Oversight Hearing on "Tribal Natural Resource Development: Barriers and Successes"
No chapters available yet
Legend
Transcript markers
- text Sentence being played
- text Search result
- text Intervention cited by the link you opened
Click a sentence to play the video from that moment. Select text to quote it with the speaker, timestamp and link.
More options
House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs U.S. House of Representatives
Follow its sittingsSpeaker 2
And that energy resource development ranges from coal development to geothermal, oil and gas, renewable, solar, just the range of it. And I think what's really important to recognize is that tribes sit at the center of the decision-making process on what they want to do with their energy resources. And we have the Southern Ute tribe, which went through all of the, let's call it, the hassle of trying to get that first terror implemented. I worked on trying to get a terror implemented, and it was almost like you throw up your hands because we placed so many obstacles in the way of the tribes to be able to utilize those. And so thank you for having the patience to get that done.
But we also need to acknowledge that tribes should have the ability to utilize all of their natural resources. Not everybody is blessed with fossil fuel resources. I'm from New Mexico. I represent both the Jicarilla Apache Nation, the Navajo Nation, who have resources like coal and oil and gas that can be developed. But I also represent tribes, including the Jicari Apache Nation, and the Navajo Nation, which have recently put up huge solar farms, other tribes which wanna put up wind farms.
We need to let everybody do what is best and what resources they have. And my concern is that this administration acts in a way that denies tribes and tribal organizations the ability to utilize renewable energy to benefit their communities and others around them. Republicans used to say that they were an all-of-the-above strategy, but now we see an administration putting up arbitrary barriers to renewable energy. Last year, Trump took away billions of dollars from the inflation reduction act by terminating the EPA's solar for all program. That was $500,000,000 specifically for tribes to take advantage of opportunities that come with clean energy.
At the DOE, Trump clawed back millions that tribes could use for grid resilience, important programs that would directly benefit tribes looking to provide power both for family homes and to sell off the reservation. At the Department of the Interior, the most recent attacks on natural resources came this month with the president's fiscal year 2027 budget request. The budget cuts natural resources management at the BIA by over $230,000,000. $230,000,000 cut. That includes a $38,000,000 cut to tribal forestry, a $15,000,000 cut to water resources, an $11,000,000 cut to energy and mineral re work.
It zeroes out programs like the Tribal Climate Resilience Program. Now I know that we have incredible bipartisan support in Congress to fund these programs. It's what we did last year when we saw the Trump administration try to do away with these programs. And we came together on a bipartisan support basis and passed a budget that renewed these programs. And I look forward to doing the same, because what you're gonna tell us today is gonna emphasize why they are so important.
Even though that's not why you came, we're gonna remember. It's like, these are the kinds of things we do. And while you do those, we need somebody actually at the BIA who's going to be able to move that paperwork, who's going to be able to get it done. It doesn't happen without that coordination, and it takes somebody at the desk. It takes those boots on the ground.
And so I know that the work you do, it both strengthens tribal sovereignty. It creates jobs. It develops the energy economy that we need for our entire country to grow. Tribes represent a smaller percentage of our land base, but a larger percentage of the opportunities for energy development. I look forward to hearing your stories.
And with that, mister chair, I yield back.
Speaker 1
The gentleman yields. At this time, we will introduce the witnesses for our panel. The chair would now like to recognize Mister Downing from Montana for 30 seconds to introduce the witness from his district. Mister Downing.
Speaker 3
Well, thank you, Mister Chair and Madam Ranking Member for holding this. Thank you to the witnesses for being here. And I gotta tell you, it's an honor to introduce our witness, chairman Frank Whiteclay. I've known the chairman for probably close to ten years now and watched him rise up in the ranks of being a leader with the Crow tribe of Indians in Montana. And I'll just tell you, I've met very few leaders that understand the issues of their people and advocate for the advocacy and well-being of their members in the Crow tribe.
He was elected November 2020, on a platform of restoring government accountability and delivering sustainable growth across his communities. And he brings significant experience as a tribal leader in managing the Crow's natural resources development, including navigating regulatory hurdles for mining the region's substantial coal reserves. Chairman Waiklee, it's great to see you. Thank you for traveling to DC, and I look forward to your testimony today on that field.
Speaker 1
Gentlemen at Yields, thank you, Mr. Downing. At this time, it's my pleasure to introduce a witness from Colorado's 3rd Congressional District. Andrew Gallegos is a council member for the Southern Ute Indian tribe, where he plays a key role in advancing the tribe's priorities on economic development, natural resource stewardship, and self-governance. He brings a practical, on the ground perspective shaped by the realities facing tribal communities in the West, particularly when it comes to energy, infrastructure, and responsible land management. His leadership reflects a strong commitment to sovereignty, long-term economic strength, and to partnership with federal and state stakeholders.
