Team Player

In the year since he took over the Interior Department from Wally Hickel, who was ousted in a storm of controversy, Rogers C.B. Morton has tried to maintain a certain tone of orderly peace and quiet. "I'm not looking for headlines," he says. But headlines inevitably pursue a man who controls Interior's vast responsibilities, which range from cattle-grazing rights to offshore oil drilling to unrest among the Indians.

This month Morton took two important steps:

-- First he had to deal with the distribution of federally held territory in Alaska. Morton decided to set aside 277 million acres--two-thirds of the state. Of that, 125 million acres will be a reserve from which the Federal Government will later select 80 million acres for parks, forests and wildlife refuges. The remaining 152 million acres will be available for claims by the state and by native groups. The move was praised by conservationists, but it set off a roar of disapproval in Alaska, where Governor William A. Egan promptly announced that the state would go to court "to preserve its sovereignty." The Governor contends that the Interior Department has filed illegally on 46 million acres to which the state laid claim in January.

-- Last week Morton moved on another important Alaskan question. He issued the department's ninevolume, $9,000,000 "impact statement" on the proposed trans-Alaska oil pipeline. The statement, a prerequisite to any major environmental decision, sets forth no specific recommendations. But its analysis of the various routes for taking oil from the North Slope appears to pave the way for Administration approval of the 789-mile pipeline that the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., a consortium of seven oil companies, wants to build from Prudhoe Bay to the ice-free port of Valdez in southern Alaska. Conservationists say that a pipeline across Canada to the Midwestern U.S. would cause less ecological damage from oil spills, and they plan to fight for their view in the courts. The oil companies contend that the trans-Canada route would cost more to build and take longer to complete.

Though Morton has indicated in the past that he favors a go-ahead for the oil companies, he says, "On something as big as this the final decision has to be in the White House." A political veteran, Morton enjoys his reputation as a "team player," and he concentrates his efforts on what he thinks he can realistically accomplish. Environmentalists don't disapprove, but they are not uncritical of him either. Joe Browder, executive vice president of a research group called the Environmental Policy Center, praises Morton's recent actions, then adds: "He isn't about to be an aggressive defender of the environment at the cost of embarrassing the Administration."

A onetime Pillsbury executive, Maryland Congressman and Republican national committee chairman, Morton, now 57, has proved an able administrator. His first priority was to attempt to tighten up the elephantine, 70,000-employee department. He also brought in bright young management talent. "Our thrust hasn't been in dramatic statements," Morton maintains, "but rather to create the administrative means of getting things done."

Interior's most important accomplishments as he sees them: the $156 million federal acquisition of land in Florida's Big Cypress Swamp, addition of 40 million acres of excess federal property to the national park system, new urban-oriented parks like Gateway East and Gateway West, and an end to the use of predator poisons on public lands.

His views on some other issues:

ON FOUR CORNERS. "[Former Secretary] Stewart Udall decided on coal power at Four Corners [the complex of generating plants where the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet], and now it's my problem: coal creates pollution. We're incorporating environmental stipulations that were never thought of when Four Corners was conceived."

ON THE REDWOODS. "The question is whether we are really protecting these areas. We may have to go to Congress and see if we can get more money to acquire protective land."

ON BEING THE FIRST EASTERNER IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY TO SERVE AS SECRETARY

OF THE INTERIOR. "I'm the first one without a conflict of interest. Being from the East has given me a very objective overview."

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