We’ve been following the Fix our Forests Act. Nick Smith posted an article in the Durango Herald that I think is worth taking a look at. There seems to be a repeated statement that implies that CEs are not part of NEPA, which kind of implies that only EAs and EIS’s are “real NEPA.” Unfortunately, no NEPA person was interviewed other than John Rader of the San Juan Citizens Alliance.
But newly proposed changes, now in the form of legislation that would let fuel mitigation projects, including logging, in high-risk zones like the forest surrounding Durango skirt the public input process have some environmental groups up in arms.
The Fix Our Forests Act is an attempt to “undermine public process and judicial review,” said John Rader, an attorney and the Public Lands Program manager at the Durango-based San Juan Citizens Alliance.
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In those areas, of up to 10,000 acres (which includes a swath of the San Juan National Forest north of Durango), the bill outlines a slate of vegetation management tactics that would be exempt from the scrutinous review prescribed in the National Environmental Policy Act.
I feel like a broken record. CEs are a part of NEPA. CE’s are a part of NEPA. I think it would be more correct to say “currently CEs are allowed for up to 4K (or whatever).
But, he pointed out, whether a forest is best treated by logging, mastication, prescribed fire or some other method, is a question asked in the early stages of the NEPA process.
“That’s the initial stages of NEPA, right?” Kimple said. “Where are we? What does this look like? Where are we in proximity to values?”
And there are already some 650,000 acres of national forest approved through NEPA and ready to burn, the SJNF told the Herald in 2023. The Forest Service treated 25,000 acres last year, meaning it’s likely to take many years to burn all acreage that has already been approved.
Although new prescribed fire plans would be exempt from NEPA review, it is fears of unchecked logging projects and heavy livestock grazing nationwide that has environmental groups concerned that the bill is a Trojan horse masquerading as wildfire hazard mitigation.
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CEs are not “exempt from NEPA review.”
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“It’s kind of the template to erase all these environmental protections in the name of creating more wildfire protection,” he said.
By exempting projects from NEPA review, the Fix Our Forests Act would keep the public in the dark, Rader fears, while fast-tracking projects that could be detrimental to the natural environment.
“Every step of the way, it’s cutting out public input and keeping the public from being informed about the details of these projects,” he said.
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Rather than the traditional NEPA public input process – a lengthy undertaking that can take years to complete – the Fix Our Forests Act would establish a far quicker public comment review timeline and radically overhaul how those projects are subject to legal scrutiny. The bill contains a “common sense litigation reform” provision that limits public comment to a 120-day period with the intention of reducing frivolous lawsuits.
Rader warns this “really insidious” provision could have the opposite effect, arguing that the shot-clock may increase the proportion of poorly prepared lawsuits.
Not sure that would be the FS’s, DOJ’s, or the public’s problem.
Forest Service CEs are required to have scoping (public input). They are also required to review extraordinary circumstances and follow standards in the forest plan, which had an EIS associated with it. On the other hand, EAs have alternatives (although in some conditions, only one no action) and an additional process of objections.
An interesting question might be the value of the objection process compared to the costs associated with dealing with them (in our Region in the past, these were run out of the RO by siphoning off talent from forests, which would have a host of opportunity costs). I’d think that some academic group might want to take a sample of CEs and EAs for fuels projects of similar size and nature (prescribed fire vs. mechanical thinning) and compare the timelines, expenses, and value added by the additional analysis (if any) and process.
Previous iterations of streamlining have included putting requirements on the use of CEs such as HFRA requiring projects to be in a certain condition class and be part of a collaborative effort. If I were a group who was concerned about public input, I’d work with the Congressional staff to standardize what is in the scoping document and timeframes for scoping, or other ideas to improve that aspect of public involvement during the use of CEs. Especially with changes to the CEQ regulations, at some point the agency NEPA regs would be updated, so this would be a chance for folks to review the current use of CE’s, which is widespread, and instead of saying “they’re not NEPA, and they’re bad”, work on how to improve their use.