I appreciate you, Councilmember Gallegos, for being here today and sharing your insights and experience. Our next witness is Miss Talia Martin, co-executive director of Tribal Energy Alternatives in Oakland, California. Welcome, Miss Martin. And last but certainly not least is Mister Ken Ahman, chief operating officer of Colusa Indian Energy in Colusa, California. Welcome, Mr. Ahman.
Let me remind the witnesses that under committee rules, they must limit their oral statements to five minutes, but your entire opening statement will appear in the hearing record. To begin your testimony, it should be pretty self-explanatory. Please press the talk button on the microphone in front of you. We do use timing lights. When you begin, the light's gonna turn green.
Green means go. When you have one minute left, the light will turn yellow. And at the end of 5 minutes, the light will turn red. And I would ask you to please wrap up your statement or the answer to the question as quickly as you can. And I will also allow all witnesses on the panel to testify before member questioning begins.
So with that, the chair now recognizes Chairman White Clay for five minutes. Mister chairman.
Speaker 4
Thank you, ranking member, chairman, ranking member, and members of the subcommittee. My name is Frank Waikle. I serve as elected chairman of the Crow Nation, the Upsalquag people. I come before you today on behalf of more than 14,000 enrolled members who call the Crow Reservation home. Wanna begin by telling you who we are, because our history is inseparable from the barriers I am here to describe.
The Psalga people have lived along the Yellowstone River in what is now South Central Montana since before there was the United States. Our connection to this land is not a property interest. It is our identity. Our language, our clan system, our ceremonies, and our way of life were all formed here. The Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1851 recognized a Crow homeland of more than 38,000,000 acres across what is now Montana and Wyoming.
Today, after a century and a half of sessions and allotments and administrative reductions, our reservation is 2,300,000 acres. We have lost more than 94% of our land base. The United States itself recognized as ours. And yet on that reduced land, we have built a government, a culture, and a community that endures. Our ancestors made supreme sacrifices to keep us on this land.
They negotiated with the United States in good faith. They fought to protect what was left. Every decision I make as a chairman, I make with their voices behind me. Every decision this committee makes about tribal natural resources, development lands in our communities, on our families, on our elders, and on our children. That is why we are here, not as supplicants, but as a sovereign nation, asking that the promises made to us be kept.
For more than four decades, the Absalaga Mine was the economic engine of the Crow Nation. It was not just a mine, it was a community institution. It paid for our police department, paid for elder services, scholarships that sent our young people to college, and brought them home again as teachers, nurses, engineers, accountants. Families planned their lives around it. Children grew up knowing there would be good work waiting for them.
The mine's expedited closure, driven by federal regulatory pressure and market conditions outside of our control, did not just shut down a business. It cut a community off at the knees. Approximately 275 Crow members lost their jobs, jobs that paid families sustaining wages in a region whose jobs do not grow on trees. Tribal revenues from royalties and taxes collapse by 35,000,000. Our unemployment rate, already far above the national average, climbed to a significant percent, and the human cost, the cost you cannot put on a spreadsheet, was worse.
Families who had been self-sufficient for generations suddenly could not pay utility bills. Young men and women who grew up expecting to work at the mine like their fathers, grandfathers, now see no future on the reservation. Some have left, others have turned to despair, to addiction, to fentanyl and methamphetamine that the cartels are too eager to supply. I've said this before the committee that the Crow Reservation has become an unwitting corridor for transitional drug trafficking. I'll tell you plainly, the closure of the Psalliga mine made the problem worse.
When you take away a community's economic foundation, you do not just create unemployment, you create vulnerability. You create conditions that predators exploit. And I want the community to hear this clearly. The mine did not close because Croco was no longer needed. It did not close because the Crow Nation failed in its stewardship.
It closed because the federal permitting and regulatory environment made it impossible to sustain. When Washington decides that tribal resource development is too difficult to permit, it is the Crow children who go without. Compounding the damage, the Crow Nation was wrongfully placed on the treasury do not pay list by the Biden administration based on invalid debts for a critical period that blocked our access to federal grants and pandemic era programs we were otherwise eligible for. My administration has cleared the issue, but will never recover those lost awards. That is money that should have gone to our people.
It never has, but it's gone now. The second barrier is the National Environmental Policy Act. Let me be clear. The coronation supports the environmental review. We have been stewarding the lands for centuries, and we intend to be stewarding for centuries more.
Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Chairman White Clay, for that testimony. Next, I would recognize Councilman Gallegos from the Southern Union Tribe for five minutes. Councilman.
Speaker 5
Good morning. Thank you, chairman, and ranking member Fernandez, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. My name is Andrew Gaygos. I'm a member of the Southern Ute Tribal Council. Thank you for the invitation to appear before you today.
Our tribe is in a good position to discuss tribal energy as our reservation sits right on top of the San Juan Basin, a rich source of natural gas. In the early 1950s, the tribe began leasing to companies to develop our minerals. In '79, in the nineteen seventies, we began taking a more active role. We used new federal laws to better negotiate mineral development and agreements. In the 1990s, we bought a gas production company and a pipeline company, and we started operating our own wells.
