Why NEPA Docs are Long… Example of Agency Comments (EPA)

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I would bet if you examined agency comments from the agencies involved in reviewing NEPA docs for actions proposed by other agencies, you would find almost entirely “you need to do more’s” and not many “you could have shortened this section by leaving out’s”. Culturally, reviewers tend to be supporting their agency’s view, or a specific resource/interest, or both. If the reviewer couldn’t add something of importance, it would bring into question if the reviews are really necessary (this is a human characteristic true of any kind of review).

To paraphrase the old expression about a picture, an example is worth a thousand words. I ran across this letter from EPA in 2010 about a garden variety vegetation management project. You may think that some of this detail is unnecessary to inform the decision maker and the public about the alternatives, or the analysis is speculative, or the answers fundamentally unknowable in any meaningful sense. Nevertheless, if someone says you should, you have to answer why not, and the judge might not agree. Still, the worst that happens is the judge tells you to do something, and once that is on the table, through the next iteration the finish line is in sight :).

Here’s a link to the letter. It says it’s an exhibit, so may have been in a legal case. You can pick any topic and see that EPA thinks that more is better (more baseline data, more analysis, more monitoring). There’s nothing wrong with their having opinions, but they only tend to go in one direction (more is better). This is one reason environmental docs, especially EIS’s, tend to be long.

Prescribed Fire: The action alternatives of the Big Moose Vegetation Management Project include the application of prescribed burning to acreage varying from 1,263 to 6,000 acres, depending on the alternative. This significant prescribed fire activity may cause degradation of air quality and visibility in the region. While we realize that the individual burn plans for this project would quantify expected emissions from the prescribed burns, EPA is concerned that the DEIS does not contain any air impact analysis presenting direct, indirect, or cumulative air quality impacts that would be associated with prescribed burning on the large acreage under consideration. Such information should be included in the Final EIS and is necessary for the decision-maker to ensure protection of air quality and visibility if the prescribed burns are ultimately conducted.

and part of the letter on climate change

The Final EIS should discuss reasonable alternatives and/or potential means to mitigate or offset the GHG emissions from the action. We understand that the action is intended to mitigate the likelihood of future stronger and potentially wide-ranging wildfires in the area.
Nevertheless, the Final EIS should discuss whether there are any reasonable alternatives or means to mitigate GHG emissions associated with the proposed action (e.g., would GHG emissions be reduced with alternatives that entail the harvest but omit the prescribed burning proposed under Alternatives 3 and 4?). (My italics- an alternative that doesn’t include PB but only MTs)

Further, EPA recommends that the “Affected Environment” section of the Final EIS include a brief summary of the ongoing and projected climate change impacts relevant to the action area, based on U.S. Global Change Research Program assessments and other relevant peer-reviewed studies. In addition, EPA recommends that the Final EIS identify any potential need to adapt the proposed action to ongoing and projected regional climate change, as well as any potential impacts from the proposed action that may be exacerbated by climate change. For example, how might ongoing and predicted climate change affect the viability of the DEIS goal of promoting aspen regeneration in this area? With regard to exacerbation of impacts, how might climate change exacerbate the water quality and other impacts from this proposed action?

This should give folks who have not been there a taste for “how docs get long” :).

On Time and Under Budget

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On September 1 31, the federal government’s fiscal year clock turned over from FY17 to 18. The numbers year-to-date are now in.

The Forest Service spent $1.75 billion of its regular $1.89 billion firefighting appropriation. No FLAME funds spent. No borrowing.

What? How is that possible? Turns out that when the boss says “we ain’t gonna borrow no more,” the can-do FS figures out how to get the job done.

Which is a good thing. Should there ever be another regular appropriation (the government is running on a continuing resolution, as it has seemingly forever), there may not be the “fire funding fix” that some western legislators covet. Hurricanes may stretch Congress’ tolerance for disaster funding to its max.

Will up-date after 9/31!

