Water Quality, Abandoned Mine Cleanup and Liability: Help Wanted!

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Thanks to Terry Seyden for finding this.. I saw it in the Denver Post, I think, Sunday but didn’t get around to posting.

This is a serious environmental problem and perhaps “Something We Can All Agree On” as you can see, with an obvious solution. What I don’t get from this story, is “who could possibly be against it?” and “why on earth hasn’t the legislation passed?”. If anyone out there knows, please share…

Colorado mining authorities have dug through a mountainside and reopened the dark granite shaft of an abandoned mine that turned deadly – trying to find options for dealing with one of the West’s worst environmental problems.
The Pennsylvania Mine, perched above timberline, discharges an acidic orange stream moving 181 pounds per day of toxic metals into Peru Creek and the Snake River, which flow into Denver Water’s Dillon Reservoir.
The poisoning of the watershed has gone on for more than 60 years.
Yet state officials say the risk of lawsuits prevents cleanup of this mine and thousands of other abandoned mines that have impaired 1,300 miles of Colorado streams and, according to federal estimates, the headwaters of 40 percent of Western rivers.
Today’s digging reflects growing frustration. Colorado county governments recently resolved to lobby for congressional action as water quality and healthy mountain fisheries are increasingly important to the Western economy.
“The idea is to just get ourselves in there and see what the remedy might be,” said Bruce Stover, director of Colorado’s Office of Active and Inactive Mines, who was peering into the Penn Mine last week.
Orange slime – containing iron, cadmium, aluminum, mercury, zinc and lead – coats the walls of the mine 4 inches thick. The U.S. Forest Service and the Environmental Protection Agency paid for the use of heavy machinery to dig through 200 feet of collapsed mountainside to open the mine shaft.
Stover and contract workers are trying to unravel an underground spaghetti of side tunnels and fissures. If the main shaft were plugged, would toxic water back up inside the mine, where it could be neutralized? Or would the mine drain through other openings and spew toxic metals at multiple points across fragile tundra? That information could help determine how a cleanup could be done most efficiently.
But, for years, congressional leaders have refused to address the problem of legal liability at abandoned mines – despite repeated efforts by U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and Mark Udall, both Colorado Democrats.
The EPA’s current interpretation of the Clean Water Act says “good Samaritans” and state governments embarking on projects to reduce the contamination of watersheds could be held liable for costs of full-scale cleanups costing millions of dollars a year to treat toxic water forever. This has prevented partial cleanups that, while not stopping all pollution, could improve water downstream.
“What we need in Colorado and across the country is federal legislation that enables the state and other parties to take smart and affordable steps at these sites,” said Loretta Pineda, state director of reclamation, mining and safety. “Right now, under the language of the Clean Water Act, we cannot take those steps without risking enormous financial liability.”
At the Penn Mine over the past year, state inspectors measured a boggling array of toxic metals discharged into Peru Creek. They counted 186 pounds of cadmium, 4,496 pounds of copper, 21,529 pounds of manganese, 21 pounds of lead and 39,896 pounds of zinc. These metals have left Peru Creek and much of the Snake River devoid of aquatic life.

This is what one person thought the reasons were: fear of environmentalist lawsuits.. and pushback by environmentalists.. could that possibly be true? And if so, what groups, and could they possibly be influenced?

From the Telluride Watch here:

But certain provisions in the federal Clean Water Act create major stumbling blocks to such efforts. The Clean Water Act likes big, perfect fixes – like permanent water treatment pants that cost millions to build and millions more annually to operate, and which convert toxic water into potable stuff that fish can cruise around in.

So-called Good Samaritans have had to walk away from more modest mine cleanup projects for fear that if they don’t bring the discharge water all the way up to CWA standards, they may be sued by a third-party citizen or even another environmental group.

Pat Willits, the executive director of the Ridgway-based Trust for Land Restoration, which helps communities deal with a myriad of issues related to abandoned mining, explains the liability problem like this: “Good Samaritans are spooked by the ‘citizen suit’ provision of the Clean Water Act, which says that if someone suspects a violation of the Clean Water Act, a citizen may begin a legal action and if successful, the defending party will have to pay all of the legal expenses of the citizen’s group. If they are unsuccessful, the defendant does not have recourse to countersue.”[…]

Two decades’ worth of efforts to shield would-be Good Samaritans legislatively by creating a new provision in the Clean Water Act (including, most recently, U.S. Senator Mark Udall’s Good Samaritan Cleanup of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act of 2009), have floundered in Congress, due to fears from environmentalists about opening up the Clean Water Act, even for such benign and altruistic purposes as protecting Good Samaritans…

Additional note: the GMUG National Forest was recognized for its leadership in the Abandoned Mines program at the 2012 Regional Forester’s Honor Awards.