This was originally a comment, but should raise some interesting discussion.
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Transforming the Forest Service requires focus on a few simple things that will change the agency over time. Preparing a complex document on transforming the agency is just a way of insuring failure.
The ONE organizational change that is needed is to move District Rangers into the small communities next to the National Forests. The agency needs lot more contact with those folks.
Then build a organizational structure to support small Ranger Districts. The Ranger Districts don’t have to be staffed with a full complement of specialists. The Ranger Districts just need access to people that can do the needed work, they don’t need to be stationed at a Ranger District.
But the District Ranger needs to be there in the community.
Second, there have been many comments of the failure of leadership in the Forest Service. Leadership starts with the people you hire at the GS 5/7 level. The Forest Service needs to hire better employees and train them.
The needs to look at DOD. Those folks understand how to work in a large organization while at the same time know how to get things done at the ground level. I would simply contact DOD and set up a transition program for military personnel to get a college degree in natural resources while still in DOD and then transfer to the Forest Service.
It would help change the current culture in the agency, where people owe their loyalty to their profession rather the Forest Service.
New employees need to spend their first year learning about the Forest Service and being exposed to a wide variety of jobs. The agency use to do this, but dropped these programs during the budget cuts of the 80’s.
Third, the Forest Service needs to cultivate and bring back a relationship with retirees and seasonal employees.
Every former seasonal employee I have met has fond memories of the Forest Service, and without exception many say it was the best jobs they ever had.
The Forest Service needs to reconnect with those folks and give them free bling like Forest Service hats and t-shirts that honor their service to the agency. The also need to inform and ask for their support in current issues that are facing the agency.
The retiree’s are a tougher sell, since so many have such a negative attitude towards the Forest Service. I suspect much of the negative attitude has to do with the lack of communication between the retirees and current management in the Forest Service.
The former seasonal employees and retirees are much more effective in defending and explaining Forest Service priorities to the public than the agency itself. People trust people they know.
Fourth a focus on public contact by ALL Forest Service employees. My first professional job in the Forest Service we discussed how to make the reception area more inviting to the public. These days Forest Service offices are in many cases closed to public entry, or have NO reception area.
In the field, it is even worse. The Forest Service is represented by contractors in the campgrounds, trail maintenance, timber sales, and even on fires.
Transforming the Forest Service is simple.
Just focus on providing good public service and be sure to deliver the message while in person.
Someone asked why the timber industry folks hadn’t spoken out about the employee cuts.. apparently they were working on it, as per this E&E News story. The Forest Service used to have a management training where we learned “affirm in public, counsel in private.” Perhaps they attended the “be silent in public, counsel in private” training instead.
The Forest Service is beginning to rehire some of the probationary employees it shed in the mass firings of Feb. 14, according to people within the agency.
An employee with direct knowledge of the Forest Service’s actions said the agency has compiled “small” numbers of terminated employees to be rehired, including for timber
management, and that managers may have an opportunity to request bringing back additional staff.
The moves mirror those of other agencies that have concluded the mass firings may have gone too far in decimating staff working on critical matters or on policies that
support the Trump administration’s agenda.
At the Forest Service, the loss of probationary workers all but eliminated a timber “strike team” in the Rocky Mountain region as well as the disaster recovery team
working on the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina, heavily damaged by Hurricane Helene last September.
Employees who described the agency’s latest moves aren’t authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity to share details.
In addition, a wildlife biologist on Pisgah whose dismissal Feb. 14 was featured in news accounts posted on Facebook that he’s been rehired.
“I was provided no information regarding what prompted this change, or how many of my colleagues have received similar letters,” Mike Knoerr posted. He said he’s the only
wildlife biologist employed at the forest.
Knoerr couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. In his post detailing the firing, he’d said he’d lost his dream job and that he’d “only had stellar performance reviews.”
The Forest Service and the Agriculture Department didn’t immediately confirm numbers of probationary employees shed, or those considered for rehiring.
