USFS Planning Workshop Video

Here’s a link to video that Nick Smith included in today’s Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities News Round Up email. In the video, Chris French, Director of Ecosystem Management Coordination, gives a presentation on NEPA reform at the Environmental Analysis and Decision Making Workshop in Phoenix, Arizona. French gives examples of the time and money the USFS spends on various planning documents and looks at documents for similar projects from other agencies — BLM, BIA. Nick’s link is an ~8 minute portion of the full video, nearly an hour, which is here. I haven’t had time to watch the whole thing. The 8-minute excerpt is worth a look.

10 thoughts on “USFS Planning Workshop Video”

  1. Costs comparisons can be useful. In my experience much of the fluff in FS NEPA docs is “CYA” rather than substance. I also see lots of cut & paste from past EA’s on same ranger district; inappropriate practice when you don’t address the actual planning area but it’s one way to reduce costs – I guess.

    I’ve long wondered when the Congress, FSEE or others will finally examine why the USFS per acre fire suppression costs are so much higher than BLM or NPS.
    What’s up? I thought the Trump admin was about cutting costs; seems like time for my old agency to tighten it’s belt on fire costs. We can’t afford to keep giving them a blank check.

    Per acre cost is where the pulaski meets the fireline; if they’re overspending out of caution, due to sweetheart contracts or whatever it’s time to rein the FS fire people in.

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  2. There used to be a lot of emphasis on reducing wildfire costs – I remember audits after several fires ~2002-2003 to look at excessive spending, but that doesn’t seem to be an emphasis anymore – especially since the FS started publicizing the increasing percentage of the FS budget that goes to wildfire suppression.

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  3. Just looking at the 8 minutes, I totally agree that involving the public before you decide which areas to treat should decrease the time (including litigation), and cost (including “litigation proofing” documents). Of course it sounds like somebody has already pronounced 25 million acres as “must treat” areas, which is a bad way to start off meaningful “collaboration.”

    I would want to take a closer look at the BLM and BIA examples to see whether they are similar to what the Forest Service wants to do in terms of controversy. They have typically been able to “get away with” less NEPA than the Forest Service in places where the public hasn’t been paying as much attention. Have they successfully defended these 4-page documents, or do they just not get sued?

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  4. Are you saying that the BLM in Oregon doesn’t have the same NEPA “problems” the Forest Service is complaining about here (large documents, high costs)? (According to this video, that is the reason the FS should be looking at them as an example.)

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  5. I don’t know, Jon, but comparing NEPA docs and appeals/litigation in Oregon — specifically on the west side of the Cascades — might make sense.

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  6. BLM has a different “appeal” process vs. the Forest Service, so you really can’t compare FS and BLM in that regard. One of the main points in the full version of the video is that FS CEs are much more involved than BLM CEs for equivalent types of projects.
    One thing that has happened subsequent to that EADM meeting is that the FS will be contracting out all EISs, with very limited exceptions that have to be approved by the Regional Forester.

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      • I don’t know. I don’t know if the FS keeps track of that. In the old days FS employees could search the PALS database and find out how many EIS’s, what they were for and so on, but maybe not who worked on them?
        In Region 2, proponents of things like ski areas and so on had contractors do NEPA- lots of these folks showed up at our EADM meeting. FWIW in my experience contracting can be helpful but is not an answer.

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  7. Seems like contracting out all EISs (EAS, too?) would have lots of big staffing and budget implications. I wonder if they include contracting “in” to the many “enterprise teams” that do this kind of work as agency employees.

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