Here’s the write-up.

For demonstrated sustained superior eff ort or action.
GMUG Abandoned Mines Lands Program
Over the last fi ve years the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests (GMUG) have successfully obtained funding for Environmental Compliance and Protection (ECAP) and Abandoned Mine
Lands (AML) Programs. The Forest is recognized as highly effective, knowledgeable and accomplished
in project work and has leveraged funding through partnerships and potentially responsible parties to
have a implemented a 5-year mine reclamation/restoration program of over $8.4 million dollars. As a
program leader in the Region, these accomplishments and the expertise aff orded on the Forest are worthy of Regional Forester special recognition.

Here’s the link to the Regional Forester Honor Awards. If you run into folks from the GMUG, you might want to say “thank you” or “we heard about the great work you’re doing.”

Sauce for the Goose? International and Intranational Conservation Policies

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Many thanks to Bob Berwyn for this post. For a long time I have wondered about the difference between the way some elements of the conservation community believe that locals in the international sector should be treated, compared to the way that some think locals in our own country should be treated. Or maybe the conservation groups are different? It does cause one to wonder, though. Certainly, indigenous people have been the focus for some of this international work; however, if that were the case it would also raise some interesting questions in this country.

I think this topic is worthy of further discussion. What bothers some folks about the prevalence of litigation as a policy tool, is that it can remove the locus of control from decisions made by those interacting with locals, to national organizations. In fact, Hoberg (can’t remember which paper off the top of my head, maybe someone on the blog remembers?) suggests that that was a conscious strategy by some groups to remove the great “timber wars” debate from the Pacific Northwest and their elected officials, with whom these groups disagreed. Which could explain part of the reason some local folks feel disenfranchised by that tactic; they were/are.

Here’s a link

and here’s an excerpt.

The work by the IUCN is more directed toward forests in developing countries with indigenous populations, but the results of the study may also have some application in more developed parts of the world, where local communities have a significant stake in the management of forested areas.

“A first step is to recognize that many forests and landscapes are inhabited by people with some form of land rights,” said Chris Buss, Senior Programme Officer for IUCN’s Global Forest and Climate change Programme. “Investors are increasingly aware they must respect these rights through recognized processes, although the practical implications of such processes have until now received less attention.”

The current investment and management process often simply results in compensation for loss of access to land or resources — a neocolonial model — rather than a genuine shared enterprise. In contrast, a “rights-based” system places local control at the heart of the process. Under this system, the people who own or have rights over the forest are the ones who seek investors and partnerships for managing their natural resource assets.

“The rights-based approach recognizes local people’s autonomy and their rights to determine the land’s destiny and to gain income from its effective management,” said Minni Degawan, Project Coordinator for KADIOAN, an Indigenous Peoples organization based in the Philippines. “Empowering local people to make decisions on commercial forest management and land, with secure tenure rights, the ability to build their own organizations and access to markets and technology can be a highly effective way of raising incomes and protecting forestry resources.”

“Communities, governments and investors all stand to gain from investing in locally controlled forestry. However, launching a commercially viable enterprise is not without its own challenges and requires adjustments to conventional investment approaches,” said Peter Gardiner, Natural Resource Manger for Mondi. “To facilitate this process, the Growing Forest Partnerships which includes IUCN and TFD, have developed a practitioners’ manual, to be released later this month, which offers investors and rights holders a step-by-step guide to negotiating commercial agreements.”

Note: there have been previous posts on this blog relating national and international; in a quick scan this was the only one I could find, on what happens when people are not in the forest.

IdeaFest in Boulder CO This Week

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I would like to attend all these but may not be able to.. if anyone else on the blog would like to attend and submit a post, let me know. The below seminar sounds interesting, especially for us bloggers, but conflicts with a vet appointment for my dog.

CSTPR Noontime Seminar: The Contrarian Discourse in the Blogosphere – What are blogs good for anyway?
CSTPR Noontime Seminar
Fall 2012 Series
Thursdays 12:00 – 1:00 PM
The Communications-Policy Nexus
Media, messages, and decision making

* Tuesday September 11, 2012

THE CONTRARIAN DISCOURSE IN THE BLOGOSPHERE: WHAT ARE BLOGS GOOD FOR ANYWAY?

by Franziska Hollender, Institute for Social Studies of Science, University of Vienna

CSTPR Conference Room, 1333 Grandview Avenue

Free and open to the public

The media serve to inform, entertain, educate and provide a basis for discussion among people. While traditional media such as print newspapers are facing a slow decline, they are being outpaced by new media that add new dimensions to public communication with interactivity being the most striking one. In the context of climate change, one question has arisen from recent events: what to do with the contrarians? Some propose that the contrarian discourse is merely an annoying sideshow, while others think that it is science’s responsibility to fight them. Blogs, being fairly unrestricted and highly interactive, serve as an important platform for contrarian viewpoints, and they are increasingly permeating multiple media spheres.