As in other agencies, the reason for inviting employees back — Knoerr said his letter called his position “Mission Critical” — appears at odds with the earlier form letter notifying them they’d been fired.
That letter said the firing was “based on your performance,” adding, “you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest.”
The North Carolina employee was part of a roughly 20-person team working on disaster recovery, as the federal government directs about $3 billion into the effort on Pisgah.
Organizations that work with the Forest Service said the mass firings — initially confirmed at 3,400 but since reduced to an estimated 2,000 by the administration —
were clearly made without regard to, or possibly understanding of, what the agency’s employees do.
Losses in timber-related staff directly contradict the administration’s goal of harvesting more trees in national forests, these organizations said. They also run counter to a promise Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins made to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) at her confirmation hearing in January to increase timber output at the Rocky Mountain region’s Black Hills National Forest.
The timber strike team was responsible for 65 percent of the timber harvests on the Black Hills forest in 2023, according to an agency employee and outside organizations that work with the Forest Service.
In that region alone, the Forest Service has told organizations, more than 30 staff working in timber — such as preparing for sales — were dismissed, out of more than 130 total employees.
The heaviest toll was on recreational technicians, of which 55 were terminated.
Maybe Dave M. can tell us why there was such a high proportion of probationary folks working in timber.
I’m going to do a historical tour of various FS organizational improvement and efficiency efforts through time, with help from the National Museum of Forest Service History and the Forest History Society.
But one effort we seem to be missing documentation of is the most recent effort.. Transformation (2007, or almost 20 years ago). Perhaps there have been more recent efforts as well, after I retired, that I just didn’t hear about.
Transformation was an enormous project with a full time team and much work and analysis all around, or at least in ROs and the WO (and to be sure, a certain amount of resistance in some quarters). But all I could find online was this from a presentation at NRCS.
I’d really like to see the final report and any accomplishment reports. I remember our R-2 Engineers taking it seriously, and I think that’s the reason WO Minerals moved to the Region 2 RO (I assume they wanted the move and it was great for us.) Even snippets of experience and memories from retirees would be helpful. Perhaps some retirees have a copy in a box somewhere?
Anyway, there was much great work by excellent employees put into Transformation, and it could be valuable information- both to find good ideas, and to avoid organizational and political pitfalls. What worked and what didn’t? Was there a Lessons Learned? Perhaps there’s also some public administration literature on the topic. Below are a sample of the slides, the link above has the complete presentation.
It seems important to me to note that concern about where the money is going is not just something for a few retirees. Also, to be fair to FS employees, including leadership, maybe Congress shouldn’t expect agencies to do well with short-term pulses of ginormously increased funding. One strategy is getting large amounts out the door for grantees, such that they, in turn, hire people to do the work without federal salaries and other benefits, and without OPM-required qualifications. This has obvious impacts on the role and number of federal employees. The other possibility is the agencies hiring more people themselves on temporary appointments, which runs into USAJobs and timing problems. Or the agencies can hire more permanents and have too many on the books when the funding dries up. There are no optimal solutions.. only trade-offs constrained by unbreachable bureaucratic barriers like USAjobs.
IG seems to focus on records and record-keeping, which is helpful. Perhaps they have not been asked to look at accomplishments, nor accomplishments per dollar expended, nor what we might call the Bubba Criterion- least overhead taken off above the salary of the person doing the work. Or maybe that’s not something they traditionally do.
Anyway, lots of interesting stuff here. Translation: IIJA is the same as what the FS often calls the BIL or Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
In November 2021, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) provided Forest Service approximately $250 million to establish the IIJA Legacy Road and Trail Remediation Program (LRT). While we recognize that Region 6 had limited time to implement LRT, we were unable to validate that Region 6 selected projects based on IIJA requirements and Washington Office guidance. This occurred because Region 6 did not document information reviewed and decisions made when determining project eligibility, nor did it use the Washington Office criteria to assign prioritization points to select LRT projects. As a result, Forest Service has reduced assurance that Region 6 considered all eligible projects and then properly prioritized and selected the most meritorious LRT projects. Therefore, we questioned Region 6’s fiscal years (FYs) 2022 and 2023 LRT costs, totaling more than $13.8 million.