Interior Dept. Order limits most NEPA studies to one year, 150 pages

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Portion of a Greenwire article posted today…. Anyone want to bet that the USFS will issue a similar order?

Citing a need to reduce “paperwork,” the Interior Department has imposed controversial new restrictions on the length of crucial environmental studies.

In a newly revealed Aug. 31 memo, Interior Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt directed that the department’s environmental impact statements “shall not be more than 150 pages or 300 pages for unusually complex projects.”

The memo states it “dovetails” with a presidential executive order focused on infrastructure projects, while adding that it is being issued in the “context of the department’s overall effort to streamline the NEPA process.”

Officials will need high-level approval to exceed the new page limit. The memo also imposes a “target” of completing the studies required under the National Environmental Protection Act within one year.

“The purpose of NEPA’s requirement is not the generation of paperwork, but the adoption of sound decisions based on an informed understanding of environmental consequences,” Bernhardt wrote, adding that studies “should focus on issues that truly matter rather than amassing unnecessary detail.”

“Managers accomplish much with fire”

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Amongst all the whining and ranting about how the Forest Service coulda/shoulda stopped all of this summer’s fires, there is this letter to the Missoulian (Missoulian’s title above), which I’ll reprint in total:

Activity on the controlled burn of the Bitterroot Range is continuing to be successful. The reports show where they are building the containment lines on the southeast edge of the control burn area. They have burned the area past Florence and into the Sweeney Creek and down to Bass Creek with extended blackened lines planned almost all the way to Kootenai Creek.

The incident management spokesman said they want to put the “hook” just on the edge of the old Kootenai Creek burn so they can stop the southernmost end of the fire there. In other words, they have got the area that they want to burn up surrounded by controlled burned areas almost all the way around this end of the Bitterroot Range.

 You can see by the map that the fire is going just almost as planned in that it has completely burned off all the forest up to Highway 12 and now it is heading south past Florence and just has to burn up the center section from the bottom foothills to the top of the Bitterroot Range.

Great work, incident managers. You have accomplished a great deal with this “lightning-initiated” fire.

Do you think this is serious or serious sarcasm?  (I don’t know anything about the author.)  It is pretty much the way the incident reps have described what they are doing to manage a wilderness fire on the edge of subdivisions.  They are not sending troops in to flail at the fire, but fire-proofing the boundary and letting it burn itself out in the interior.  Shouldn’t property values go up all along the forest boundary knowing the fire risk has now been hugely reduced?  (No NEPA!)

Wild Virginia Calls for Investigation of Forest Service on Draft Pipeline Decision

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For whatever reason the focus on this blog is often westward-leaning and forest-focused. I received this press release from the folks at Wild Virginia regarding a potential pipeline through the George Washington National Forest and the Monongahela National Forest, so thought I’d post it below. – mk

Wild Virginia Files Objection and Calls for Investigation of United States Forest Service on Draft Pipeline Decision

Wild Virginia, a state-wide forest conservation group, filed a formal objection today against the United States Forest Service (USFS). This was in opposition of the draft Record of Decision (ROD) that could allow the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) to be built in the George Washington National Forest (GWNF) in Virginia and in the Monongahela National Forest (MNF) in West Virginia. Joining Wild Virginia in the objection are Heartwood, the Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition and various individuals.

“By filing this formal objection to the United States Forest Service Record of Decision, Wild Virginia is doing what the Forest Service has refused to do; defend the ecological integrity of our public lands,” said Misty Boos, Wild Virginia Director.

The draft ROD proposes to allow numerous exceptions to the Land and Resource Management Plans for both national forests that could allow the ACP to cross the GWNF. The current GWNF Plan, which took 7 years to complete and had input from over 10 thousand individuals and groups, was finalized in 2014, the same year that Dominion Resources and Duke Energy rolled out plans for the ACP. Neither company participated in the planning process or offered any input to forest planners, knowing full well that their planning for the ACP, then named the “Southeast Reliability Project” were in the works.