Using the highly ranked blog ‘Watts up with that’ as a case study, discourse analysis of seven posts including almost 1600 user comments reveals that blogs are able to unveil components and purposes of the contrarian discourse that traditional media are not. They serve as extended peer communities as put forth by post-normal science, however, blog users themselves do not see post-normal science as a desirable goal. Furthermore, avowals of distrust can be seen as linguistic perfomances of accountability, forcing science to prove its reliability and integrity over and over again. Finally, it is concluded that the climate change discourse has been stifled by the obsession of discussing the science basis and that in order to advance the discourse, there needs to be a change in how science as an ideology is communicated and enacted.
Tuesday, 11 September, 2012
12:00 PM – 01:00 PM

Then there is the Culture Politics and Climate Change International Conference from Sept. 13-15
the program is here. Even if you can’t attend the titles sound interesting and you could, more than likely, find a written paper on a related topic by the same authors that would be of interest.

Finally there is the The Nation Possessed conference I mentioned previously on this blog. Here is the link. It is the 12th to the 14th.

If you want to be stimulated by new ideas about the same old topics, head to Boulder this week!

Groups Sue FS and EPA on Lead Bullets

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I thought it was interesting that CBD, the Sierra Club, and the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council are suing the FS apparently for RCRA violations… yet it seems from this Courthouse News Service article that they are already suing the EPA. since it appears that EPA is in charge of RCRA, and if in fact lead is bad for all the mammal-eating birds, then why should one national forest become the target?

Here’s what they said:

“Lead ingestion and poisoning from ammunition sources has been documented in many avian predators and scavengers that inhabit Forest Service land in Arizona, such as California condors, bald and golden eagles, northern goshawks, ferruginous hawks, turkey vultures, and common ravens,” the complaint states. “Many bird species are exposed to spent lead ammunition when they consume mammals that have been shot with lead ammunition but not retrieved and later die in the wild. These ‘shot but not retrieved’ carcasses are a food source for wild, free-ranging California condors in Arizona.”
The groups add: “The ingestion of spent lead ammunition, even in minute amounts, by wildlife causes many adverse behavioral, physiological and biochemical health effects, including seizures, lethargy, progressive weakness, reluctance to fly or inability to sustain flight, weight loss leading to emaciation, and death. The existence of such adverse health effects makes the wildlife experiencing them more susceptible to other forms of mortality, such as predation.”
The Center For Biological Diversity filed a similar lawsuit in the District of Columbia. There, it seeks judicial review of the Environmental Protection Agency’s refusal to regulate the use of lead ammunition on public lands.

It seems to me like it should be clear where the authority to regulate lead ammunition rests, and the US taxpayer should only have to pay for one agency’s attorneys to defend it. Hopefully, I’m missing something here.

Sierra Institute’s Response to the Economic Analysis of the Critical Habitat Designation for Northern Spotted Owl

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Context:

The US Fish and Wildlife Service contracted with a group called Industrial Economics out of Cambridge Massachusetts, to do the socioeconomic analysis of the designation of critical habitat for the northern spotted owl.

The Sierra Institute was commissioned by the National Forest Counties and Schools Coalition to provide third-party analysis.

Here is a link to the page that has the Sierra Institute report, the Executive Summary, and conclusions, and an excerpt from the Executive Summary.

The purpose of this report is to review and provide comments on the May 29, 2012 draft report by Industrial Economics, “Critical Habitat Designation for the Northern Spotted Owl,” prepared for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Industrial Economics’ assessment is insufficient in its documentation of cumulative socioeconomic impacts and current socioeconomic conditions. Their interpretation of the charge of “determining whether the benefits of excluding particular areas from the designation outweigh the benefits of including those areas in the designation” is overly
narrow. As an assessment, the report does not comport with sound socioeconomic assessment science and lacks a sufficiently comprehensive evaluation of potential impacts.

While acknowledging a loss of over 30,000 jobs in the timber industry from 1990 to 2010, Industrial Economics argues that these loses were offset by regional population gains of 15% and an 18% employment increase in the decade of the 1990s. Industrial Economics errs by assuming: 1) job gains in the 1990s offset job losses in the 2000s, 2) regional population and job increases directly offset timber industry job declines, and 3) employment gains (and
losses) are equally distributed across the region. They report regional job increases of only 3% in the 2000s, and do so without analyzing impacts associated with the Great Recession, which hit hard many of counties where critical habitat areas are designated.

