What Do Forest Service Employees Think About NEPA?: Igelman Story Post #2

Here is the discussion about NEPA with my and Sam Evans’ perspectives from the Jack Igelman Carolina Public Press story here. What do you think?

Although politicians have portrayed NEPA as enforcing rigid and redundant rules that prevent action, within the agency, said Friedman, the view of NEPA is “based on how (its) tasks and practices affect them and their work.”

For example, she said, a public affairs specialist may appreciate the public input aspect of the law.

Friedman said that when she joined the agency in 1979, “a strong bias that the real work was in the woods and not chained to a desk” existed.

But the culture within the agency has changed, and some now see the law as a means to “getting involved in decision-making and influencing what the project does,” she said.

Still, within the agency, there are plenty of concerns about NEPA.

An October 2018 roundtable discussion hosted by the National Forest Foundation — the nonprofit arm of the Forest Service created by Congress — identified several concerns within the agency and its partners.

They included fear of litigation, the lack of capacity within the workforce, varying knowledge of NEPA among staff, and concerns that resources reallocated to fire suppression have dried up budgets, among many others.

Evans thinks an internal perspective exists among some bureaucrats within the Forest Service who “feel NEPA is a red tape obstacle they want to get rid of — that NEPA is the problem.”

“NEPA gets the blame but is a critical safeguard to make sure that the work the Forest Service does is good” and a counterweight to politicians who see the legislation as excessive bureaucratic regulation, he said.

“There is also a perspective in the agency that NEPA is the only counterweight of the extreme pressure on staff to cut more timber,” Evans said.

“(NEPA) is the yin and yang of Forest Service decision-making, and the current reforms fundamentally shift the balance of power in agency decisions.”

I told Jack that when I started in 79, the first CEQ NEPA regs had only been out for a year. So to the work generation before mine, (I’d use the term “mothers” except I don’t remember any females in that cohort) doing NEPA was a completely new thing. It required hiring people who knew about obscure topics like fisheries, economics and so on, which required a massive cultural transition. But that was forty years ago now, and that generation and mostly my own (who worked on Process Predicament) have gone. Current employees have grown up with NEPA.

I also told Jack that CE’s are a bit like an IRS short form (it’s not a great analogy but..) the IRS mostly knows the situations that require long forms (think extraordinary circumstances). Some people don’t like doing their taxes, but everyone likes getting refunds (the equivalent of getting projects done?)

Many NEPA people love doing (at least part of) NEPA. It can be underappreciated and I always thought it was excellent preparation for line officer work. Some specialists see NEPA as something that makes them write boring docs when they could be in the field or working their program. Others look at it as way to gain influence over decisions, or faithfully represent the trade-offs to the best of their professional skill. Some people like me really like talking to people at public meeting and trying to figure out a way to design the project so that as many interests as possible would agree. Perhaps it was more fun for me, as the kinds of projects I worked on did not have timelines that were rigorously enforced.