“It is criminal that the Forest Service would bless Dominion’s proposed plans for the ACP when this should have been part of the forest planning process ten years ago,” said Ernie Reed, President of Wild Virginia and Heartwood Council member. “The Forest Service has disregarded 7 years of work and thumbed its nose at the entire forest plan to pave the way for the most damaging proposal that Virginia’s forests have ever seen.”

The ROD stands in striking opposition to virtually all the input that the USFS had submitted on environmental impacts on the forest from the proposed pipeline up to the point that the draft ROD was signed. The USFS has been perhaps the most vocal critic of the process, the content and the conclusions that Dominion has submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as the basis for its Final Environmental Impact Statement which is a regulatory requirement for all federal projects of this nature. The Draft Record of Decision was signed July 21 by Tony Tooke, then Southern Forester in Atlanta. Virtually all of the previous submissions and comments by the USFS on the project were generated at the local level by GWNF and MNF staff.

Subsequently, one month after signing the ROD, Tooke was appointed as Chief of the United States Forest Service by Sonny Perdue, the Secretary of Agriculture.

“For whatever reason, the Forest Service has suddenly dropped its formerly responsible approach to project review and is now proposing to authorize construction of the destructive ACP across the National Forest prior to receipt of detailed and site-specific plans,” said Rick Webb of the Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition. “The Forest Service has seemingly adopted the same deferred-analysis model of environmental review as the other dysfunctional federal and state agencies. It’s bad news for the remaining wild landscape in the central Appalachian mountain region.”

“The stark contrast of Forest Service filings before the draft Record of Decision demonstrates a breech in agency procedure which should be scrutinized by senate and congressional committees,” said David Sligh, Wild Virginia Conservation Director. “We are making this request for an investigation today to Virginia’s senatorial and congressional delegation.”

“It becomes the responsibility of citizens to hold the USFS accountable for its actions,” Boos asserted. “Wild Virginia is taking this action on their behalf.”

Link to Wild Virginia’s Objection to the USFS

Why We Disagree About Fuel Treatments: VIII. Need For Change: Embracing Prescribed Fire

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We’ve talked about people who are doing fuel treatments successfully (the watershed examples here and here). But in some parts of the country, as we will see in future posts, it is really really difficult to do, for a variety of reasons we’ll explore. As folks have described to me some of the difficulties, I’ve asked them “why don’t we just give up with prescribed burning and vegetation treatments? and stick to Firewise + Suppression alone?”. It’s so… hard…

The Forest Service says they want to put more fire on the landscape, but they are not aligned (in at least some areas) to produce those results, other than through WFU. Perhaps EPA is not aligned to produce those results, and so on. As I’ve asked fire scientists, they tend to say things like:

1. You are thereby putting all the pressure on suppression folks, and not giving them areas that can help them. You are removing a key tool from their toolkit.

2. Wildfires can have negative impacts on infrastructure, species, watersheds, people and so on, and..

3. Controlled burns can produce reduction in fuels, plus conditions things for fire-dependent species with fewer (different) risks.

Here’s how Washington Prescribed Fire Council put it:

Rediscover Prescribed Fire

Prescribed fire is the planned, professional application of fire in the right place, at the right time. It is a safe, effective process that has been sidelined for the last 100 years as we suppressed wildfire on a state and national level.

Fire suppression was intended to keep people safer and industry thriving, but over time, has actually resulted in the reverse: unprecedented forest density, stockpiled fuels, and diseased, degraded forests that are more likely to burn hot, fast and out of control. Recent wildfires have been especially devastating for Washington: lost lives, lost homes, shuttered businesses, millions and millions spent.

There has to be a better way, and there is. It’s time to embrace prescribed fire.

