Obama: Moving NOAA corrects a Nixon mistake

President Obama said Friday that his plan to move the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration into the Interior Department would correct a mistake that dates back four decades.

Obama announced the plan to take NOAA away from the Commerce Department as part of a broader proposal to merge various trade and commerce agencies. Here’s Obama on Friday on why NOAA is housed at Commerce to begin with:

If you’re wondering what the genesis of this was, apparently, it had something to do with President Nixon being unhappy with his Interior Secretary for criticizing him about the Vietnam War. And so he decided not to put NOAA in what would have been a more sensible place.

But some environmentalists are dismayed by the proposed move to Interior, which handles offshore oil-and-gas leasing and regulation.

Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke said her group is “extremely troubled” by the plan. “The move could erode the capabilities and mute the voice of the government’s primary agency for protecting our oceans and the ecosystems and economies that depend on them,” she said in a statement.

“We understand the president’s interest in creating a more nimble, coherent entity for economic policy; but that can be done without sacrificing the scientific and environmental strengths of NOAA, and the independent perspectives it brings to critical issues,” she said.