In discussing timber harvest impacts, Industrial Economics bases its incremental change analysis on a period in which there is a severe downturn in the economy and wood products industry. This results in an undercount of likely impacts. Estimates of harvest totals are generalized and not linked to subunit timber harvest totals, resulting in estimates that, as they acknowledge, “could vary materially from future actual timber harvest…”

Because of the shortcomings of Industrial Economics’ report as a socioeconomic assessment, the Sierra Institute for Community and Environment provides additional analysis and review of socioeconomic conditions. This is done also to improve the understanding of socioeconomic changes that have taken place since 1990 and the potential impacts of
northern spotted owl critical habitat area designation of almost 14 million acres across the California-Oregon-Washington northern spotted owl region. Designation of this amount of land as critical habitat area requires deeper and more comprehensive analysis.

and

Case studies, two in California and three each in Oregon and Washington, were conducted to better understand socioeconomic changes and current socioeconomic conditions “on the ground.” Some key findings from these cases include in California:
• Siskiyou County lost all its saw mills, has seen its population age, and has lost eight schools, challenging the county to provide for the remaining students and reverse the loss of young families.
• In Humboldt County there are powerfully suggestive relationships between mill closures and student impoverishment as reflected in Free and Reduced Price Meal (FRPM) enrollment rates. This county has suffered dramatic declines in its goodsproducing sector, with the manufacturing subsector losing 65% of its 1990 jobs by 2011.
In Oregon:
• Tillamook County has 24% of its children living in poverty, and 39% living in singleparent households, almost double the national average.
• Douglas County has 31% of its children living in poverty – twice the national average and 34% in single-parent households.
• In both of these counties, but especially in Douglas County, there are significant declines in manufacturing jobs, particularly since 2008. Free and Reduced Priced Meal participation rates increased over the last four years as well, some schools by almost 20 percent.
• Josephine County, over the last several decades saw forestry and logging jobs decline by 80%. Wages have stagnated and are two-thirds of the Oregon average. The county now ranks near the bottom of Oregon counties in health indicators and FRPM participation rate for the county is 70%.
In Washington:
• Grays Harbor County Natural Resources and Mining jobs declined by over 50% and
Forestry and logging jobs by just under 70% from 1990 to 2010. The county is near the bottom of the health rankings for counties in the state. FRPM participation rates for the county exceed 60%, with one school district at 92% in 2011 and another at 88%; the lowest rate is 41%, reflecting the considerable differences across the county.
• Skamania County has 90% of its land in federal ownership, and 59% of the land in the county is designated as critical habitat area. Natural resource and manufacturing jobs have declined by over 50% over the last 20 years, though service industry jobs have increased dramatically during this period.
* * *
Timber receipts and, more recently, the Secure Rural School and Community Self-Determination Act (SRS) payments to replace lost timber receipts to counties and schools have been historically important. In California, on average, Humboldt County Schools received just under 5% of their funding through SRS; Siskiyou received on average just
under 7%; and Trinity County received 15%. In Oregon, U.S. Forest Service SRS funding has provided on average 23% of county road budgets, with six counties receiving over 40% Response to the Economic Analysis of Critical Habitat Designation for The Northern Spotted Owl of their total road budget. Though dramatically lower in 2011, SRS payments comprised 40% or more of Skamania County general fund throughout the 2000s. In Oregon O&C counties, the Bureau of Land Management contribution to county budgets has been significant. In Douglas County in 2009 it comprised 17% of total county revenues and in Jackson County, it makes up 7% of total county revenues.
Eighteen counties received SRS O&C funding that goes directly to county general funds.
SRS is scheduled to expire in 2013. Loss of these funds will challenge already financially cash-strapped counties and school districts.
The time has long since past that we “reconcile” what Industrial Economics’ terms in its report as “competing economic and conservation goals.” Newer approaches address forestry as a “triple-bottom-line” endeavor—one in which economy, environmental, and community (or equity) benefits are all a part and integrated. This approach is not about trading off
harvests at the expense of the environment, or environmental outcomes with community and economic interests, but integrating them in ways that advance them collectively. The tenets of what Industrial Economics calls “ecological forestry” discussed in the report are suggestive, but remain too narrow as presented.

Note from Sharon: So the topic of job losses in the PNW has been discussed heatedly since I left there in the 80s. In the interest of understanding the impacts of the proposed action, it seems like this is of enough importance that I would yard up the economists in the PNW area who have worked on it to review it, and have the discussion in a public forum. The stakes are too high for any lesser form of information.

I also have to wonder why this group was chosen to do the analysis. Did more local economics groups not compete? Did they ask for too much money?

