An urban presidency invites rural voices

WASHINGTON AND LOS ANGELES —  Every stream tells a story on the half-day drive from Denver to the Salazar family ranch, every culvert a tale of water and politics. Ken Salazar knows them all, a font of knowledge tapped by President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday when he introduced the Democratic senator from Colorado, whose ancestors farmed and ranched the American Southwest for more than 400 years, as his choice to lead the Interior Department.

Some environmentalists call Salazar too centrist and too friendly to drilling and mining interests to run the department: “His overall record is decidedly mixed, and is especially weak in the arenas most important to the next secretary of the Interior: protecting scientific integrity, combating global warming, reforming energy development and protecting endangered species,” said the Center for Biological Diversity in Arizona. A letter opposing his nomination was signed by about 50 wildlife biologists and members of environmental groups.

But in Salazar and former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack -- a longtime chief executive of a major farm state, nominated Wednesday for Agriculture secretary -- Obama is adding two rural-tuned voices to the Cabinet of the most urban president in at least 100 years. Salazar’s adds a background, and perhaps a preference for farm and ranching interests, to the often-contentious politics of western water scarcity.

Among the Interior secretary’s duties is to oversee management of the Colorado River, a crucial source of water for irrigation and municipal supplies for seven states, including California. He will have a major say in appointments to key water posts, including the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the biggest water system in the country, California’s Central Valley Project.

“We’re very pleased that we got someone who actually knows water, who is a Westerner and is a centrist -- not a liberal and not a conservative,” said Jeffrey Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

The majority of conservationists and rural interest groups say that by choosing Salazar and Vilsack, Obama has taken a step toward fulfilling his campaign promise of revitalizing rural economies.

“We’re very encouraged” by the choices, said Mark Maslyn, executive director of the American Farm Bureau, which recently honored Salazar for his work on agricultural issues. “They’re men of substance, and they have a record” of supporting the renewable energy efforts Maslyn called “critical” for rural economies and the nation.

Salazar barnstormed rural Colorado on Obama’s behalf in the months before the November election, promising men in work boots and women in cowboy hats that the Illinois senator understood their plight better than Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), his Westerner opponent. He drew affirming nods when he criticized McCain for raising the prospect of renegotiating the Colorado River Compact, which apportions water among seven states.

In a recent interview on the state’s eastern plains, Salazar sipped from a plastic bottle with a “protect Colorado water” label. He acknowledged the challenge he had to overcome pitching a South Side Chicago candidate in agricultural areas, but he said voters responded when he stressed Obama’s support for the most recent farm bill and for energy alternatives such as wind, solar and biofuels, which are booming in rural Colorado.

“When I explain that to people in rural Colorado,” Salazar said, “people come our way.”

Salazar has drawn praise as a consensus-builder on water issues. Roger Patterson, who is the MWD’s assistant manager and has held water posts in other states, said he was instrumental in working out a settlement in a U.S. Supreme Court case involving the Republican River.

Attorney Scott Balcomb, who represented Colorado in Colorado River Basin talks for nearly a decade, said he expected Salazar to encourage the states to work out problems, rather than dumping them in the federal government’s lap.

Still, some voiced concerns that as a Coloradan, Salazar can’t escape that state’s perspective on river issues. Most of the Colorado River’s flow originates in the Rocky Mountains, yet Colorado’s share of its namesake river is smaller than California’s.

“I’m sure he will try to be fair,” said Bill Swan, an Arizona attorney who represents California’s Imperial Irrigation District, the single biggest user of Colorado River water. “But when push comes to shove, it’s often upper basin against lower basin, and he’s from the upper basin -- particularly that state.”

Obama praised Salazar’s experience in a news conference Wednesday and, in a shot at the Bush administration, said it would help him lead an Interior Department that “cleans up its act.”

With Salazar, Vilsack and other energy-related appointees announced last week, Obama said, “I am confident that we have the team that we need to make [the] rural agenda America’s agenda, to create millions of new green jobs, to free our nation from its dependence on oil and to help preserve this planet for our children.”

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jtankersley@tribune.com

bettina.boxall@latimes.com