Additionally, we identified that Region 6 approved and allocated LRT funds to 11 ineligible tasks within 2 approved projects. This occurred because Region 6 lacked sufficient internal controls to ensure that LRT funding was allocated only to eligible tasks. As a result, Region 6 held more than $630,000 in LRT funds for ineligible tasks within approved projects, thus making these funds unavailable for other eligible LRT projects or tasks. These questioned costs are fully included in the total $13.8 million discussed above. Forest Service officials generally agreed with our findings and recommendations, and we accepted management decision on all recommendations.
There was also a report for R-3. Perhaps someone knows if there were investigations of other regions, or if R-6 and R-3 were unique for some reason.
We found that the agency did not always properly track its allocated funds for salaries and expenses (S&E). While FS had controls for budgeting and selecting projects for CALR funds, the agency did not design specific controls to track its fiscal year (FY) 2022 CALR S&E separately from other IIJA S&E funds. As a result, FS cannot accurately report how it expended the funds allocated for CALR S&E in FY 2022, resulting in more than $5.7 million in questioned costs. Furthermore, FS did not establish a process to ensure selected proposals were tracked and completed timely. Without a process to track and monitor CALR rehabilitation projects, FS could be noncompliant with the Act’s requirement to discontinue funding for a project that fails to achieve results for more than 2 consecutive years. FS officials generally concurred with the findings and recommendations, and we accepted management decision on all recommendations.
In support of wildfire risk reduction, FS received $205.6 million from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) for fiscal years (FYs) 2022 and 2023 to conduct hazardous fuels management activities. We determined that FS did not separately track FYs 2022 and 2023 IIJA, Division J Hazardous Fuels Management funds. As a result, FS could not accurately report how much it spent for FYs 2022 and 2023 hazardous fuels management, resulting in $205.6 million in questioned costs.
Additionally, we found that FS did not fully document its rationale for prioritizing and selecting projects. As such, FS’ decision-making process is not transparent, resulting in reduced assurance that the most critical projects were selected. FS generally agreed with our findings and recommendations, and we accepted management decisions for the two recommendations
I’d just say that the “most critical projects” are in the eye of the beholder, and it would be odd for OIG to second-guess priorities. But in the interests of transparency, to my mind, it wouldn’t hurt to document the reasons for prioritizing certain projects, even acknowledging that there’s some chance of employees spending time on post-hoc rationalizations.
We found that FS may have exceeded the $9,160,800 spending limit on salary, expense, and administrative costs in FY 2022. We found that FS transferred or obligated more than $46.2 million in CWDG funding related to salary, expense, and administrative costs. Specifically, it transferred more than $32.6 million to its FS Operations account, obligated more
than $5.9 million for CWDG-specific salaries and expenses, and awarded more than $7.6 million to State agencies to help FS administer the program, which exceeded the $9,160,800 limit by more than $37 million. We also found that FS did not track how CWDG funding that it transferred into its FS Operations account was spent, which puts the agency at risk of spending CWDG funding on expenses that were not allowed under IIJA. These conditions occurred because FS did not consider all salary, expense, and administrative-related costs we identified to be subject to the IIJA limitation. As a result, FS is at an increased risk of violating the Antideficiency Act. FS officials disagreed with our interpretation of this IIJA provision and maintained that the agency used the funding in accordance with IIJA.
Lastly, while we noted that FS appropriately prioritized IIJA projects and did not exceed award limitations, FS did not have grant agreements in place for 5 of our 10 sampled
applications as of September 20, 2023, even though the application period had closed on October 7, 2022. FS officials disagreed with Findings 1 and 2 and Recommendation 1.