My main experience with large EIS’s (and longest!) was Colorado Roadless. I can’t imagine contracting something that size and complexity (spotted owl, across states) nto an outfit that is potentially starting from scratch. But maybe I’m missing something. I also hope the economists at the state universities were involved in reviewing.. it would be good to see the reviews and how the comments were responded to in a public venue.

Sequoia National Monument.. So Few Trees, So Much Planning and Litigation

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Trail of 100 Giants, Forest Service photo

Thanks to Terry Seyden for this link.

Perhaps the Californians on this blog can help me. I can’t understand this story…

This is about the Sequoia National Monument- which has probably had more planning investment per acre than any other unit of the National Forest System.

Although the monument designation bans commercial logging, that didn’t stop the Forest Service from issuing a plan in 2004 that would have allowed enough timber cutting in the monument to fill more than 2,000 logging trucks a year — all in the name of reducing the risk of wildfire.

Although the new plan reduces the size of trees that can be felled, it allows the cutting of some young sequoias, no larger than a foot in diameter, and other trees as big as 20 inches in diameter to reduce fuel loads and promote ecological restoration. Any young sequoia trees that were felled would not be sold, the agency said. But other conifers and trees could be. The diameter limit would also not apply to trees considered a hazard along roads or in public areas.

I don’t understand how there can be a ban on commercial logging and trees can be sold.

The Forest Service’s long policy of fire suppression has been blamed for the decline of the sequoia groves. In the nearby Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, managers primarily use prescribed burns to create sequoia-friendly conditions.
Conservationists want the Forest Service to adopt the U.S. Park Service approach. But Elliott said that “fire alone is not going to fit the bill. Mechanical treatments are appropriate.” The many private holdings and small communities scattered across the forest demand more aggressive fuel reduction, he added.
Sequoia ForestKeeper has argued that the agency used the hazard tree provision to cut down commercially valuable old non-sequoias in 2005, when it removed about 200 trees near the popular Trail of 100 Giants and sold 67 of them as timber. Judging by the number of rings on the stump, Marderosian said one of the felled trees was 320 years old.
According to documents released Tuesday, mechanical tree thinning would be allowed on about 23% of the monument acreage. But Sierra Club staff attorney Kristin Henry said other provisions in the plan could potentially open the door to tree cutting on much more land.
“I’m just a little bit skeptical,” Henry said. “It seems as though this plan is geared to a lot of logging.”

Hmm they sold 67 non-sequoias identified as hazards in 2005.. it seems a bit of a micro-scale to me to be much of an issue. Again, there must be more to this story… maybe Californians can help provide some background. I’m also curious exactly what the judge said in this case and why.

FYI, in Colorado, we do cut trees (more than 67) and the State temporarily stopped doing prescribed fire, which these folks advocate because of the dangers.

Note: in browsing for a photo I found this neat picture gallery here of sequoia groves on the Sequoia National Forest.

Track Rock Gap- What’s Up With That?

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You may have read the Examiner stories (under “Crime and Corruption”). Links to those stories can be found in the below story.

This is from Indian Country Today media network.

In July, another Examiner article ran that claimed the Forest Service knocked down more than one hundred trees and blocked the primary trail without the permission of the Creek and Cherokee people.

Wettstaed was quick to debunk the accusation.

“We went to [the nations],” he said. “I’ve kept them appraised with everything that’s going on. … They’ve all endorsed what we’ve done.”

Judy Toppins, public affairs staff officer with the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest Service, said that in March not one hundred, but less than two-dozen trees were chopped down to obscure the user-created trail.

“The mitigation activity that we did for the unauthorized trail … included the taking of about 20 or so dead or damaged trees, non-merchantable timber,” she said. “There also was quite a bit of brush cut and pulled into that trail area. … Nothing was cut within the archeological zone.”

Lisa LaRue-Baker, acting tribal historic preservation officer with the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, affirmed that Wettstaed has been in consistent contact with the nation in reference to the site and trail.

“We consult with the Forest Service in our historic area of interest on a regular basis,” she said. “[They] made us aware of [the chopping down of the trees] and we didn’t object to it.”

LaRue-Baker said a film crew had submitted an application with the Forest Service to film a documentary within Track Rock Gap. LaRue-Baker told Wettstaed that the nation was adamantly opposed to the idea to filming at their sacred site.

“Our initial response was that we didn’t wish to see the permit be approved because it’s an archeological site that we would like to remain pristine,” she said. “It’s a sacred site and we don’t want sacred sites commercialized and exploited.”

She added that the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians do not want the site “violated and forever altered for curious and recreational purposes.”

