Greens lash out at plans to speed NEPA reviews
By Marc Heller, Originally published August 27, 2019 at E&E News
Conservation groups and scientists are bashing the Forest Service’s plan to revamp the National Environmental Policy Act. (Photo of The Elliott State Forest. Photo credit: Tony Andersen/Oregon Department of Forestry/Flickr)
A Forest Service proposal to accelerate environmental reviews of forest management projects has generated thousands of public comments, including criticism yesterday from conservation groups.
In comments submitted to the agency, the Western Environmental Law Center and other groups said the proposed changes to the National Environmental Policy Act’s procedures would diminish public input while opening national forests to “sweeping destruction” through increased logging, mining and other projects.
A public comment period on the proposed rule, available on the Forest Service website, ended yesterday. The agency had extended the comment period for two weeks at the request of stakeholders.
“The agency has released a proposed rule that brazenly attempts to remove the public from public land management decisions, and seeks to expand the scope and scale of land management without sufficient environmental analysis,” said the groups, which also included Earthjustice, the National Audubon Society and the League of Conservation Voters, among others.
Without a change in the proposal, the groups said, the issue is likely to land in court.
The Forest Service proposed the changes earlier this year, saying adjustments to NEPA procedures would remove obstacles to projects that boost forest health and wildlife habitat and improve recreational facilities. Reviews under NEPA often delay projects by a few years, officials and advocates for the changes say.
The Forest Service said the proposal would promote forest health and maintain public input while helping push projects along. The agency said it faces a backlog of 5,000 applications for special-use permits and renewals of existing permits awaiting environmental analysis and decision.
Among the proposed changes are several new or expanded categorical exclusions from NEPA, which would allow the Forest Service to proceed on projects with less-rigorous environmental reviews. The exclusions include projects related to forest restoration and resilience, improvements to structures at recreation sites, and conversion of forest system roads to non-forest system roads.
In some cases, the categorical exclusions could apply to projects up to 7,300 acres, a scale that environmental groups said is too big.
Environmental groups, as well as a group of more than 200 scientists led by the Oregon-based Geos Institute, told the Forest Service in letters that the proposal cuts out public input on the majority of affected projects.
“Yet again the Trump administration wants to roll back vital safeguards and curtail public input. This rule will make it easier to log, drill and mine our forests — actions that will be doubly bad for our climate by both increasing pollution and limiting our ability to reduce it. Our forests must be managed as part of the climate solution,” said Kirin Kennedy, the Sierra Club’s deputy legislative director for lands and wildlife.
The service received more than 41,000 comments on the proposal. Supporters, including associations representing sportsmen and foresters, said the changes would improve wildlife habitat and forest health. The National Association of State Foresters, which has called for more landscape-scale forest improvement projects, said the proposal works toward that goal.
“Expanding the type of work that can be eligible for [categorical exclusions] should save the agency significant time and funding which is currently expended on administrative procedures,” the NASF said.
The Quality Deer Management Association, representing sportsmen, submitted comments supporting the proposed categorical exclusion for routine forest management activities.
“Forest management as we know it today has vastly changed over the past few decades,” the group said. “No longer is it responsible to simply leave forests unmanaged or unmaintained.”
Robert Macnee, Ph.D. is Deputy Director of Resilience Services at Climate Resilience Consulting, where he helps governments, institutions, and communities reduce climate risk in equitable and practical ways. He holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Management focused on climate change impacts on health and communities, and brings over a decade of experience spanning economic development, resilience planning, and implementation.
Samantha Medlock is President of Climate Risk Advisors, helping communities and organizations advance equity, sustainability, and resilience. Her career began chasing floods as a local official in Texas Flash Flood Alley—a hands-on experience that still shapes her approach to climate and disaster risk management.
Arsum is the Senior Adaptation and Coastal Resilience Specialist for the National Wildlife Federation’s Southcentral Region. In this role, she advances climate adaptation efforts, with a focus on nature-based approaches to address the impacts of climate change and extreme events across the Gulf region. She has authored and co-authored numerous publications on climate impact assessments and adaptation solutions. Additionally, she regularly participates in state-based coastal resilience and hazard mitigation planning across the Gulf, collaborating with regional and local stakeholders.
Jim is a multilingual world traveler. Based in Bavaria during the 1970s, Jim spent most of this period in India, Afghanistan and Nepal, where he founded and operated a charitable medical clinic serving Tibetan Refugees. He settled in Oregon in 1983 on a forested ranch in the Umpqua National Forest.
Dr. Micah Hahn is an Associate Professor of Environmental Health in the Institute for Circumpolar Health Studies at the University of Alaska-Anchorage. She received her joint PhD in Epidemiology / Environment and Resources from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her MPH in Global Environmental Health from Emory University. Subsequently, she was a postdoctoral fellow for the CDC Climate and Health Program, and in this position worked collaboratively with the CDC Division of Vector-borne Diseases and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Her research focuses on understanding the health impacts of climate change and working with communities to develop locally-relevant adaptation and resilience-building strategies. Dr. Hahn is also on the Management Team of the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center.
Michael is a former Founding Principal of Resilient Cities Catalyst, a global non-profit helping cities and their partners tackle their toughest challenges. He is currently the Executive Director of Climate Resilience Academy at the University of Miami.
Dr. Quintus Jett is a consultant, educator, and strategist for public causes. He has a doctorate in Organizations & Management from Stanford University, and a two-decade faculty career which spans schools, departments, and programs of business, engineering, liberal studies, divinity, and public and nonprofit management. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Dr. Jett launched a volunteer project in New Orleans, which enlisted residents, students from over a dozen colleges and universities, and hundreds of others to field map the city’s Gentilly district, Lower Ninth Ward, and New Orleans East. Dr. Jett is an innovator in higher education, bridging the divide between academic research and the other priorities of the modern university, including student access and diversity, community engagement, and providing foundations for life-long learning in today’s rapidly changing world.
Scott is Monfort Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. He has written about 100 publications in the peer-reviewed climate literature, is a former editor of the Journal of Climate, and served for five years as founding Science Chair of the North American Carbon Program.
Linda has many years of experience in disaster preparedness and resilience. She has been an elected official on the Linn County Iowa Board of Supervisors, Chair of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, the East Central Iowa Council of Governments, the statewide Mental Health Developmental Disability and the Linn County Board of Health. Langston is a former president of the National Association of Counties (2013-2014).
Ken works with families and organizations as a mediator, organizational consultant, trainer and facilitator. Along with his passion for helping people prepare for and reduce climate change, Ken also volunteers as a mediator through Mediation Works and is passionate about supporting youth through mentoring with Boys to Men of Southern Oregon.
Matthew is a retired high school teacher who was once honored as Oregon High School Social Studies Teacher of the Year. Before his teaching career he was in the restaurant business in Portland. He is also a lawyer who has been a member of the Oregon State Bar Association since 1980.
Andrea is the Resilience Policy Advisor for the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency. She works across state agencies and with local governments to increase the state’s resilience to the impacts of climate change.