Norton Lobbied For Superfund Company

Environmental Groups Already Leery Of Former Watt Deputy

(CBS)  President-elect Bush's choice for secretary of the interior, whose duties include overseeing national parks and natural resource protection, has been a lobbyist for a lead-paint manufacturer defending itself from numerous environmental lawsuits.

Former Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton is listed with the Colorado Legislature as a lobbyist for NL Industries, a Houston company formerly known as National Lead Co.

A search of court records shows the company is listed as a defendant in at least 14 federal environmental and personal injury lawsuits filed in the past two years. The United States is the plaintiff in one of the environmental suits.

The cases involve Superfund or other toxic-waste sites, plus class-action lawsuits from children and adults allegedly poisoned by lead paint.

The company's most recent quarterly report to the Securities and Exchange Commission says NL industries is also the target of litigation involving "mining locations."

The Denver law firm Norton works for, Brownstein Hyatt & Farber, also is listed with the U.S. Congress as a lobbyist for NL Industries.

Norton said through a spokeswoman Friday that she would not give any interviews until after Senate confirmation hearings are complete.

On Thursday she received the blessing of Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, who may preside over those hearings.

"I do not anticipate any serious problems with her confirmation," Murkowski told The Denver Post after meeting with Norton in his Capitol Hill office.

Norton joined Brownstein Hyatt & Farber in 1999. According to congressional records, the firm lobbies in Washington for 45 clients, including some with political interests before the Interior Department.

They include Delta Petroleum Corp., which is interested in "offshore resources"; Timet-Titanium Metals Corp., a metals processor; the Shaw Group, which makes pipes for oil companies and power plants; Ustman Technologies, which monitors underground storage tanks; and Warren Rogers Associates, which sells products and services for chemical and petroleum storage tanks.

NL Industries CEO J. Landis Martin did not return a message Friday seeking comment.

Steve Farber, a top lawyer at Brownstein Hyatt & Farber, declined to discuss specifics about any client represented by Norton.

In Colorado, Norton also is listed as a lobbyist for the gambling town of Black Hawk, and she has volunteered as legal counsel for the Colorado Civil Justice League, which is part of the American Tort Reform Association.

Environmetalists have already sounded alarms over Norton's record.

In Colorado, critics say, Norton — a one-time deputy to Reagan administration Interior Secretary James Watt — was not very aggressive on environmental issues and too willing to rely on local control and voluntary compliance.

Norton made it clear in 1998 she favored a change in federal law that would allow polluters to avoid legal trouble if they turned themselves in and cleaned up the mess.

On no issue do green groups and the former Colorado attorney general disagree more than whether to allow oil drilling on Alaska's 19-million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

Last week, as she was introduced as President-elect George W. Bush's pick to head the Department of the Interior, Norton said she agreed with the position Mr. Bush took during the presidential campaign of supporting exploratory drilling in the refuge, which was set aside in 1980.

Norton has advocated that position for more than a decade. In 1984, while a deputy to Watt, she worked to open the refuge to drilling.

Supporters of drilling argue that only a small portion of the refuge — roughly 2,000 to 5,000 acres — would be open to drilling; that very few people actually visit the refuge; and that billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas may lurk under the tundra. They also claim that drilling can be done in a way that would not affect species living in the refuge, especially the massive herd of caribou that roams its grounds.

Opponents of drilling argue that even a small drilling operation in the refuge could have a major impact on the delicate ecosystem that calls it home. According to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the refuge hosts more pregnant polar bears that anywhere else in Alaska and serves as a nesting site for several species of birds.

And opponents also suggest that estimates of the size of potential oil reserves under the refuge vary widely. In 1998, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that between 5.7 and 16.0 billion barrels of oil were available. The U.S. consumes somewhere between 14 and 20 million barrels of oil a day.