As you can imagine, we encountered a number of barriers during that time, but we also had our share of successes. Energy development has given us economic strength. We've provided our members with jobs, health insurance, and a college education. The tribe is the largest employer in La Plata County. To increase financial stability, we're diversified by investing in real estate and non-energy businesses across the country.
For the last 25 years, our message to Congress has been the same. The United States must root out the barriers it has created and allow tribes to voluntarily take on the responsibilities normally performed by federal agencies like the BIA. Congress removed some of those barriers in the 1955 Energy Policy Act and the Hearth Act in 2012. The Hearth Act allowed tribes to approve some land leases without BIA review and approval as long as the tribe had federally approved leasing regulations and an environmental review process. After the BIA approved our regulations and environmental process in 2023, we finally approved business, agricultural, residential, and renewable energy leases on our land.
Even with the Hearth Act, however, we still could not approve leases for conventional energy development. We also couldn't approve the rights of way to fill those gaps. Our next option was to enter into a tribal energy resource agreement or TERA under the energy policy act. A TERA gave us authority to negotiate energy, realty leases, business agreements, and the rights of way without meeting, without needing the BIA to review and approve. In theory, terras were a great option, but the application process was burdensome, and it was unclear what function a tribe would be allowed to take on.
Congress passed amendments in 2017 that improved the terror process. And as mentioned, in 2025, the Slaunute Indian tribe became the first tribe to submit a terror application, and we expect interior to approve the terror early next month. However, even with the tariff, we still need congress to grant us authority to approve nonenergy rights of way like roads and fiber optic lines. We also need Congress to address the suffocating impact of NEPA when applied on troubled lands. Passing the speed act would improve the tribe with a very useful tool.
To be clear, we spent significant resources to ensure the energy development on the reservation is done while protecting the land. This is not only the right thing to do, but it's our duty to the land. The problem is tribal lands are held in trust by the United States, so all land use activities on tribal land require federal approval. That means Indian tribes are subject to the same NEPA process that applies to federally public lands. As it stands today, NEPA allows people with no connection to our land to delay or defeat tribally supported projects for the use of travel trust resources.
The SPEED Act would help resolve this issue. For any agency accident that affects the use of travel resources, court review would be limited. But in closing, the tribe appreciates Congress's actions to pass laws to increase travel authority over how to use our own lands. The tribe supports the Speed Act language that limits the ability to impede or legally challenge tribally approved projects located on tribal trust lands from opponents with no connection to the area, and we'll continue to urge similar legislation that supports self-determination in developing our natural resources. Thank you.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Councilman Gallegos, for that testimony. The chair now recognizes Miss Martin for five minutes. Miss Martin.
Speaker 6
Good day, Chairman Herd, ranking member Ledger Fernandez, and distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. My name is Talia Martin. I'm an enrolled member of the Shoshone-Bannock tribes of Fort Hall, Idaho. On my maternal side, I am my families are Weezers or in Sandes or the Tukidika and Agaidika of the Boise Valley or the sheep eaters and salmon eaters.
But today, come to you as the co-executive director and representative of the Tribal Energy Alternatives, which is an affiliate of Grid Alternatives. TEA is a native-led organization. We're a nonprofit governed by an all-native board of directors. Most of our staff also come from the tribal communities that they serve. Our mission is to partner with tribal nations across the country to bring renewable energy benefits that advance their energy sovereignty goals, reduce energy cost, and strengthen community resilience.
Since 2010, we have partnered with over 75 tribes in over 19 states to provide tens of millions of dollars from philanthropic funding and stay in federal funding for tribal energy projects. We've also installed over 8 megawatts of solar energy on residential homes, tribal government buildings, and community fill facilities, while also investing in the local capacity building. It's evident in our workforce development work, where we provide solar education and trainings during installs and with stand-alone workforce development services benefiting over 500 tribal members in total. We truly believe that the staff at TEA, that the energy development should deliver direct benefits to tribal communities, including lowering energy costs, improving reliability, and preserving culture in the ways of life that strengthen tribal sovereignty. We hope that the tribal natural resources development also recognizes that the energy system is forever changing.
We're moving toward a more distributed, electrified, and dynamic grid, and we'd hate to see the shift leave tribes and risk them being left out of the system changes. For us, electricity is about being affordable, reliable, and accessible. In our work with tribal partners, we consistently see barriers that limit the ability to develop energy projects on tribal lands. Some of these limited resources are capital, geographic constraints, and infrastructure constraints, as well as dueling priorities between tribe and utility, as well as challenges in capturing federal incentives. These reflect structural gaps in how energy policy and financing of utility systems are designed.
