Stories: The Right Place to Go by Les Joslin

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As I said in the post yesterday about the Women’s Forest Congress, I’m interested in posting stories.. so here is one from Les Joslin.

The Right Place to Go
By Les Joslin

One morning in June 1962 District Ranger Bob Hoag assembled his crew in the Bridgeport Ranger Station yard to line us out for the coming week’s work.

In addition to a range conservationist and a forestry technician who doubled as fire control officer—the latter still detailed to a Wyoming bug job, we were a fire prevention guard, a three-man fire crew, a three-man trail crew, and a veteran forestry aide and his recreation crew of one. That was it for an almost half-million acre Toiyabe National Forest district that stretched from the Sierra Nevada crest eastward to the Nevada desert. Ranger Hoag had to mix
and match these resources to cover all the bases. All, if needed, were firefighters.

Mrs. Hoag, he finished, had her hands full with their first baby and could no longer be district clerk. “Can any of you guys type?” he asked.
“I can!” I responded, before realizing what I was doing.
“Good. You are now also the district clerk.” And that was that. In addition to my fire crew duties, I would staff the office from time to time. I would type and file, answer the phone, greet visitors, take and report daily fire weather readings, and maintain radio contact with crews in the field. A bronze Forest Service badge centered on the left pocket flap of my uniform shirt, I would often be the only Forest Service representative visitors would meet.
I particularly enjoyed the public contact aspect of my part-time district clerk work. Most
ranger station visitors genuinely appreciated my assistance. Sometimes that assistance involved
more than information, directions, and permits.

Late in the morning on one of my office days, a worried looking visitor drove in and asked if I could help him with his dog.
“What’s wrong with your dog?” I asked.
“Porcupine quills,” the man responded as he produced a whimpering half-grown beagle with a face full. “Got ‘em at the campground a little while ago.
Fortunately for me, I wasn’t alone at the station that day. Marion Hysell, the fire control officer, had been back from that bug job for a few weeks and was getting ready to shoe Old Blue.
“Let me get some help,” I said, not committing myself further as I walked toward the barn. “I’ll be right back.”
I knew Marion would know what to do, and he did. We must have made quite a picture, sitting there on the front porch of the little office. As the beagle’s master looked on, wringing his hands, Marion skillfully extracted each quill as  I held the squirming puppy.

“Thanks a lot!” the man exclaimed as he climbed into his car with the dog. “I knew I’d come to the right place.”

The right place. That squared with my idea of what a Forest Service ranger station should be—and should always strive to be—the right place to go for help and get it.

Adapted from the 2014 third edition of Toiyabe Patrol, the writer’s memoir of five U.S. Forest Service summers on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s.

 

Shout Out to BLM NEPA Folks!

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I’d like to give a special shout-out to some BLM employees today, who traditionally have labored in relative obscurity.

There have been quite a few news stories saying they “did not look at” this or that, based on plaintiffs’ assertions.  Then because it’s in litigation, we never get to hear the BLM side.. unless we dig into some relatively obscure “response to comments” document.  So this post will be successful if the next time you read a news story that says “BLM’s NEPA did not…”, you consider the fact that well.. maybe.. they actually did.

What reminded me of this was today’s story about the results of some (in this case, sue-and-settle) litigation against oil and gas leasing in California. As per this Reuters story..

The 2019 lawsuit was filed in California federal court by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club, who were later joined by Monterey and Santa Cruz counties. It claimed the federal plan to move forward with development ignored the potential harm from oil and gas extraction on groundwater, the climate and seismic activity.

And the solution…

A federal plan to lease over 725,000 acres of Central California land for fracking and oil drilling has been blocked after a federal judge approved a settlement brokered between the Biden administration and environmental groups that sued over the plan The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management agreed in the deal approved Tuesday to take a fresh look at the environmental impacts of the leasing plan, which was approved by the Trump administration in 2019.

is…more analysis.  From the settlement, it looks like they need to do an SEIS with more alternatives (?).  Which isn’t exactly saying their analysis of the alternatives was inadequate.  But maybe legal folks will understand what this settlement says.

Now if you’ve been following these stories (there are many across the west, and they all say the same thing,  “BLM did not consider…” ), you might wonder “what about those BLM folks.. why can’t they do it right? After all, NEPA is a procedural statute, so conceivably even if the BLM  said “this project will extinguish life on earth as we know it” the project could go ahead.  Well maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement, but you see my point.

My own experience with BLM NEPA folks and solicitors was that they did good work. Take a look at the Central Coast RMP Amendment’s pretty overwhelmingly complete documentation here.