LaRue-Baker, who said she’s “baffled” by the “fabricated Mayan-Cherokee connection,” said her nation, in partnership with the Forest Service, are working on a plan to further protect the site.

“It’s the last stronghold we have on our homeland,” she said. “It’s very near and dear to us.”

The Examiner article said:

He added that Oklahoma Cherokees had informed the USFS that the stone terraces and building ruins at Track Rock Gap were the burial places of many great Cherokee warriors and therefore could not be photographed or filmed. The administrator was asked if opinions of officials at the Seminole Nation, the Muscogee-Creek Nation or the Miccosukee Tribe had been considered in the matter. The administrator didn’t answer the question. Shortly thereafter, it was confirmed that Creek officials had not been consulted by the USFS concerning Track Rock Gap.

My question is that if the Oklahoma Cherokees said “no” and other Nations said “yes” does that mean it would have been OK? I would think that one “no” would be sufficient.

Also, it seems like it would be easy enough to check 100 vs. 20 trees.

I suspect that there is a good news story that could be written about this controversy, that would explain both sides so we could understand their perspectives, and also go out and count the darn trees.

Here’s a link to what Examiner.com is looking for in its writers:

Write for us!

Launched in 2008, Examiner.com is a dynamic entertainment, news and lifestyle network that serves more than 20 million monthly readers across the U.S. and around the world.

Real People. Real Knowledge.

Examiner.com is fully powered by Examiners, thousands of writers who are self-motivated independent contributors. Each Examiner is able to express through words and photos a deep expertise in a topic. Their knowledge is enhanced by a viewpoint unique to their experiences and oftentimes, their location.

Ready? Here are the qualifications we expect of Examiners, and of you as an applicant:

You are a credible, passionate and knowledgeable subject matter expert
Even if you’re not a professional writer, you feel ready to write interesting articles about your topic in the third person
You are willing to provide timely, accurate and fair information with proper attribution of your sources as appropriate
As it makes sense, you’re willing to infuse your articles with a local point of view, including coverage of venues, events and local attractions
You are willing to contribute 1-2 articles per week on average to build and keep your audience
You are open to our feedback about your topic and articles, and are interested in creating the highest quality articles possible

Five Commandments of Decision Making Under Uncertainty

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Ran across this in Roger Pielke, Jr.’s blog, here. He linked to a paper by Haldane and Madouros at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium. Here is the link to that paper and an excerpt below, but check out Roger’s summary, or the original paper or both. Does this remind you of planning? Fire suppression?

(e) Complex rules and defensive behaviour
There is a final, related but distinct, rationale for simple over complex rules. Complex rules may cause
people to manage to the rules, for fear of falling foul of them. They may induce people to act defensively,
focussing on the small print at the expense of the bigger picture.
Studies of the behaviour of doctors illustrate this pattern (Gigerenzer and Kurzenhäuser (2005)). Fearing
misdiagnosis, perhaps litigation, doctors are prone to tick the boxes. That may mean over-diagnosing drugs
or over-submitting patients to hospital. Both are defensive actions, reducing risks to the doctor. But both are
a potential health hazard to the patient. For example, submitting patients to hospital increases significantly
their risk of secondary infection. Hospitals are, after all, full of sick people.
Doctors unencumbered by a complex rulebook will have fewer incentives to act defensively. They may also
be better able to form their own independent judgements when diagnosing medical problems, using their
accumulated experience. That ought to more closely align a doctor’s risk incentives with their patient’s. The
same is likely to be true of other professions, from lawyers to policemen to bank supervisors.
Of course, simple rules are not costless. They place a heavy reliance on the judgement of the decisionmaker,
on picking appropriate heuristics. Here, a key ingredient is the decision-maker’s level of experience,
since heuristics are learned behaviours honed by experience. A dog will outperform a puppy at frisbeecatching
because it has had time to fine-tune its “gaze heuristic”. An expert baseball player or cricketer will
outperform a novice sportsman for the same reason. So too will an experienced doctor or detective or fund
manager or shopkeeper.

And from Roger:

A focus on simple vs. complex analyses and decisions that are based on heuristics rather than optimization runs counter to the grain of conventional wisdom across many areas, from financial regulation to environmental protection.

One important point to note is that their paper uses two conflicting definitions of “uncertainty.” One definition of uncertainty is equivalent to “risk” or the odds of a particular outcome from a known distribution of outcomes. If I bet $1,000 that the next roll of a die will turn up 6, I am taking a risk on an uncertain outcome. A second definition of uncertainty (“Knightian uncertainty”) is equivalent to what I typically call “ignorance” following from the work of John Maynard Keynes, as discussed in The Honest Broker. These two definitions are obviously not referring to the same concept, and thus are subject to confusion unless care in taken in the interpretation. (I discuss uncertainty-as-ignorance at length in this recent paper in PDF).