FS agreed with Finding 3 and Recommendation 2. We did not accept management decision on Recommendation 1
This one’s interesting. It didn’t seem to me like something OIG would usually do.
The OIG’s Office of Analytics and Innovation (OAI) conducted a survey of Forest Service Firefighters to better understand the perceived impact of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) on firefighters, including authorized pay increases, occupational series changes, and programs relevant to firefighters.
To conduct our analysis, we used Enterprise Human Resources Application (eHR Apps), which is the Department’s system for all telework and remote work information and source for personnel data. Of the USDA employees in the eHR Apps as of September 21, 2023, we identified 8,889 employees with a duty station code in the DC locality area. 6 Of those 8,889 employees, 86 had a remote work location outside the DC locality area.
We performed analysis on the 86 employees using updated personnel data as of April 11, 2024 and found that the remote work agreements for 37 of the 86 USDA employees still did not match their duty stations and were potentially pay impacting.
Good news.. FS with many employees only had 6 who did not match, whereas FNS (Food and Nutrition Service) with many fewer people (couldn’t find table of USDA agencies and employment figures). So percentage wise, the FS was doing very well. On the other hand, the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, had four, which seems a bit ironic. and the Office of the Secretary had one.
I didn’t know that the FS had any, but sure enough ARS, APHIS, and the FS apparently have them. Does anyone know what the Forest Service’s is?
The Office of Inspector General (OIG) performed an inspection of multiple USDA agencies to assess the security posture of USDA’s Industrial Control Systems (ICS) to determine whether proper controls were implemented to minimize the risk of compromise. We reviewed NIST guidance for ICS and USDA policies and procedures and interviewed agency officials to identify relevant criteria and determine how agencies implemented security controls and configurations, tracked and authorized changes to their ICS devices, and identified and mitigated security vulnerabilities for ICS devices. We also reviewed vulnerability scans at one agency to determine whether vulnerabilities had been addressed in accordance with USDA policy. This report contains sensitive content. It is being withheld from public release due to concerns about risk of circumvention of law.
NFWF planned to work with its existing partner networks to raise additional funding to benefit the goals of the grant, providing a minimum 1:1 match of FS funds.
It would be interesting to see a table of which grants by which authorities had which match requirements. Also,
With the grant awarded to NFWF, FS reduced its administrative burden by utilizing NFWF’s grants management expertise and processes to establish subaward agreements and to monitor sub-recipient outcomes. After the solicitation process and its initial evaluation, NFWF consults with the FS program manager prior to selection to ensure potential project sub-awards align with FS’ program goals and priorities. Furthermore, NFWF will solicit projects that are in counties with persistent poverty and/or that engage underserved and socially disadvantaged landowners. According to FS, after NFWF’s consultation, the FS program manager must agree with the final determination of the sub-award projects.
As of October 2023, NFWF awarded five project sub-awards totaling more than $1.55 million to support revegetation of mined lands in Central Appalachia and the Cumberland Plateau. Figure 7 below shows FYs 2022 and 2023 approved project sub-awards by location and obligated amount.
As we’ve discussed one person’s reducing “administrative burden” is another person”s “reducing federal employees work, including (possibly) inspection of results.”
We conducted this work as part of our ongoing inspection with the objective to conduct integrated oversight of the funding provided to FS’ Restoration Projects on Federal and Non-Federal Land from IIJA. Specifically, we announced we would review program information for transparency and disclosure, perform data analytics on relative data sets for integrity and quality, inspect key aspects of the internal control environment, and review the implementation of the program. This report provides information related to reviewing program information for transparency and disclosure as well as program implementation.
SRM is also prioritizing immediate resources to support those impacted. Here are several ways we are helping to connect and engage our membership:
Job Boards: SRM is offering free job listings during this time to help members connect to new opportunities. We encourage you to explore openings on the SRM Job Board as well as postings from partner organizations compiled here at the bottom of this email.
