Bush streamlining or steamrolling NEPA?

...The administration currently is making a full-court press against the delays and bureaucratic obstacles it claims are caused by NEPA. The keystone of this effort is the Healthy Forests Initiative, the administration's effort to allow the clearing of timber in the national forests. Officials argue the effort is designed to reduce fire hazards, while environmentalists counter it is an effort to provide low-cost timber to the logging industry.

Under the "old" NEPA requirements, timber sales of the size the Bush administration wants to offer would have required public hearings and an environmental analysis of their impacts -- an EIS or EA.

On Thursday, the administration issued a regulation in the Federal Register allowing a "categorical exclusion" to NEPA for fuel mitigation efforts of less than 1,000 acres...