ENRD at the Department of Justice is getting a new name. According to an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by ENRD’s Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson, the Environment and Natural Resources Division will be renamed the Energy and Natural Resources Division.
From the op-ed:
Over the past two decades, the division has played a central role in the responsible production and use of energy, driven by technological advances from the shale revolution to AI. To recognize this evolution, we will now rename it the Energy and Natural Resources Division.
The division’s charge to steward America’s environment responsibly is unchanged. The environment is our nation’s greatest natural resource, and the new name captures that priority. We’re proud of the results we’ve achieved over the past 17 months against air and water pollution, lead poisoning, ozone depletion and radioactive waste. Our achievements include last week’s landmark multistate settlement to address forever chemical pollution and a $100 million penalty secured at trial for industrial air pollution near Detroit. The division continues to enforce environmental laws, punish fraudsters and smugglers, honor our nation’s treaty and trust obligations to tribes, and defend federal agencies’ efforts to protect and develop responsibly our wildlife and natural resources.
At the same time, we will fight to ensure that the U.S. remains energy dominant for the next 250 years.
This is hardly the first name change for ENRD. It was founded as the Public Lands Division in 1909. It became the Lands Division in 193, and then the Land and Natural Resources Division in 1965. It did not become the Environment and Natural Resources Division until 1990. In each case, the change was made by order of the Attorney General.