Facebook Live Session: Join us next week for a Facebook Live session with SRM leadership. We’ll provide an update on our advocacy work with agency leaders and discuss how SRM is engaging on behalf of members. Watch our Facebook & your email for details!
Zoom Meeting for Member Input: Also next week, SRM in conjunction with our Young Professionals Conclave will host the 1st of several private Zoom “Townhalls” exclusively for members to share their experiences. These insights will help build a clearer picture of how staffing changes are impacting the management of rangelands and those who depend on them.
I was (and still am) going to post on the list of contracts in the FS cut off by the Trump Admin via DOGE. I was going down DOGE’s list, but of course the FS is under USDA, so I had to read past USDA contracts. And it turns out that they are interesting, even though the funding doesn’t come through Interior Approps as does the FS budget, so those funds couldn’t have been used for the seasonals that the FS couldn’t afford during the last Admin, nor for other FS needs. At least that’s my understanding, and likely other people here know more about the budget. Point being, I was hesitant to talk about these USDA bucks as being a bit out of our space. But then The Hotshot Wakeup posted about it, and then Nick Smith linked to THWs post, so here we go.
First, DOGE seems to be working on contracts not grants, at least on this list.
Second, DOGE has not been through all agencies yet. But if you are interested in the consulting companies getting $100 mill from USDA, you can always go to highergov.com and search under “awardees” and see what other government contracts those companies received to get a bigger picture of how much they are getting from the feds.
As for me, I’m perfectly willing to accept that many useful things were done with that funding… like I’ve said before, it seems like there aredeliverables that are documented by the contracting folks. So why not just… post those where the public can see them? And I’m not judging what appears to be e Beltway Bandits of the Management Consulting subspecies, who are currently doing work in the DEI space. USDA clearly wanted the work done, and everyone’s got to make a living.
There are a couple of other interesting things.. if you look up the companies, some of them appear to be generic consulting firms without advertising a specialization in DEI. Take AMA Consulting, for example, on their “our services” page, you can see many useful things but not DEI. Ivy Consulting does highlight DEI. KL Scott does not, as far as I can tell. THW took a deep dive into Londagin, as we’ll see below, who does quite a bit of stuff, according to GovTribe “Specific service offerings have included organizational efficiency assessments, strategic alignment and process optimization, human capital roadmap development, communications support, and comprehensive DEIA initiative implementations across various federal departments.”
Based on a review of their websites, if their DEI contracts are stopped, there is plenty of other work for them in strategic organizational development, process improvement and similar work. Certainly there are processes at USDA that could use improvement. I also wonder whether there is some different requirements invoked if the contracts are above $25 mill, since there are four capped at that. But maybe USDA found that they had $100 mill lying around and divided by four?
One $25M DEI consulting contract went to Timothy J. Londagin, LLC. His LinkedIn account says he was a Strategy Team Member at the USDA National Headquarters, a management lead at the Department of Homeland Security, a team lead at the TSA, and an organizational lead at The General Services Administration.
The USDA alone contracted over $27M for DEI advising and implementation to his company.
He was also contracted $28.3M from the Department of Interior for Organizational Change Management Services in 2023, another $4.2M from USDA for Organizational Change Management in 2023, $6.5M for a Health and Human Services DEI contract in 2023, and a $4M+ contract from the Executive Office of the President.
I also found USAID grants totaling $4.477M issued to Timothy J. Londagin, which were partially funded with COVID-19 relief money in 2022. It was a sole source, non-compete contract.
Maria Asuelimen started AMA Consulting, which had a $25M contract for DEI consulting work for the USDA. Before that, she held management positions at FEMA and the Small Business Administration.
At this time last year, we were told they couldn’t find $70M to ensure wildland firefighters continued to be paid.
The exact descriptions of the terminated contracts were “DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION AND ACCESSIBILITY (DEIA) ASSESSMENT AND TRAINING SERVICES.”