Here’s Calfire’s comprehensive list again:

Management objectives:

Reduction of conflagration fires.
Optimization of soil and water productivity.
Protection and improvement of intrinsic floral and faunal values.
Sub-Goals:

Reduce the number and intensity of large, damaging wildfires with corresponding savings of suppression costs.
Increase public safety.
Increase water quantity and maintain water quality from managed watersheds.
Decrease the potential for damage from flooding and siltation.
Protect and improve soil productivity, and decrease erosion over the long term.
Improve wildlife and fisheries habitat.
Improve oak woodlands through fire management and regeneration.
Establish and maintain desired plant communities.
Propagate rare or endangered species of plants, which are fire dependent.
Improve air quality over the long term.
Improve forage and browse for livestock.
Increase opportunities for recreation and improve scenic vistas.
Decrease the risk to firefighters and other responders during wildland fires.
Provide training opportunities for personnel in incident organization, operations, fire behavior, firing methods and effects of weather influences.
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So before we go on, for the reasons outlined here (and other reasons you might add or rephrase) do you agree that it is important to increase (embrace) prescribed burning? Why or why not?

Fire Map Questions

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Last night this graphic showed up on the national news

But of large incidents, this is what we get from NIFC.. here.

Could the difference be that the news story showed all fires, and the other only large fires? But then where on the NIFC website is the “all-fire” map? (Note that the source of that news graphic is also NIFC). Perhaps one of our readers can help?

You can see why a person in central Colorado would be curious about this…

Smoke Maps on the Web

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As a residents of the western US, we live with fire. For the last few weeks, I’ve been living with smoke. I wanted to know where it was from.. air quality websites were not particularly helpful. I found this neat EPA app here. However, I’ve noticed that my area has smoke, but is not even close to being on the map.

Here’s current air quality but not by reason (i.e., not just smoke)

Here are some maps on Wildfire Today..also from NOAA but different..

Maybe someone among our readers can explain.. ??

Conservation Triage – How a Math Formula Could Decide Fate of Endangered U.S. Species

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The title says it all. Considering that US citizens pay more in taxes than they do for food and clothing, is it any surprise that a lot of us want lower taxes. Here are some selected quotes from an article titled “How a Math Formula Could Decide Fate of Endangered U.S. Species“

It’s all about the 80/20 rule or, to put it another way, picking the low hanging fruit.

1) “Arizona State University ecologist Leah Gerber presented a plan to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials that would use a mathematical formula to direct government money away from endangered and threatened species she calls “over-funded failures” and toward plants and animals that can more easily be saved.”

2) “Gavin Shire, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said in an email to Reuters that the agency is examining the controversial proposal.

“We have worked closely with this group of scientists as they developed this new conservation tool, and while we have not made any determinations yet, are impressed with its potential,” Shire said. “We will be exploring further if and how we may best use it to improve the effectiveness of our recovery efforts.””

3) “The Endangered Species Act bars the government from deciding which animals and plants become extinct. But funding one species over another could let some decline or die out.

“I just don’t think it’s possible to save all species even though I would like to,” said Gerber, a self-described Democrat and environmentalist. “That’s an uncomfortable thing to say and I don’t like it but that’s the reality.”

Gerber said as many as 200 additional species could be saved by directing funds away from species such as the iconic northern spotted owl – whose numbers have declined despite millions of dollars spent on conservation efforts – and toward those with a better chance of survival.”

4) “So-called conservation triage is already being used in New Zealand and the Australian state of New South Wales, but Gerber has developed a specific algorithm for the United States that considers the expense and needs of local species as well as rules laid out by the Endangered Species Act.”

5) “Gerber came up with the idea for a U.S. model while Democratic former President Barack Obama was in office, pitching the concept to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials before her algorithm was developed. Given the proposed budget cuts, some proponents say it may have a better chance of adoption under the Trump administration.”

6) “Despite protected habitat and about $4.5 million, adjusted for inflation, that Gerber calculates has been spent annually between 1989 and 2011 to help the owl recover, federal statistics show its numbers have declined by about 4 percent per year. About 4,800 northern spotted owls are left in North America, according to the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife.”

