Trump Interior Department transition leader David Longly Bernhardt | Photo: David Hawxhurst/Wilson Center
We've known for some weeks that Donald Trump's transition team includes attorney David Longly Bernhardt, who has been tasked with managing the post-electoral turnover at the U.S. Department of the Interior. Bernhardt will be overseeing the hiring process for Trump's new Interior Secretary, along with a number of important subordinate positions within the Department, including heads of agencies like the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
While he's hardly a household name, Bernhardt is a serious heavy hitter in the kind of policy issues Interior oversees, and his selection for the Interior transition job surprised no one who knows the field. Bernhardt's expertise, combined with Trump's apparent willingness to delegate the detailed work of hiring staff to carry out his policies, probably means that Bernhardt will effectively be selecting a good handful of candidates to fill top positions at Interior.
And that may well mean a couple of long-term California water issues get very close attention from Trump's new Interior Department.
--
--
Bernhardt is no stranger to internal Interior Department politics. In 2006, he was appointed by former President Bush as Solicitor in the Department, essentially making him Interior's lead attorney. Bernhardt had previously served as Deputy Solicitor, Counsel to the Secretary, and a few other high-level positions within the Department since Bush took office in 2001. This insider career track likely contributed to his unanimous confirmation by the U.S. Senate for the Solicitor position.
As Solicitor, Bernhardt oversaw Interior legal strategy on water rights, public lands and waters energy development, and Endangered Species Act issues. His record there wasn't one you could characterize as uniformly anti-environmental: Bernhardt developed Interior's legal arguments for forbidding the importation of hunters' polar bear trophies after the species was listed as Threatened in 2008.
Bernhardt's private sector work should raise concern among California water activists.
Instead, it is Bernhardt's work outside the Interior Department that will likely raise concern among California water activists. After the inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, 2008, Bernhardt took a position with the Denver-based law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, where former Bush Interior Secretary Gale Norton was a partner. Before joining the Bush Administration in 2001, Bernhardt had worked for the firm as an associate attorney.
It's at Brownstein Hyatt that Bernhardt did much of his work for the not-particularly-green community. Nationwide, Brownstein Hyatt is likely best known among environmentally concerned people for its work representing the developer of a proposed massive copper mine on sacred land in the Santa Rita Mountains in southeastern Arizona. But it's one of the firm's California clients that has some water activists on edge as they await news of Bernhardt's picks for Interior Staff.
A certain three-inch fish | Photo: USFWS
That client, described on Brownstein Hyatt's web site as the Nation's largest federal water contractor, is the Westlands Water District. Westlands hired Brownstein Hyatt in the early days of the Obama administration. That may have been due entirely to the law firm's reputation as an aggressive advocate. It may also have had something to do with an existing relationship between Bernhardt, who became co-chair of Brownstein Hyatt's Natural Resources Division, and former Interior Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Jason Peltier, who left Interior in 2007 to become Westlands' Chief Deputy General Manager.
More about Westlands
The Bottom Drops Out Part 2: Groundwater and the Valley
Report: Retiring Toxic Farmland Would Save Money, Water, Delta Wildlife
Irrigators Ask Judge to Cut Emergency Water for Klamath Salmon
1 of 2
next
Throughout the course of the Obama administration, the embattled water district - in the news most recently for running afoul of the Securities Exchange Commission for allegedly hiding financial problems from would-be investors - has been a major political voice in favor of continued unsustainable water exports from the San Francisco Bay Delta. Bernhardt represented Westlands in its legal efforts to force USFWS and the National Marine Fisheries Service not to block water pumping from the Delta, despite abundant evidence that the pumping threatened legally protected species such as the Delta smelt, the winter-run Sacramento River Chinook salmon, and the southern resident orca population.
We've discussed that tortuous legal process at some length here before. In a case that made it to the Ninth Circuit, Bernhardt and his colleagues represented both Westlands and the San Luis & Delta Mendota Water Authority to argue that USFWS violated federal law when it found in 2008 that continued pumping from the Delta would endanger the Delta smelt, and that the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the Central Valley Project and its pumps at the Delta, also broke the law when it accepted USFWS' recommendations by limiting pumping to help the fish.
In the lengthy legal battle to protect smelt and salmon from excessive water diversions, Bernhardt worked the other side.
Westlands and San Luis, and a long list of co-plaintiffs, lost that suit in the Ninth Circuit in 2014. The agricultural irrigation districts continue their lobbying efforts to preserve pumping. They won a rhetorical boost in Fresno on May 27, when then-Presidential aspirant Donald Trump told a fundraising rally:
You have a water problem that is so insane. It is so ridiculous, where they're taking the
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
29/05/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
29/05/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent ratings news and is derived from press re...
29/05/2026
The days are getting longer, the temperatures are rising, and playlists are filling up for the season. With summer around the corner, Spotify's global edito...
29/05/2026
New retro-inspired MPC announced
There are few devices that have gained the status held by Akai Pro's MPC range, and in recent years, the company have s...
29/05/2026
Save up to 30 on acclaimed titles
Following a successful launch at Superbooth 2026, Bjooks have revealed that they will be continuing the Kickstarter campa...
29/05/2026
Binaural monitoring application improved
Genelec have just released an update that brings some powerful new features to their HRTF-based binaural headphone ...
29/05/2026
6 June 2026 at SAE Institute, London, UK
IMSTA FESTA 2026 is almost upon us, with some of the biggest names in pro-audio set to descend upon SAE Institute i...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, died April 12, 2026, at his home in...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Comparing 5 AI Video Enhancers for Restoring Old Video Quality
Kate Luvis May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Digitizing VHS, MiniDV, and other legacy formats doe...
29/05/2026
Studio Hamburg Builds New Post Pipeline with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Workflow replaces a patchwork of legacy tools...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
At the Intersection of Music and Dance, an Epic Collaboration Boston Conservatory musicians and dancers found creative parallels in their recent performance o...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
Latino Film Institute Fellows Screen Their Short Films at the Egyptian Theatre
The Inclusion Fellowship and Spark Animation Grant uplifts 15 ...
29/05/2026
GLOOKAST LAUNCHES CINNAFILM TACHYON PLUGIN FOR MEDIA PRODUCER AND MEDIA SERVICES
This release first appeared here.
Visit our Tachyon product page or contact...
29/05/2026
May 29 2026, 09:00 (PDT) Dolby and rednote Bring More Immersive Storytelling to...
29/05/2026
Something fundamental has shifted in how people consume media. Audiences aren't abandoning television or radio content; they're just expanding how, wher...
29/05/2026
Youtube exclusive special drops today
Watch now
UKTV today announces another e...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
The Official Trailer of Physical 100 Italy, on Netflix From Se...
Trump Interior Department transition leader David Longly Bernhardt | Photo: David Hawxhurst/Wilson Center 