They were not built with tribal communities in mind. Across our work, we have supported tribal communities in deploying community-scale solar. These projects bring signs from seven kilowatts to 300 kilowatts, often serving between five and forty-five homes per project deployed. A lot of our work has been concentrated in Washington, New Mexico, and South Dakota, which are more favorable to solar and residential homes. An exam, for example, in Washington, we've worked with tribal housing authorities and economic development programs to install solar systems.
In total, in Washington last year, we have deployed over 465 kilowatts, which equates to about $11,500,000 in lifetime savings to those tribes in that state. In New Mexico, we have also deployed over 300 kilowatts last year, which will provide almost $1 million in lifetime savings. We worked with several pueblos as well, pueblos that have actually worked with us during Solar for All. And because that grant was terminated, a lot of those projects were abandoned, and we work to pursue other types of funding to continue those projects and make sure that they see the renewable energy benefits. Every project that we install, we train tribal members through hands-on workforce development, ensuring that these benefits are long lasting and long term capacity for the tribe.
These are not just pilot projects or one-time demonstration. They're meant to be replicable, cost-effective deployments with measurable benefits. We were one of six tribal awards that received Solar For All, and we received about 62,000,000 to deploy. 72% of that would have went directly to tribes. We went to the program was designed to deploy 14 megawatts of residential serving solar, 20% savings, and help over 2,900 tribal households.
But the loss is more than $500,000,000 once the program was terminated. One of the recommendations that we do want to highlight today is making sure that federal investments are protected and are delivered to tribal nations, so that they can also pursue those energy projects. We also hope that the committee considers a broader definition of what development means, and it shouldn't just be based on resource extraction, but also deliver tangible benefits to tribal households and communities. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today, and I look forward to your questions.
Speaker 1
Bush. Thank you, Miss Martin. The chair now recognizes Mr. Amin for five minutes. Mister Amin.
Speaker 7
Chairman Heard, ranking member Ledger Fernandez, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to testify. My name is Ken Ahman. I am chief operating officer of Calusa Indian Energy, a section 17 corporation that is wholly owned by the Kasheldihi Band of Wintune Indians of the Calusa Rancheria, a federally recognized tribe located in the Sacramento Valley of Northern California. We're the only tribally owned power plant and microgrid developer in the country. I'm here on behalf of the Calusa Indian community to describe what the tribe has built, and the federal barriers slowing further progress.
The Calusa Indian community is a small tribe, not a major gaming operator. What they have is a proven track record of energy development spanning more than 20 years. In 2005, the tribe built a cogeneration microgrid, expanded it with solar and battery storage in 2012, and has since completely rolled the incumbent utility PG and E completely off the reservation. This is the first tribally owned modern microgrid in the country. The microgrid now powers the casino resort, tribal members' homes, the government campus, water treatment plants, agricultural operations, and tribal businesses.
There have been zero power interruptions at all since 2012, making this little tribal utility authority a global leader in utility uptime. Meanwhile, the surrounding region of Northern California has suffered major blackouts and rolling failures. Today on the Calusa Reservation, the tribe is installing a 2 megawatt battery energy storage system, exploring natural gas reserves to fuel the cogeneration plant, and developing an AI center of excellence campus with plans to expand to over 100 megawatts. Calusa's progress, however, is not the norm. An estimated 17,000 tribal homes across Indian country still have zero electricity.
Power outages, rates on tribal lands are more than six times the national average. The tribe founded Kalusa Indian Energy to help other tribes replicate Kalusa's model on their own reservations. Through Kalusa's tribal energy training academy, we trained American Indian and Alaska Native technicians using the Kalusa microgrid as a live training environment to support other tribes in developing and operating their own energy systems. But Calusa's success came despite the federal system, not because of it. Six barriers continue to slow tribal energy development.
First, NEPA. Most activities on trust lands trigger a federal environmental review. The average environmental impact statement takes four and a half years to complete before the leasing process even begins. One tribal leader estimates it takes 49 steps to develop energy on trust lands, compared to four steps on private land. Second, grid interconnection.
The tribe spent over 10 years in a legal battle with PG and E to acquire distribution lines that already existed. That failed. We ended up running our own underground distribution and kicking PG and E off the reservation. The standard transmission planning process runs five to seven years. No tribe and no private developer can build a business case around that timeline.
Third, EPA permitting and delegation. Pathways exist for tribes to assume regulatory authority, but the time-intensive process functions as another barrier. Fourth, the land into trust process. Fee to trust applications take years and sometimes decades. Fifth, the Hearth Act was intended to reduce federal involvement in tribal leasing, but projects on tribal land still require additional permits, triggering separate environmental reviews.
The result is a fragmented permitting landscape across multiple agencies that the Heart Act alone cannot solve. And sixth, a BIA policy, not a statute, requires the secretary to personally review every single clean energy application submitted by a tribe. This bottleneck should be changed. Several provisions in H.R. 4776, the SPEED Act, could provide meaningful relief. Clarifying that NEPA is a procedural statute, not a vehicle for mandating substantive outcomes, addresses a genuine pattern of agency overreach.
