By STEVEN K. PAULSON
Associated Press Writer
Dec. 29, 2000

DENVER (AP) -- Gale Norton remembers growing up in Colorado, hiking with her dog, watching elk in a grove of aspen trees and contemplating the eternity gazing at jagged mountain peaks. "If it were not for a call from the Bush transition team, my husband, John, and I would be skiing in those mountains today," she said Friday after the president-elect nominated her for Interior secretary.

Norton says when she looks at those resources now, she also sees an opportunity to make better use of the two-thirds of the nation's lands in federal hands -- and that includes access for business. And that's what worries environmentalists. They fear that Norton -- who once worked for James Watt, Ronald Reagan's controversial interior secretary -- will rely too much on corporations to police themselves. They say she knows her stuff but worry about her priorities.

In Colorado, they say, Norton was not very aggressive on environmental issues and too willing to rely on local control and voluntary compliance. With disputes over air quality, oil drilling and other issues on the horizon, many environmentalists are worried. "This is going to be a challenge for her, especially since she favors free market and local control solutions," Susan LeFever, spokeswoman for the Colorado chapter of the Sierra Club, said Friday.

While serving as Colorado's first female attorney general, 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. "Companies are more likely to find out if they have environmental problems if there's some hope regulators will work with them," Norton said in 1998.

She also went up against the federal government, opposing the U.S. Forest Service in its attempt to take over private and state water rights to ensure a certain level of water continued flowing through streams and rivers. The Forest Service's requirements were higher than water flows called for in state law, she argued. During her eight years as attorney general, she gained a reputation for being tough on crime, working to shorten death penalty appeals.

Born in Wichita, Kan., the 46-year-old lawyer cut her teeth on environmental issues, going to work for Watt at a Denver legal foundation before Watt went on to become Reagan's Interior secretary. In 1984, she went to work for the Agriculture Department in Washington. A year later, she was named assistant solicitor for conservation and wildlife at the Interior Department, where she worked to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. Bush said the same while running for president.

In 1990, Norton made her first run for public office, beating Colorado Attorney General Duane Woodard and won re-election in 1994. Two years later, she ran for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, losing to Wayne Allard, partly because of her support for abortion rights.

Issues of growth and land management are among the most important in Colorado, a growing state where residents treasure open space. Norton has argued that government must not to get too involved trying to direct growth. "I don't think that the state or any government guesses particularly well in the long run," she said in 1995.

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