7) “One proponent is Hugh Possingham, an Australian scientist and an architect of the policy in that country. Now the chief scientist for U.S. environmental group The Nature Conservancy, Possingham wants to see similar policies adopted in the United States.

“I’m always amazed that this is a contentious issue. I’ve had people discuss it with me and end up with a fit,” he said. “But the mathematics and the economics of doing the best you can with the resources you have – I don’t know why that’s contentious at all.”

The Australian state of New South Wales, which in 2013 adopted a strategic prioritization algorithm, decided to keep funding recovery efforts for some species that the model ranked as low priorities, said James Brazill-Boast, senior project officer with the New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage.

For example, he said, the koala would be ranked low, but Australians would never support letting the beloved creatures, listed as vulnerable by law, become extinct.

Gerber said U.S. officials could similarly decide to continue supporting species that her algorithm might reject – or non-profits could step in to help.

“I don’t think the agency wants to let things go extinct,” Gerber said. “I don’t want to let things go extinct. … But we can actually achieve better outcomes by being strategic.””

California’s Efforts on Dead Trees and Fuels

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PGE in California has cleared 100K miles (!) of powerline.

To add to the fuel treatment debate mix.. What does the fuel issue look like in a D state when you take the FS out of the equation? (given that the reporter isn’t as cautious about his language about “to blame” for wildfires as readers of this blog would prefer). Here’s the link.

While human error continues to be the leading cause of wildfires, the number of dead trees and densely overgrown brush are responsible for some of the most damaging and difficult to control fires.

In October 2015, Gov. Jerry Brown issued an emergency declaration to address the number of dead and dying trees as a result of extended drought conditions. An estimated 102 million trees died between 2010 and 2016 during the Golden State’s devastating drought, with about 62 million perishing in 2016 alone.

These trees are frequently to blame for wildfires, including the 2015 Butte Fire that burned 70,000 acres and destroyed 900 structures after a dead pine tree fell on power lines.

Cal Fire has partnered with the California Conservation Corps to organize crews to clear dead trees and conduct controlled burns in densely forested areas.

Pimlott informed the subcommittee that in the time since the declaration, Pacific Gas & Electric has cleared trees and brush from 100,000 miles of power lines across the state. California has spent $418 million to remove dead and dying trees statewide, which has been instrumental to reducing the amount of property damage caused by fires.

“Collectively, we have removed over 800,000 trees since the declaration,” Pimlott said. “We have focused primarily on the property damage side of things.” He credits the ability of multiple agencies, including Cal Fire, Caltrans, PG&E and others who have worked together to reduce the risk of unintentional fires.

Pimlott said the state needs to commit more money to fire prevention and forest maintenance projects.

“Fifteen million dollars really isn’t enough to deal with our forest health challenges,” Pimlott said. “We really need to look at more significant investments.”

Pimlott said a proposed $150 million appropriation would make a nice start toward a long-term solution to wildfires in California.

If you go to Governor Brown’s site here, you find:

The tree die-off is of such a scale that it significantly worsens wildfire risk in many areas of the state and presents life safety risks from falling trees to Californians living in rural, forested communities. Several counties have declared local state of emergencies due to this epidemic tree mortality.

The Governor’s state of emergency proclamation on the tree mortality epidemic builds on the April 2014 executive order to redouble the state’s drought response, which included provisions to expedite the removal of dead and dying hazardous trees. Today’s proclamation helps identify high hazard zones for wildfire and falling trees that have resulted from the unprecedented die-off and prioritizes tree removal in these areas. It also calls for state agencies to take several actions to enable removal of hazard trees. Governor Brown’s letter to Secretary Vilsack requests urgent federal action, including additional technical assistance for private land owners, matching federal funding and expedited approval for emergency actions on federal lands.

In addition, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and CAL FIRE are convening a Task Force on Tree Mortality comprised of state and federal agencies, local governments and utilities that will coordinate emergency protective actions and monitor ongoing conditions.

I’d be interested in observations from California NCFPers on this..