The proximate cause standard would reduce the analysis that drives up costs and timelines. Reducing the statute of limitations for NEPA challenges to 150 days would give project financing the certainty it requires. The bill's presumption of negative impact when a federal agency selects the no-action alternative on tribal trust lands is particularly important. These reforms are a meaningful step forward, but this testimony is about more than any one bill. The regulatory barriers tribes face are not the product of malice.
They're the product of a system that was not designed with tribally owned energy development in mind. It's time to redesign it. The Calusa Indian community is not asking for a new federal program or federal funding. We are asking Congress to remove the barriers that prevent tribes from building their own energy systems. Thank you.
Happy to answer any questions.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Mr. Amman, for that testimony. The chair will now recognize members for five minutes of questions, and I will begin by recognizing the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. McDowell, for five minutes. Mister McDowell?
Speaker 8
Thank you, chairman. Mister Amman, I have a question for you just immediately following on your testimony. But if there if it takes 49 steps to approve a project on tribal land, and it takes four steps to approve it on private land. If you're a private investor, why on earth would you ever invest in a project on tribal lands? Most don't.
And does that harm or help the members of tribal communities? Absolutely harms.
Speaker 7
Not just for energy sovereignty, but for the ability to develop economic development projects that can help tribes at least diversify away from gaming, if not produce an alternative across the board for any and all economic development activities.
Speaker 7
Listen, the tribe I work for refers to PG and E as Pacific greed and extortion for a reason. Despite.
Speaker 8
This, Calusa has achieved zero power interruptions for over a decade. Yes, why did Caloosa make the decision to tap into oil and gas reserves on tribal lands?
Speaker 7
So, yeah, to be clear, the Caloosa tribe is sitting on natural gas reserves, no oil. And the reason for that is an extension of sovereignty. So today, the only outside utility that is maintained on the reservation is the natural gas distribution line that's coming in. And the tribe would prefer not to give PG and E a penny of their money. And so, exploring on-site gas reserves is the final step towards true energy sovereignty.
Speaker 8
What delays did you face when making the decision to do that? I guess, really, what I'm asking is, can you tell me what it looks like on the ground when a tribe makes the decision to move forward with an energy project? How does it play out so slowly?
Speaker 7
Sure. Yes. Well, first, most importantly, if a tribe is not Hearthack certified, then you'd get put into the BIA meat grinder of sorts, where, yes, just general permitting and responsiveness out of the BIA can be crushing to a project. If you are Hearthack certified, it helps for sure. The NEPA process, number one, by far, in a way, what is inhibiting a lot of these projects from getting off the ground.
Having fractionated land, trust versus fee versus allotted land makes it incredibly difficult. And then finally, really, the fee to trust process. So if you have fractionated land, then ideally, we help tribes identify neighboring parcels that are not in fee, in order to acquire them and put them into trust specifically for an energy development. Development. And that process can take years, if not decades.
Speaker 8
How often do you see projects that are delayed because of overbroad federal reviews or a lack of coordination between agencies? Every week. That's great. That's just great. We have to do better with that.
In your testimony, you said that tribes are not looking for the government to build the projects for them, but they want the government to get out of the way. And so if the Senate were to pass the SPEED Act, would tribes be ready and willing to take advantage of streamline permitting? And would this help lead to building a stronger and more secure energy future on the tribal lands?
Speaker 8
I'm running out of time here. Chairman White Clay, I have a question for you, and I'll close with this one. But is the challenge that you face as the chairman of your tribe, is it a lack of resources or willingness from tribal communities, or is it a permitting system that moves too slowly?
Speaker 4
Thank you for that question. It's permitted. It's regulatory. It's BIA quagmire. It's a NEPA quagmire.
It's we're not sovereignty is in question when we have to go through all the acronyms for any type of movement on energy. And with every acronym, it's a whole different process. And where we can consolidate all of these, most of these through the Speed Act would be a great benefit.
Speaker 8
Mister chairman, I would just urge the senate to take up the speed act and yield back.
Speaker 1
The gentleman from North Carolina yields. At this time, the chair recognizes the ranking member of the subcommittee from the state of New Mexico, Miss Ledger Fernandez, for five minutes. Miss Ledger Fernandez.
Speaker 2
Thank you, Mr. Chair. And, I wanted to start with the testimony from Ms. Martin. Your written testimony or what you spoke about was how the work you were doing was gonna bring down the cost of utilities for the tribal members you were gonna serve.
I think, if I recall, it was $1,300 per household per year. In today's environment with rising prices, you know, the Ron Var is bumping prices up for utilities, for gas, for diesel. What does it mean to have these projects suspended because of the pullback on funds, and how can you get them back into play? Like, are you gonna be able to get them done and save these tribal members this money?
