jobs.

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) spoke to ThinkProgress Green about how important jobs in the conservation economy are to the West:

One of the big issues I’ve always thought about is how do you have a balance of lands in the West? So, how do we find ways to protect the remaining wilderness areas in our state and in our region, at the same time encouraging development of clean energy, appropriate development of natural gas, solar wind, all of that. And to me, that’s not only preserving our really special western way of life, it’s also developing our economy because it gives us ways to preserve wilderness areas for people to recreate, it gives us ways to develop our resources in a sustainable way. And what that will do is build our population in a responsible way and it will give good jobs.

Watch it:

Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) agreed that the conservation economy is critical to his state and must be promoted:

It’s the fabric of who we are as a state, and why we can all embrace it. And look, this notion that there are people that say you can’t bring in business interests to be able to embrace conservation, that they can’t work together—it’s not true. If they can just come to New Mexico and take a look around—we can make it happen, we’re doing it there, and it should be a part of everything we are talking about from an economic perspective.

Watch it:

Both DeGette and Lujan are sponsoring bills in Congress that support jobs in the conservation economy, such as protecting new wilderness area and national conservation areas and attracting renewable energy development to their states.

An array of business leaders across the West are speaking out in favor of creating jobs by protecting lands, water, and air quality. ThinkProgress reported last week on the work of the Outdoor Industry Association to convince Utah leaders that jobs in recreation are critical to the state’s economy. Businesses in Colorado and New Mexico seem to agree. For example, the New Mexico Green Chamber of Commerce recently pointed out the economic benefits of national monuments to the state. And Rob Katz, CEO of Vail Resorts, used part of the time on a panel at Project New West to describe his company’s efforts to raise money for restoration of national forests, which the company’s website calls “an essential investment.”

Because land conservation not only supports public health via clean air and clean water but creates jobs, recent attacks on the environment by Republicans (such as efforts to mine for uranium around the Grand Canyon and dozens of riders on an appropriations bill) are attacks on jobs and on the western way of life. As a recent report from CAP determined, hundreds of thousands of outfitters, guides, construction workers, engineers, and other residents of the West and across the nation depend on protected public lands to economically thrive.

By Tom Kenworthy, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress Action Fund

To the short list – death and taxes – of things that are certain, add a third: House Republicans whining a duet with the oil and gas industry about complying with the nation’s bedrock environmental laws.

The latest example came today during a hearing before a subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee to examine the arcane subject of allowing the energy industry to employ so-called “categorical exclusions” to dodge thorough environmental reviews of drilling projects on federal lands. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) pushed back on the oil and gas industry claims:

The BP oil spill disaster proved that allowing companies to take shortcuts is a bad idea. It’s unfortunate that some continue to attempt an end-run around the law and protections for Colorado’s water, air, and public lands. We need reasonable, common-sense solutions that allow for balanced energy development, and I commend Sec. Ken Salazar for his diligent work to ensure responsible energy policy in the West.

The authority for drilling projects to bypass environmental assessments and more rigorous environmental impact statements under the National Environmental Policy Act was pushed by the administration of George W. Bush and endorsed by Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. As with most things involving energy development on public lands, Bush’s Interior Department proceeded to go hog wild.

A 2009 investigation of how the authority was (mis)used by the Government Accountability Office found widespread abuses and illegalities in the way the authority was applied. Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, which oversees mineral development on federal lands, gave the industry exclusions in 28 percent of drilling permit applications from fiscal 2006 to 2008, the GAO found. And it did so in ways that were frequently “out of compliance with both the law and BLM’s guidance,” the report said.

Following up on that damning report, the Obama administration’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar put a halt to the reckless fast-tracking in 2010 by issuing new guidance to the BLM that limited the use of the broad exemptions. Last month, on procedural grounds, a federal judge in Wyoming ruled that Salazar’s guidelines were illegally implemented. At today’s hearing, BLM’s deputy director Mike Poole announced that the agency would conduct a new rulemaking to comply with the judge’s decision.

But for the “drill, baby, drill” crowd, that’s not good enough. They want the Bush-era party to resume.

The liberal use of categorical exclusions, said energy and mineral resources subcommittee chairman Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), “are an essential part of streamlining an overly burdensome and bureaucratic process.”

Somehow Lamborn and his allies never got around to mentioning that even with those burdens in place, onshore oil and gas drilling is near a 20-year high, total U.S. crude oil production is the highest it has been since 2003, and the industry is sitting on thousands of unused drilling permits and leases covering nearly 30 million acres that have yet to be developed.

Written by Alexandra Kougentakis, a Center for American Progress Action Fund Fellows Assistant, and Brad Johnson.

Rep. Diane DeGette’s (D-CO) attempt to regulate fracking — underground hydraulic fracturing for natural gas extraction — is under attack by a multimillion-dollar lobbying and public-relations campaign from the oil and gas industry. Led by the American Petroleum Institute and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, dozens of industry organizations established the Energy in Depth front group to denounce fracking legislation as an “unnecessary financial burden on a single small-business industry, American oil and natural gas producers.” The Energy in Depth blog personally attacks DeGette as being “squarely focused” on ending this “critical energy-producing practice”:

Consistent with her legislation in the 110th Congress, DeGette remains squarely focused on stripping states – who have a 60-year record of ensuring hydraulic fracturing is done safely and effectively – of their regulatory authority and enacting a one-size-fits-all federal mandate that could effectively halt this critical energy-producing practice at a time when our economy, working families, and state and local governments desperately need the boost.

The “multimillion-dollar lobbying and public-relations campaign to defend the practice” of fracking includes a website, Twitter feed, Facebook group, YouTube channel, an “aggressive ad campaign” on the Drudge Report.

Fracking, which was developed in the 1950s by Dick Cheney’s Halliburton, involves “injecting a million gallons or more of water and chemicals deep underground to pry out gas that’s locked away in tight spaces,” contaminating groundwater with toxic chemicals. A 2008 hydrogeologic study in Garfield County in Colorado, where fracking is extensively used, found evidence of methane and chlorine contamination of groundwater supplies. Under the Bush administration, fracking was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Furthermore, the fracking fluids — industrial solvents including known carcinogens and endocrine disrupters such as diesel fuel, and benzene — are largely unregulated. Even after a Colorado nurse nearly died from exposure to fracking chemicals in 2008, industry officials continue to argue that their toxic formulas must be kept secret. In recent testimony, a Halliburton executive compared the chemicals which cause “heart, lung, and liver failure, plus kidney damage and blurred vision” to secret flavorings:

It is much like asking Coca-Cola to disclose the formula of Coke.

The Fracking Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act has been introduced in both chambers of Congress to close these loopholes, restoring Safe Drinking Water Act oversight and requiring that companies disclose to U.S. EPA or state agencies the specific chemicals that are injected into the ground to extract gas supplies. The sponsor of the Senate bill is Sen. Robert Casey Jr. (D-PA), while the House bill is sponsored by Reps. Diana DeGette (D-CO), Jared Polis (D-CO), and Maurice Hinchey (D-NY). “We’re not opposed to gas drilling,” Congressman Hinchey has explained. “We just want it to be done in a way that is not going to injure other people, not going to damage their property, not going to contaminate their water supply.”

The intent of the FRAC Act is to protect the public through healthy drinking water standards and greater public awareness. It would reduce some of the problems currently resulting from the unregulated use of the procedure while continuing to allow its use for production of oil and natural gas. If the technology truly has “an exemplary safety record,” as industry representatives claim, then they should have nothing to fear from a law that calls for greater disclosure and the protection of public safety.

Intern Erica Goad contributed to this post.