Nada Culver, the Bureau of Land Management's deputy director for policy and programs, testifying on Capitol Hill last summer. Francis Chung/E&E News
A senior Bureau of Land Management official will not testify at an appeals hearing this week involving a former BLM employee who claims he was fired after raising environmental concerns about a massive Trump-era Wyoming oil and gas drilling project.
Administrative Law Judge Samantha Black yesterday ruled that Nada Culver, BLM’s deputy director of policy and programs, is not required to testify at the Merit Systems Protection Board hearing because it is likely that anything she would say is already available in the record.
Culver was set to testify today on the details of a July 2019 comment letter she co-authored while serving as a senior official with the National Audubon Society that attorneys for the former BLM employee say mirror the concerns that their client, Walter Loewen, raised about the Converse County Oil and Gas Project while working on the bureau’s analysis of the project that was ultimately approved (E&E News PM, Feb. 11).
But Interior Department attorneys last week filed a formal motion seeking to preclude Culver from being compelled to testify in Loewen’s appeals hearing.
“Appellant has not articulated any reason why the testimony of Nada Culver … is relevant or necessary for this proceeding,” the motion stated. “Indeed, Appellant has failed to identify any information that he believes Ms. Culver alone...
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