Academics and policy makers typically like to focus on uncertainty-as-risk rather than uncertainty-as-ignorance as the former is more readily subject to easy quantification and manipulation. This focus reinforces the values of academia (where physics-envy runs rampant through the social sciences) and the desire of politicians to make concrete-looking claims backed by authoritative-sounding expertise. The result can be to create a zone of ignorance surrounding our decisions. Not surprisingly, bad decisions can result.

I was thinking of climate change strategies and also appreciated EO’s comment #12:

Decision making is a process. Before I retired I had to do a lot of decision making under uncertainty. The golden rule is ” The correctness of decision made under uncertainty is uncertain”. The first commandment is: Dont get emotional, dogmatic of the decision made under uncertainty. It could be wrong. Second commandment: keep an open mind, listen to critics, and other views because they might be right and be prepared to modify and even make a complete U turn or abandon a decision as more facts are available and uncertainty is reduced.
Third-keep enough reserve that if required to modify or alter the decision there are enough resources to work. Fourth commandment- hedge or take insurance on such that if the decision turns out to be a complete failure, you could start again. Fifth commandment- execute the decision with a political will and with confidence that the correct decision has been made. The decision could be correct but it will fail because of lack of confidence

Op-ed on “The Nation Possessed” Conference

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Hmm.. some other folks are seeking to reach across the divide..Here’s a link to Patty’s op-ed in the Sunday Denver Post. Bolding mine. Good on the Center for the American West and the presenters.

More important, you will have the rare, almost exotic experience of hearing people of different partisan affiliations consider a national issue in a civil, thoughtful and lively conversation. As the conference title’s direct reference to “conflicting claims” makes clear, the conference organizers have made no effort to deny or suppress the reality of conflict. On the contrary, our goal — to use the phrasing of natural scientists — is to separate “signal” from “noise,” carefully and thoughtfully laying out areas of both agreement and disagreement.

Presenting at the conference will be former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat, and former Utah Sen. Bob Bennett, a Republican who lost office when challenged by a Tea Party candidate. Speaking at a session — on the challenge of making science-based decisions while being shouted at and litigated against by agitated constituents — will be Mike Dombeck, former chief forester and director of the Bureau of Land Management under Democratic presidential administrations; and Lynn Scarlett, former deputy secretary of the Interior in the George W. Bush administration. All of these individuals are people who have chosen forthright, substantive expression over the alternative of vilification, blame, and demonization.

After years of transforming public land into private property, the federal government’s land management underwent an enormous change. Fears and worries about unregulated extraction of resources led to the creation of new institutions: the Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the agency with the largest domain of all, the under-recognized Bureau of Land Management (the BLM). For years, the BLM carried the nickname, the Bureau of Livestock and Mining. Over two centuries, the BLM and its ancestor agency the General Land Office have served as a political and cultural seismograph, recording the nation’s changing attitudes toward and uses of land and resources.

There is no better focal point for a study of the paired and intertwined questions of how we live with nature and how we live with each other.

Over the last two decades, I have had the good fortune to occupy a prime seat on the 50- yard-line, watching the federal land management agencies as they navigate through times of dramatic change. Attending the “Nation Possessed” conference will position you in a comparably well-placed seat.

800 Trees and 6.5 Acres .. Litigation.. and Mass Extinctions

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Popular skiing terrain on Burnt Mountain East. The area is outside of the Snowmass Ski Area’s operations boundary, but inside its permit boundary. The trail in question would allow skiers to access this terrain and then return to the Two Creeks base area. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith

I have been following this project (Burnt Mountain) and here is a link to a news story from Friday from the Aspen Times, and below is an excerpt.

So I am totally not a skier, so perhaps I don’t understand the complexities of why this could be good or bad in terms of safety. I do understand the idea of 6.5 acres and 800 trees, though, and I don’t understand how the Ark Initiative mission relates to 6.5 acres. And how the area around an old road could be special because it’s roadless…

I looked up the Ark Initiative here.. it seems to be concerned with the mass extinction of species. I’m just not getting the connection with 800 trees and 6.5 acres.

In an email earlier this month, Ark Initiative representative D.J. Duerr explained the organization’s position.

“Fitzwilliams could call this part of Burnt Mountain a parking lot if he likes, but that wouldn’t change the simple fact that this forested area contains no roads and is in the same wild and undeveloped condition as the immediately adjacent Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness,” Duerr said.

For The Ark Initiative, the dispute pertains to terrain beyond the egress.