Speaker 6
Thank you. I appreciate the question. I think this is a really hot topic for all of us who are trying to fill in the gaps from federal incentives that are no longer in existence. Just for a little context, the Solar For All grant requires 20% savings, and we expected to exceed those savings by combining different federal financial sources. Solar for all funding alone wasn't enough to fill in the gaps.
And so we also propose utilizing other types of sources, philanthropic access for funding these projects, for technical assistance. So from that calculation, we're able to propose that at least a minimum 1,300 or at least on average, $1,300 would be saved annually per household. Unfortunately, when that was terminated, we were also able to look at other funding sources that were still in existence through the state. Particularly in New Mexico and Washington, there was still state funding available that these projects that were developed under Solar For All continue to see those same estimates or the same cost savings. So those are direct savings to the tribal members, right, that are already experiencing energy burden, higher than the national average.
So state funding was something that we used to fill the gap. We also had some philanthropy that allowed us to provide grants in these different areas, and it was beyond the six states that we proposed in Solar for All, and so we were able to also pursue those projects. Is it enough? Definitely not. We're hoping to see more.
And we're recommending that there are more federal incentives specific for tribes because that was $500,000,000 that was committed to and taken away. And so that was, again, $94,000,000 in lifetime savings. And so we're hoping to, again, see that those types of federal incentives come back, as well as financial stacking, that we're hoping to provide technical assistance to the tribes in order to take advantage this time around, if there are ITCs or the tax credits that they can utilize. So we'll see that.
Speaker 2
Thank you. And what we're seeing is that renewable energy, even without subsidies, is still the cheapest form of electricity. It all depends on your situation, on where you're at. I wanted to get to the issue of the SPEED Act, and I think that everybody on this dais, on Republican and Democrat, recognize that we have to overcome the burdens. It is not working, and it is wrong for there to be so many burdens, extra burdens placed on tribes.
I do have when we were looking at the speed act, though, I'll have I'd love to have a conversation with you because I looked at it, and I looked at the requirement, that you could not bring any, you could not bring any judicial review if a comma was not both substantive and unique submitted during the public comment period. And that would worry me a lot because I know that, for example, I represent multiple tribes that might be neighbors with each other. Each of those tribes, for example, might give the same comment. This mine will impact a water source. So you have two tribes give the same comment, substantive impact on water source, but they wouldn't be foreclosed from having any judicial review because that comment wasn't unique.
I don't know if any of you have thought about that, but that's actually what the language says. It must be both substantive and unique, which means nobody else would have said it, which would preclude tribes if you had multiple tribal members. Does that raise any concerns? I know, constipation guy, you actually spoke of that. I don't know if you had looked at that aspect of it.
Speaker 5
Yes. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman. We have, and the way we interpreted that was you're not gonna be pushed aside to not comment. But what the comments that we were trying to really impact is the ones that are really outside of the area, outside of the state even that bring concern just because they're, you know, cared about the land. But what we're talking about is just limiting that.
So if we are neighbors and it does affect you, you definitely have that right to make a concern. So that's how we interpreted it.
Speaker 2
Yeah. And I think that that idea that people didn't want anybody, but that when you actually add the unique aspect, you are then actually canceling each other out. And from a legal perspective, and this is kind of what I did before I got here, you are really meaning that multiple tribal members, multiple tribes, would no longer be able to raise those issues because of the word and unique, which is, I think, a problem. I had a motion to strike that, so it could be substantive, which is, I think, what you're trying to get to. Unfortunately, I didn't get a single Republican vote on it.
Maybe when it's reviewed again. And with that, I've gone over my time, and I yelled back.
Speaker 1
Gentlemen, time has expired. I think the intent of that was to remove form duplicative letters, but that's something that maybe we can talk about. So, which are gumming it up unnecessarily. The gentleman from Michigan, mister Wahlberg, is recognized for five minutes. Mr. Wahlberg?
Speaker 9
Thank you, mister chairman, and thanks to the panel for being here. Councilman Gallegos, let me ask you this. Southern Ute's experience shows that when tribes have the capacity to manage development, energy projects can support jobs, revenue, and long-term economic opportunity for the whole community. From your perspective, how does tribal energy development translate into real workforce and economic benefits for Southern Ute?
Speaker 5
Thank you for that comment. My answer to that would be, you know, having the tribe regulate and be the one that oversees all of our compliances and makes us more sovereign as a tribe. And the economic value that it brings is the health and welfare of our membership. And, of course, it's gonna add jobs to their surrounding communities, and their surrounding communities that aren't tribally owned or not will benefit from the success of future development.
Speaker 9
How are those benefits impacted and limited when federal approvals take too long?
Speaker 5
Well, thank you for that question. Follow-up would be if the process takes too long, it lags for resources like education, health, and even funding for our travel members. So at one point, we weren't able to.
Speaker 9
Have some of those immunities for our members. So the delay would be the delay to the members that benefit from those services. How can we, the federal government, if it's possible, how can we fix that issue so that the timeline actually supports investments, hiring, and long term planning for the tribes?
