The Forest Service's rule changes undercut its once-proud mission

Char Miller

...His conscientious stand seems even more so in light of the Forest Service’s recent announcement of a series of “rule changes.” Do not be fooled by that innocuous-sounding concept. What the federal agency has amended will have a profound impact on its mission, objectives, and authority. These rule alterations will undercut its commitment to “Caring for the Land, Serving the People” and undermine some of the nation’s most iconic landscapes, including Nevada’s rugged Ruby Mountains and Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area, that the agency has protected for more than a century. One key change the Forest Service involves the enforcement of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations that govern its decisions concerning resource extraction. Formerly under current NEPA, the Forest Service had to develop robust Environmental Impact Reports that identified the ramifications of a timber sale or an energy or mining lease. This report must be open to public scrutiny and the agency was required integrate the public’s concerns in any subsequent assessment of the relevant project. As part of the Trump administration’s rollback of NEPA regulations, the Forest Service now has removed environmental considerations as criteria for decisions to approve plans. It has also sharply limited public input and thus the agency’s transparency and accountability. Strikingly, the Forest Service and its administration-minders have taken these steps while celebrating NEPA’s 50th anniversary and the forceful role it has played in developing good forest management since President Richard Nixon signed NEPA into law in January 1970. The agency’s actions are striking, too, given Nixon’s argument that the “1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters and our living environment. It is literally now or never.” Climate change only reinforces the sense of urgency that President Nixon articulated decades ago and it illustrates why the Forest Service’s rule reversals will be so devastating to the land and the people who benefit from it...MORE

NEPA, as interpreted by the agencies and courts, has been one of the most wastful environmental laws on the books. Can the feds tell us how many NEPA documents are prepared each year? No. According to the GAO:

Governmentwide data on the number and type of most NEPA analyses are not readily available, as data collection efforts vary by agency.

Can they tell us the cost of complying with NEPA? No. As the GAO explains:

In general, we found that the agencies we reviewed do not routinely track data on the cost of completing NEPA analyses. According to CEQ officials, CEQ rarely collects data on projected or estimated costs related to complying with NEPA. EPA officials also told us that there is no governmentwide mechanism to track the costs of completing EISs. Similarly, most of the agencies we reviewed do not track NEPA cost data. For example, Forest Service officials said that tracking the cost of completing NEPA analyses is not currently a feature of their NEPA data collection system. 

Some agencies keep better records. The Dept. of Energy found in 2013 the average cost of an EIS was $2.4 million and the average cost for an EA was $301,000. The GAO also reported "that the 197 final EISs in 2012 had an average preparation time of 1,675 days, or 4.6 years."

Who knows what those numbers are today, but for sure it is a colossal waste of time and money. Anyway, how can you do a cost/benefit analysis if you don't know the cost? They keep that hidden from us, don't they.