Editors note: Kennedy is the fifth American Geological Institute Congressional Science Fellow, one of about 30 sponsored by science and engineering societies coordinated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
As an undergraduate geology student in 1974, I ran for a seat on the Planning
and Zoning Commission in my hometown in western Connecticut. My parents had
been very active in local politics and government. My father was on the towns
Board of Selectmen, a small-town version of a city council. At that time, a
controversy was building over the role of wetlands and the extent to which they
should be preserved from development. Like many of my classmates, I wanted to
do something to address environmental issues. And the local Democrats
were looking for candidates.
It wasnt much of a campaign. I signed on to the party platform at the
local caucus and went back to school. In my hometown, where Republicans had
an insurmountable lead in registered voters, I was actually running against
fellow Democrats for one of the three minority seats on the seven-member Commission.
I lost the election but not my interest in how public policy is developed and
implemented. While an undergraduate I considered a going on to law school. And
my sense of public service has always been strong. So its not entirely
surprising that in September 2002, I took leave from the graduate program in
hydrogeology at the Desert Research Institute in Reno and found myself in Washington,
D.C., to begin a year working on Capitol Hill as a Congressional Science Fellow.
After getting my bachelors in earth and environmental sciences, I began
a long career in mineral exploration. Along the way I completed a Ph.D. in geology,
specializing in geochemistry and petrology. In the late 1970s, it was apparent
that our societys demand for natural resources would continue and that
wed have to find ways of producing them that wouldnt harm the environment.
A postdoctoral study that I completed in 1987 assured me that the science could
enable this goal. The positive attitudes of my coworkers convinced me that it
could be done.
I served as a company representative to various regulatory agencies for environmental
permitting and regulatory compliance. Like many other geologists, I began doing
so as a project geologist. Drill programs are planned to minimize disturbance
and avoid environmentally or culturally sensitive areas, and it makes sense
for geologists in the field to be responsible for the environmental compliance
and permitting of their projects. On more advanced programs, senior geologists
and managers also become responsible for the information supplied by teams of
geologists in support of environmental impact statements or feasibility studies.
In the course of my career, I worked on several major projects and was peripherally
involved in two others. One of those may yet become a mine. The others, whose
economics were as good (or better), will probably never become mines
certainly two never will. The chief obstacles were public and political opposition,
not science or economics. As one project in Wisconsin advanced to the permitting
stage, my daughter came home one day from fourth grade to ask me: was I the
guy who was going to ruin all the wetlands in northern Wisconsin? The federal
government purchased the development rights to another, the well-known New World
project located six miles north of Yellowstone Park. The third became entangled
in policy decisions stemming from the ongoing debate and controversy involving
the 1872 mining law. All of these projects were affected by the poor environmental
legacy of some historic mining activities.
In early 2001, a corporate merger interrupted my exploration career and gave
me the opportunity to pursue other options. (If you havent been through
a merger yet, trust me, youll hear the words opportunity and
options a lot.) I decided to apply for the American Geological Institutes
Congressional Science Fellowship. The issues that have affected my career
those issues that arise when natural resource development conflicts with preservation
of the natural environment wont be going away, and likely will
intensify in the future. I wanted to participate in the process of supplying
information to legislators, and to experience how different interests try to
influence public policy. The Fellowship has provided me with a unique opportunity
at a time when my career is at a crossroads.
Welcome to Washington
Following a month-long orientation I chose to work in the office of Sen. Harry
Reid (D-Nev.). Sen. Reid has been a strong supporter of the congressional science
and engineering fellowship programs, and has a number of current and former
science fellows on his staff. The Senators bipartisan reputation, his
leadership position, and his success as a legislator, combined with the opportunity
to work for my adopted home state, made the prospect of working in Sen. Reids
legislative office very appealing.
I will be working on issues ranging from water and other natural resources to
drought and climate change. Ill devote a considerable amount of time to
state and local issues involving public (federal) lands. The federal government
controls over 87 percent of the state, whose communities are typically surrounded
and even intertwined with public lands. The resolution of many local land issues
literally requires an act of Congress. Discontent over some federal policies
implemented to administer the high proportions of federal land in Nevada and
other states in the Mountain West helped fuel the Sagebrush Rebellion in the
1970s, a movement for greater state and local control of what are now federal
lands. The rebellion flared up again in 1994 when rancher Dick Carver bulldozed
open a road that had been closed by the U.S. Forest Service.
I joined Sen. Reids staff a month before the 2002 election and as the
Senate considered 11 of the 13 fiscal year 2003 appropriation bills, the Department
of Homeland Security, and the Resolution to Use U.S. Armed Force Against Iraq.
The experience was like joining a school of fish, in which all the others know
instinctively which way to turn at any particular moment.
With the hum of the office going on about (or over) my head, I started to become
acclimated. I read up on various issues that I would be working on, and some,
such as Social Security, that I probably wouldnt. Soaking up this mysterious
new culture, I watched proceedings on the Senate floor on the television on
my desk.
I went to committee hearings and the Senate gallery, found my way about the
Senate offices and through the subterranean corridors connecting them to the
Capitol and House. I went to briefings and House or Senate committee meetings.
Some performances were remarkably pithy. In the Senate Committee on Foreign
Relations, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) used two brief questions and only five
minutes to establish exactly how two witnesses, Henry Kissinger and Madeleine
Albright, agreed on the way our nation should proceed with regard to Iraq, and
how soon they thought we might have to undertake military action.
The 2002 election (for those of you who have been under a rock) turned the Democrats
narrow majority in the Senate to the Republicans advantage, and gave me
an instant lesson in how quickly political realities can change. Politics during
the ensuing lame duck session of the 107th Congress anticipated the change to
come in the 108th, as the Senate proved unable to pass the pending appropriation
bills. In January, Senator Reid went from managing the Senate floor as Assistant
Majority Leader or Whip to assuming a more reactive role as Assistant Minority
Leader. Welcome to Washington.
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