Our friends at Center for Western Priorities had this in their Look West newsletter this morning…
One month after rescinding job offers for thousands of seasonal employees, the National Park Service appears to have partially reversed course. The Los Angeles Times reports that a memo sent from the Interior department to Park Service officials approved the hiring of 7,700 seasonal employees this year, an increase from the 6,300 seasonal employees in recent years.
But the extra seasonal hires still wouldn’t offset the loss of roughly 1,000 full-time park service employees who were fired last Friday in Elon Musk’s purge of “probationary” government employees.
If I calculate correctly, that’s a 22% increase in seasonals..? Also I don’t see that as a “partial reversal”, it sounds like a “complete reversal plus adding more seasonal employees.”
It also says:
There’s also no indication that the White House intends to change course on national forest lands, where 3,400 workers were fired last week.
So what’s going on with FS and BLM seasonals? Are they back to being hired on, and are the numbers greater than last year?
As Jon pointed out in his Litigation Update, the combo of various court cases plus administrative actions has led to the CEQ NEPA regs being pulled. So here’s the guidance.
While these revisions are ongoing, agencies should continue to follow their existing practices and procedures for implementing NEPA consistent with the text of NEPA, E.O. 14154, and this guidance. Agencies should not delay pending or ongoing NEPA analyses while undertaking these revisions. For such analyses, until revisions are completed via the appropriate rulemaking process, agencies should apply their current NEPA implementing procedures with any adjustments needed to be consistent with the NEPA statute as revised by the FRA. Moreover, although CEQ is rescinding its NEPA implementing regulations at 40 C.F.R. parts 1500–1508, agencies should consider voluntarily relying on those regulations in completing ongoing NEPA reviews or defending against challenges to reviews completed while those regulations were in effect. CEQ will provide ongoing guidance and assistance through monthly meetings of the Federal Agency NEPA Contacts and the NEPA Implementation Working Group required by section 5(c) of E.O. 14154. CEQ encourages agencies to use the final 2020 rule “Update to the Regulations Implementing the Procedural Provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act” as an initial framework for the development of revisions to their NEPA implementing procedures,4 consistent with this guidance, E.O. 14154, and to the extent permitted by
applicable law.
I hope practitioners get a strong voice in this updating, and that the Federal Agency NEPA Contacts will be listened to.
Of course, the two agencies we mostly follow have their own NEPA regs, so that’s what they will be doing. I don’t usually check BLM regs, but for this post I was checking on them and ran across this interesting Federal Register Notice about their NEPA procedures.
It looks like they got rid of various administrative Cat Xs and added legislative ones. This seems fairly unusual but interesting. The rationale seems kind of vague to me.
With this revision, the Department removes four administrative CXs from the BLM’s NEPA procedures due to consideration of sound land management, legal frameworks, and other factors.
Only 33 comments were received. I don’t think the FS every removed CE’s, usually the courts did that for us ;).
While looking at this, I ran across a very handy link that describes what the Fiscal Responsibility Act says about NEPA. It’s very clear and done in Q and A’s.
Bottom line, NEPA practitioners (internal and contractors and grantees) need to use the existing agency regs and check for adherence to E.O. 14154, and FRA. I wouldn’t doubt that there will be some guidance on “checking for adherence to FRA” that will come down at some point.
If the lawyerly folks here see things differently, let me know.
I often work or interact with US Forest Service and BLM folks, as an employee of a nonprofit contractor for both agencies, as a member of a Resource Advisory Committee, as a member of a community wildfire defense partnership group, as a forestry instructor (folks who have come to my classes to make presentations or who have led field tours, including a forest supervisor, a silviculturist, an FMO, a Hotshot crew superindentant, HR officer, etc.), and as a private citizen (recreation, firewood permits). I have complained in the past about the agencies’ decisions and policies, but not about the people. By and large, the vast majority of the individuals I’ve worked or interacted with are highly professional, well educated, and, in general, do very good work on the public’s behalf.
Please share your experiences here, and focus on the positive. The folks who have been fired, as well as those who still have their jobs, need and deserve support.