Speaker 5
Great question. Well, I think just approving the speed act and then just relying on the part where tribes create their own regulation that's best tailored for that specific reservation rather than use the NEPA review or environmental review that isn't well intended. But I think the tribes have each tribe has unique regulation and standards that best know how to fit that specific tribe.
Speaker 9
Okay. Okay. Local control. Thank you. Thank you.
Mister Aman, your testimony describes Calusa as doing two things at once: building real energy infrastructure and training people to operate it. You highlight Calusa's tribal energy training academy and your efforts to help other tribes stand up their own utility authorities. And you describe the Kalusa model as a solution to the energy problems facing Indian country. What makes the Kalusa model workable for other tribes, and what would it take for more tribes to replicate that kind of energy independence?
Speaker 7
Thank you. What makes the Kalusa model workable, I believe, is that we take an all of the above approach, where the core of our home microgrid is powered by stable baseload, natural gas fired cogeneration power plant with solar and battery supplementing. And so I like to say that every tribe is resource-rich when it comes to energy. It's just a matter of identifying which resources they are rich in. So we are not a renewable energy company.
We are a tribal energy company. So we deal with tribes all across the country. Of the 575, you know, many have oil and gas reserves. More of them do not. And so identifying gas pipelines nearby, available solar potential.
All of the above, I think, is really what makes our model workable for other tribes. And, also, the fact that the Calusa home microgrid was depended on virtually no federal funding. This was a financeable project. Right? And so not just looking for money from the feds, but looking for a long-term sustainable option.
What would it take for more tribes to replicate this? Ideally, like the councilman said, clearing the feds out of the way as much as possible and putting the permitting control in the hands of tribes. The only other thing I'll mention is helping to expand technical capacity across Indian country would also be a great benefit.
Speaker 1
has expired. I yield back. Gentlemen, time has expired. At this time, the chair recognizes the gentleman from the state of Washington, Miss Randall, for five minutes. Miss Randall.
Speaker 10
Thank you, mister chair, and thank you to the tribal leaders and our witnesses for being here today to share your perspectives on the barriers and successes in natural resources development. I represent the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state, and this land and these waters are home to 12 federally recognized tribes. Our state is home to 29. And since time immemorial, indigenous communities have managed landscapes to maintain the health of their communities, their people, preserve cultural resources, sustain food access, and ensure a future for the next seven generations. Woven into the cultures of the tribes in my region is a deep respect for the water and salmon.
And it's tribal leaders who have been leading the efforts to protect fish habitat and make their communities more resilient in the face of climate change. It's personal and important, especially because many of the tribal nations in my district have experienced historical levels of flooding, coastal erosion, and severe wildfires, and are having to make the difficult decision to voluntarily relocate essential communities, facilities, hospitals, schools, justice centers, and even entire neighborhoods to safer, higher ground. Large infrastructure and resiliency projects require tribes to navigate a complex jumble of potential resources and programs across many federal agencies. And each program comes with its own regulatory strings, reporting requirements, deadlines, cost-share requirements, and other processes that make programs difficult or impossible for some tribal nations to access. Not every nation is able to access the same, you know, legal expertise, doesn't have the same funding for staff.
That's why I introduced the TERA Act to address these challenges by streamlining the approval process and improving coordination across agencies and grants. Mister Amman, in your testimony, you mentioned that the new Department of the Interior policy requires that the secretary of the interior must personally review every single clean energy application submitted by a tribe. For those who may not know, the secretary of interior serves in the president's cabinet and is responsible for management and conservation of most federal land and natural resources and leads agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, Indian Affairs, National Park Service. It seems like a secretary sign-off policy would make it almost impossible to obtain approval. What kind of delays have resulted from this Trump administration policy?
Speaker 7
I don't know anyone that has actually been approved. So I think it's significant, cumbersome, and unnecessary. I think it removes the self-determination, you know, out of the equation where tribes should, like I said, we're not a renewable energy developer. We're a tribal energy developer. That means we do all of the above, and that includes a whole lot of renewable projects.
And so if a tribe wants to develop oil and gas, they should be allowed to. If a tribe wants to develop wind and solar, they should be allowed to do so as well.
Speaker 10
And I don't think it can go without saying that this administration is asking for individual sign-off on tribal clean energy projects while doing everything they can to speed up private oil and gas project approval. In your testimony, you also stated that one tribal leader had estimated it took up to 49 steps to develop energy resources on trust land, compared to just four steps on private land under state jurisdiction. I'd love to hear more about that and any steps Congress can take to streamline that process.
Speaker 7
Sure. Yeah. I think it's really highlighted in the rest of my testimony. The NEPA is number one, far and away. Number two is the EPA permitting and delegation.