“Around 2002, the USFS drew the original boundary for the ‘inventoried’ Burnt Mountain Roadless Area to exclude the exact area where Skico wanted to cut the new ski runs,” Duerr claimed. “It appears the ‘inventoried’ roadless boundary in this part of Burnt Mountain wasn’t based on whether the lands were actually roadless but on Skico’s desire to cut up this area for more profits. The Colorado Roadless Rule reclassifies even more of the roadless lands on Burnt Mountain out of ‘roadless’ status to facilitate the new ski runs.”

Fitzwilliams countered Thursday that the Forest Service spent six years on administrative analysis of Skico’s proposal and that two courts upheld the decision. He maintained that work on the egress is allowable, but he wanted the Forest Service attorneys to make sure the process was adequate in case of a challenge from The Ark Initiative.

“If we’re not going to affect roadless, I don’t know what the issue is,” Fitzwilliams said.

He also questioned the legitimacy of The Ark Initiative as an environmental organization. No local groups, such as Wilderness Workshop, have challenged the Forest Service decision, he noted.

Fitzwilliams suggested The Ark Initiative is a front from powder skiers who don’t want their stash turned into inbounds skiing.

“This isn’t about roadless,” Fitzwilliams said. “This is about fresh tracks at the bottom of the hill.”

In practical terms, the status of the traverse remains in limbo at least for this ski season.

“That is part of the area that is still under Forest Service review,” Skico spokesman Jeff Hanle said.

Burkley said Skico can work on a small portion of the 1,900-foot-long traverse from below and from above, but it can’t touch the middle 1,400 to 1,500 feet. The traverse, ironically following an old road, is 15 to 30 feet wide and steeper than Skico wants for intermediate customers.

“We don’t want to create a terrain trap where we suck people in,” he said. “For an expert skier, it’s not an issue.”

The new terrain will be accessed from Longshot. Skiers and riders will work to their right. The new terrain won’t be named.

“You’d be hard-pressed to identify any one run,” Burkley said.

Let me just add that skiers are not roads, and removing trees as part of “activities not otherwise prohibited” seems to be OK under the 2001 Roadless Rule. It’s just not clear to me why this is a Big Deal, related to extinctions of species, and worthy of expensive lawyer time for the plaintiffs, and, ineluctably, the taxpayer.

I’m with Scott.. something here simply doesn’t add up.

Here’s another article from 2009 (!) on the same subject and here’s a quote

Ark’s lawsuit contends that the Skico’s master plan amendment should have triggered studies on effects on roadless areas and on elk. The initial approval and environmental studies were performed in the early 1990s, so conditions might have changed, the group contended. As an example, it wanted a new study on the work’s potential impact on elk.

“If it’s a minor amendment, it might not need NEPA analysis,” Brawer said. “This wasn’t minor and [the initial approval] was old.”

Ark contends that the Forest Service analysis has been piecemeal and it has lost sight of the cumulative impacts on Burnt Mountain. It wants the ski area project blocked “until and unless” full-blown environmental studies are performed on Skico’s amendment to its master plan.

The Forest Service’s arguments essentially flip all the claims made by Ark. The agency said its review was cumulative and satisfied NEPA requirements. The project has no significant effect on elk or endangered species like lynx, the agency said. It wants the review to stand.

The two sides argued the case in Denver earlier this year before U.S. District Judge Walker Miller. It is unknown when a ruling will be made.

Here’s another article from 2011 about how the legal battle was “over”..

A trio of judges in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals denied an appeal on Nov. 8 in a lawsuit seeking to block the construction of an egress trail connecting lower Burnt Mountain East to Two Creeks, which was approved by the U.S. Forest Service in 2003.

The decision, written by Judge Paul Kelly, Jr., ends the legal process for the plaintiffs in the suit opposed to the trail, the Ark Initiative, Donald Duerr who is connected to the Ark Initiative, Paul “PJ” Smith, who works at the Gene Taylor’s ski shop in Snowmass Village and Alex Forsythe, a Florida resident who skis frequently on Burnt Mountain.

The U.S. Forest Service was the defendant in the suit and Aspen Skiing Company was not named.

However, Skico legal counsel David Bellack attended oral arguments recently in Denver just in case he was needed to support the Forest Service’s case.

It’s not clear yet what the resolution of the legal challenge to the trail means in terms of actually building the trail.

“We are aware the appeal was rejected but haven’t discussed anything internally regarding Burnt Mountain at this time,” said Aspen Skiing Company Vice President of Mountain Operations Rich Burkley.

The trail in question exists today in crude form, but the legal battle begin after the U.S. Forest Service approved a wider and formalized trail.

So.. people already go there and there are folks against something “wider and more formalized”; but it’s not a road and it’s bad for “roadless”??

Like I said, something just doesn’t add up.