Thanks to Nick Smith for the link to this Los Padres EA..
It looks like a condition-based management EA for wildfire risk reduction activities. It’s 75 pages with many appendices.
The LPNF proposes two general categories of treatments: (1) Fuelbreaks and Defense Zones (Zones) and (2) Forest Health Treatment Units (Units). The objective in Units is to promote healthy forests that are resilient to natural disturbance, enhance opportunities to suppress wildfire, and increase protection of the urban interface. Zone treatments would occur along ridgelines, existing roads, motorized trails, and property lines and adjacent to Forest Service administrative sites (including developed recreation sites, fire stations, and ranger district offices), communication sites, and other structures. Zone treatments would involve the establishment and maintenance of strategic fuelbreaks along ridgelines to slow the rate of spread of wildfire for the purposes of aiding wildfire management efforts and protecting infrastructure, communities, and natural and cultural resources. Zone treatments would also involve reducing fuels along roads and motorized trails to support ingress/egress and evacuation and reducing fuels along property lines and adjacent to United States Forest Service (USFS) administrative sites to help protect life and structures and limit economic damage associated with wildfires. Treatment methods could include mechanical thinning, hand thinning, chipping and grinding, piling and burning, mastication, mowing and weed-whipping, prescribed fire, targeted grazing, and planting and seeding.
The project is designed with a management approach that supports responsiveness and flexibility prior to treatment implementation. This approach allows for proposed treatments to be aligned post-decision but prior to implementation with ground conditions at the time of implementation. This will maximize the efficacy and efficiency of project planning and implementation by reducing the time and funding currently spent per project, increasing flexibility to choose treatment areas and methods, and taking advantage of time-sensitive opportunities and conditions. It also allows for continued coordination with local agencies, tribes, and others to focus treatments on shared priorities and include cultural approaches consistent with the project.
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One of the questions many people have on these projects is “how is the public involved in the site-specific decisions?”
An Implementation Plan (IP) was developed as part of this proposed action to help ensure resource conditions at the time of implementation are appropriately considered prior to implementation. The IP provides an implementation framework and process that the Forest Service will apply at the stand level prior to entry. The IP includes three forms to be filled out at different stages of implementation planning, and one form to be filled out upon treatment completion:
• Form A: Phase Initiation Form
• Form B: Phase Treatment Form
• Form C: Environmental and Permitting Requirements and NEPA Consistency Determination
• Form D: Treatment Completion Tracking Form
Each form is described in detail in Appendix D – Implementation Plan, including templates for each. Work will be prioritized each year based upon an assessment of the dynamic conditions, addressing areas of highest priority for the upcoming phase with the input of the Forest’s fire, fuels, silviculture and/or other specialists as applicable. A key component of this step would be to identify the areas and types of surveys that need to be performed, including (but not limited to) special-status species and their habitats,
invasive plant species, riparian conservation areas, and cultural resources. Many of these studies are time-sensitive and surveys, when necessary, would be performed in the appropriate season before the work. Applicable RPMs and Best Management Practices (BMPs) would be listed based on the assessment of resources to ensure that any constraints are included in the planning of the work for the year and to ensure that crews performing the work are also aware of the requirements.
For the WRRP, it is anticipated that up to 10,000 acres of treatments would be implemented each year, with a maximum implementation scenario, including re-entry treatments, not to exceed 20,000 acres per year. This is based on a review and average of work over the last 10 years. Including all types of treatments, the LPNF currently averages 3,500 acres per year, with higher totals over 9,000 acres of annual treatment.
Appendix D has a very detailed description of the implementation steps. I selected this section to describe public outreach at the site-specific implementation level.
Each phase of work would be disclosed to cooperating agencies, tribes, and the public (e.g., posted to the Forest website, social media, and/or other method(s)), to the extent practicable. No additional NEPA decisions are needed unless proposed work falls outside the scope of the EA. A detailed plan for the phase of work that includes elements such as the location of treatment areas, the surveys completed and areas of modified treatments based on RPMs and other measures, identification as to whether material would be sold, chipped or masticated, piled and burned, or removed would be provided as well as a more precise schedule of activities. Outreach to the public, particularly in areas where treatment is located near residences or prescribed fire is planned, would be undertaken. Regulations requiring formal public engagement opportunities (e.g., comment or objection periods (36 CFR 218)) during project implementation do not exist.
So there is a chance for the public to make its wishes known at each site, but no regulatory requirements for formal comment periods. What do you think?
What do you think I think?
My first impression is that this is not a project decision, but a plan decision. If they are identifying areas that will be managed differently for different purposes than other parts of the Forest (“zones” and “units”), these are management areas, which would require a plan amendment. If so, more would obviously have to be done with the public and with NEPA prior to actual projects.
“No additional NEPA decisions are needed unless proposed work falls outside the scope of the EA.” What this really means is unless there are environmental effects that have been identified as issues but have not been considered in the EA. The public needs to be part of identifying environmental issues, presumably through scoping.
The less site-specific a proposed action is, the more likely there would be new environmental concerns arising when a site and treatment are identified. Whatever this “project” is, it sounds like additional NEPA may sometimes be needed. The problem for the public is that if the Forest Service says everything is within the existing scope, there is no usual decision-point opportunity for the public to challenge that as a failure to comply with NEPA. (A feature, not a bug, to the Forest Service.) If nothing else, I would expect something like announcing a determination of NEPA adequacy so someone could sue them over that.
It’s also possible that consistency with the forest plan cannot be demonstrated until standards and guidelines are applied to a specific site and treatment. Would that determination escape review?