I think one that goes often overlooked is the fee to trust process, because I think legislators view fee to trusts through one lens and not necessarily through the very fine lens of energy development. And so I think that expediting fee to trust applications specifically for energy developments would solve a lot of these problems. Because where you have a lot of land or where you have fractionated land or where you have existing, you know, right-of-way issues or whatever. A lot of those problems can be solved by identifying new parcels of land and putting that new parcel of land into a trust.
Speaker 1
Gentlemen, time has expired. At this time, the chair recognizes himself for five minutes of questions. Councilman Gallegos, it's great to see you here. The southern Ute tribe, your tribe, has a reputation for setting a leading example of a tribe that's built real capacity to manage energy development successfully. Can you tell us a little bit about how greater tribal control over energy development has impacted the Southern Ute tribe's ability to deliver economic results for its people?
Speaker 5
Thank you, Chairman. I'll start off with, you know, the greater and faster we can produce a product, the more our members are gonna thrive off of services that we help fund, those individual services like the education, like health care, so on. And another one is, you know, really showing that the, you know, the federal government that natives can be on their own, you know, self-sufficient, maintain a good clean, healthy way of production because, you know, a lot of people are worried about the animals and the environment. You know, that's our worry too, but who better to manage and can keep control than that individual tribe. So speaking from a tribe's perspective, you know, give us our tools, give us our amendments that we can, you know, put to work because there ain't no better way to, I guess, we have everything in house rather than a visitor coming in and trying to, you know, look at a site or whatnot.
But I'll just leave it there for now.
Speaker 1
Alright. Thank you. So it's fair to say energy development has an economic benefit, but it enhances tribal sovereignty and self determination. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 1
Great. Thank you. Mister Raman, dumb question, basic question. When you say microgrid, what is that? How do you define microgrid?
I'm just curious.
Speaker 7
Man, it depends on who you ask. There's a how we define it is you have on-site power generation and on-site distribution to more than one electrical load. You can be interconnected with the main grid. You can be operating completely in island mode, or you could have, you know, the option to do both.
Speaker 1
So how big of a capacity would be the largest collusive? I'm just curious in terms of, like, peak capacity. Is it like hundreds of megawatts? No.
Speaker 1
10 megawatts? Yes, okay. Got it. Some tribes are same if I could stay with you, Miss Ram, for just a moment. So some tribes are blessed with an abundance of natural resources, while others are not.
Can you talk a little bit about how the kind of energy development that Calusa does puts tribes, particularly those without many natural resources, in a position of independence?
Speaker 7
Sure. Yeah. Well, again, I'd like to say that all tribes are resource rich when it comes to energy, whether it's sunshine or natural gas or geothermal or any, we're completely technology agnostic. And so we haven't found a tribe yet that we can't find an energy project for. That's not to say that every energy project is financeable, but technically, there's a solution to some regard with every single tribe that we're in development with.
Speaker 1
Great. Thank you, Mr. Roman. That's a great perspective to have. Every tribe has natural resources just in different ways, and identifying those and giving them opportunities. I think the message of economic diversification is one that really resonates with me.
And you mentioned that, in your testimony and also in your opening statement. And I think that's a great message that across the dice, everyone would agree that economic diversification is a good thing. Thank you. Chairman White Clay, a common theme that we've seen in this hearing is that tribal natural resource development is more than an economic issue. It's a sovereignty issue.
When tribes can't develop their own resources in a timely way, there are real consequences for self-determination. Speaking on behalf of the Crow tribe, how do federal permitting delays and overlapping approvals interfere with the Crow tribe's ability to exercise control over its land and its resources?
Speaker 4
Thank you. Well, first, it's a sovereignty issue. You know, like the councilman said, who better to store the land than the folks that grew up on it for centuries that are part of the land, that were ingrained in the land? The overlapping issues that affect the Crow tribe as far as energy development and creating these come down to people. The Crow tribe, through our resources, we have been able to fund all the social programs within our tribe.
My tribe is ground zero for missing and murdered indigenous people. And with the closures of the mine, limiting and slowing of the production of economic development and energy production. We're not able to fund these programs. We're not able to do that. Yes.
There are programs out there for tribes, but they're very limited in their usage. For example, we had 72 missing people last year, and we found all 72. And those folks were found on our general fund. We were fully funded that with no help from the federal government. So in those programs, slowing down permitting, slowing down production, slowing down all of these things, restricts tribes from being able to fund these social programs.
Thank.
Speaker 1
Thank you very much, chairman White Clay. And I see that my time has expired as well. If you, the witnesses, could hold on for just one moment, please. Great. I wanna thank each of the witnesses for your valuable testimony and, also, my colleagues, fellow members, for your questions.
Members of this committee may have some additional questions for each of you witnesses, or perhaps all of you witnesses, and we'd ask that you respond to those in writing. Under committee rule three, members of the committee must submit those questions to the committee clerk by 5 PM on Monday, 04/27/2026. The hearing record will be held open for 10 business days for these responses. If there is no further business, then without objection, the subcommittee stands adjourned.
Ask anything about this video — I analyse its transcript to answer.