Forest Service unveils new plans for National Forests

Dan Berman, Greenwire senior reporter

The Forest Service plans to roll out a proposed planning rule that will be essentially the same as the 2005 rule blocked by a federal judge in San Francisco earlier this year. But this time, the agency will conduct an environmental impact statement (EIS) with five alternatives, service spokeswoman Donna Drelick said today.

The new proposal will strengthen the role of science in forest management and allow more public input in the planning process, she said.

Meanwhile, the agency is proposing major revisions to its guidelines for implementing the National Environmental Policy Act. In a proposed rule scheduled for publication in tomorrow's Federal Register, the Forest Service proposes to move its NEPA procedures from the agency handbook to federal regulations, and incorporate various NEPA recommendations from the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Tomorrow's announcement on the forest planning rule responds to the March ruling by U.S. Judge Phyllis Hamilton, who sided with environmentalists and the state of California and enjoined the Bush administration's 2005 planning rule, saying the Forest Service violated the Administrative Procedure Act, NEPA and Endangered Species Act when it drafted, revised and published the rule (E&ENews PM, March 30).

The planning rule determines how the 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands develop their individual forest plans, documents that govern activities from timber harvests to recreation and protecting endangered plants and animals.

The Forest Service and timber industry say the 2005 rule properly focuses attention at the project level, but critics say plans developed under the 2005 rule would make it more difficult to challenge individual projects, because the new plans have no enforceable standards such as specific limits on logging or watershed protections. Forest Service officials have said they will appeal aspects of Hamilton's ruling they cannot remedy via a new rulemaking.

NEPA regs

The Forest Service is also proposing changes to its NEPA procedures, incorporating guidance from CEQ and selected court decisions. Changes are designed to improve the EIS process to make it the studies more relevant to actual decisions and not on potential lawsuits, according to the proposed rule.

"A 'One size fits all' approach to NEPA documentation has not been effective," the proposed rule states. "There continues to be focus on preparing NEPA documents such as an EIS or environmental assessment (EA) for litigation rather than to facilitate an informed decision process."

Aside from moving NEPA procedures from the agency handbook to a federal regulation, the Forest Service proposes deleting a list of actions that require an EIS, incorporates a controversial CEQ guidance on cumulative effects and allows for the use of "adaptive management" practices.

For environmental impact statements, the proposed rule changes a list of classes of actions that require an EIS to actions that "normally" require an EIS. Currently, the studies are required for proposals to carry out or approve aerial application of chemical pesticides, proposals that would substantially alter the undeveloped character of an inventoried roadless area, and proposals for major federal actions with major environmental impacts.

'Forward looking'

In addition, the agency would only have to study the proposed action when it conducts environmental assessments, per a recent CEQ memorandum. A stand-alone, no-action alternative is no longer required.

The rule also incorporates a June 2005 CEQ memo on cumulative effects of agency actions. The guidance, however, has been at odds with rulings from courts in the 9th Circuit in particular, where environmental groups have successfully challenged the agency's failure to consider the cumulative effects of timber sales and other proposals.

In the memo, CEQ interprets NEPA as requiring an analysis of cumulative effects and a "concise description of the identifiable present effects of past actions to the extent that they are relevant and useful in analyzing whether the reasonably foreseeable effects of the agency proposal for action and its alternatives may have a continuing, additive and significant relationship to those effects."

But CEQ does not see NEPA as requiring a listing of past actions or a study of the individual effects of each project. NEPA analyses are meant to be "forward-looking" and focusing on the potential impacts of agency proposals, not a study of individual past actions.

Public comments on the NEPA rule will be accepted through Oct. 15.