Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
Wednesday, November 04, 2015
Obama Administration Adopts Wide-Ranging Natural Resource Mitigation Requirements
Earlier today, the Obama Administration adopted an expansive set of mitigation requirements for all its natural resource management agencies. Under the voluntary policy, the Department of Defense, Department of the Interior, Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will aim “to avoid and then minimize harmful effects to land, water, wildlife, and other ecological resources (natural resources) caused by land- or water-disturbing activities, and to ensure that any remaining harmful effects” are effectively mitigated.
The mitigation policies are intended to “establish a net benefit goal or, at a minimum, a no net loss goal for natural resources the agency manages that are important, scarce, or sensitive, or wherever doing so is consistent with agency mission and established natural resource objectives.”
This policy essentially applies to all natural resources what the Clean Water Act and Executive Order have required of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) with respect to wetland impacts (namely avoidance, minimization and mitigation, with mitigation aiming for no net loss of wetland functions and values). This is an expansive additional set of analyses and mitigation requirements and has the potential to significantly expand these agencies’ permitting obligations and timelines.
Depending on how it is implemented, the policy has the potential to overshadow the procedural environmental review requirement mandated under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by imposing a substantive environmental action obligation on agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Corps, National Park Service (NPS), and U.S. Forest Service...more
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