There are 18,229 active oil and gas wells in the 11 counties within the boundaries of the BLM Central Coast Field Office: 110 or roughly 0.6 percent are located on Federal mineral estate. Completion of this proposed RMPA/Final EIS will allow the BLM to resume oil and gas leasing within the planning area, which could result in development of up to 37 new oil and gas wells during the next 20 years, as described in the Reasonably Foreseeable Development scenario.

It also sounds from the news story (plaintiffs’ claims quoted) as if the problem were analyzing impacts.   Without looking at the document, did the BLM actually “ignore” the impacts on groundwater, the climate, and seismic activity?  Even back in my day, the BLM did analyze climate impacts, so I looked into this.

It was easy to find the response to comments for the Sierra Club and CBD on page I410:

Sections 3.6 and 4.6 (Climate Change/Greenhouse Gas Emissions) of the RMPA/EIS provide the regulatory framework, baseline conditions, and provides an assessment of impacts to GHG emissions (a proxy for impacts to climate change) from activities allowed under the RMPA alternatives. The primary GHG impacts that can be reasonably expected to occur are emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels and from releases of CO2 and methane due to oil and gas development and production. Discussions of impacts to other resources affected by climate change appear in the respective sections in Chapter 4 of the Draft RMPA/EIS. As discussed in the assumptions presented in Section 4.6, all activities must comply with applicable laws and regulations and may be subject to review for certain types of GHG emissions by the local air permitting authority. Therefore, utilizing this as a foundation for the analysis presented in Section 4.6, the RMPA/EIS considers current information regarding climate change.

Section 1.2.2 (Planning Approach) of the RMPA/EIS explains that oil and gas leasing and development on Federal mineral estate requires multiple stages of BLM Central Coast Oil and Gas Leasing and Development Appendix I. Comments and Responses to Comments May 2019 I-411 Proposed RMPA/Final EIS environmental analysis and authorization. Environmental review under NEPA is required at each phase. Therefore, future projects would also conduct specific project-level assessments of potential impacts to air, water, induced seismicity and human health; and may conduct Health Impact Assessments. Sections 4.4 (Hazardous Materials and Public Safety), 4.3 (Geology), 4.5 (Air Quality and Atmospheric Conditions), 4.7 (Groundwater Resources), and 4.8 (Surface Water Resources) of the RMPA/EIS provide a detailed analysis of the potential impacts to these resources under the RMPA alternatives.

Regardless of what they analyzed and how,  it sounds as if the BLM folks need to produce more alternatives and reanalyze.  Which can be somewhat demoralizing when you do good work; I’ve been there.   And then you reanalyze, and the court finds something else not quite right in the new analysis.

I’m not sure that that’s the case here, but if you note in the photo, if looks like this EIS is in response to a court order to give more detail on well stimulation techniques, which they did.  And so it goes.

Anyway, here’s a great big shout-out to the BLM folks who do NEPA and analysis work; all of you across the country!  Your work is appreciated..

Women’s Forest Congress Resolutions, And More Storytelling on TSW

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A big shout-out to the folks who worked on developing the Women’s Forest Congress held in October of this year.  I’d appreciate if anyone was there and would like to report on their experiences.

The enthusiasm and energy sounds amazing.. and yet, part of me wonders why we still need to do this 50 years after women entered our professions.  According to their website:

Forests play an intrinsic role in our lives. Forest products touch us at all stages of life and are increasingly emphasized as a central tenet of a responsible, sustainable future. Forestry is essential to us all, and yet the sector has less than 20% participation by women, and even less by people of color. Whether involved through land ownership, industry, conservation, public agency, or other roles, women in the forest sector are consistently and significantly underrepresented. This discrepancy is even more significant for women of color.

Of course, it’s not just us. Take climate science,

These inequities and specific obstacles women face help explain why there are only 122 women on Reuters Hot List of the world’s 1000 top climate scientists. Among the top 100 scientific papers in the last five years, less than half were authored by women, with only 12 papers having female lead authors.

Anyway, here are their resolutions:

The Women’s Forest Congress challenges organizations in the forest and forest products sector to

  1. FOSTER workforce opportunities for all women through mentorship programs, professional development, scholarships,, with a particular focus on reaching out to those who need help or are asking for assistance in any part of their journey;
  2. BROADEN recruiting practices to include wider networks, and build a pipeline of talent by connecting with and showcasing forests and the forest and forest products sector to youth and students, creating job shadowing and internship opportunities, etc.;
  3. BUILD workplace systems that support mental health coverage, and include training and programs promoting healthy lifestyles, such as family leave, flexible work schedules, generous vacation plans, social opportunities, and holistic wellness programs;
  4. PROMOTE a variety of working environments, encourage flexibility, and ensure all work environments are fully accessible;
  5. ENABLE employees to prioritize mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health and model healthy behaviors for others;
  6. CREATE a safe, inviting, and welcoming workspace for all resulting in greater wellness, increased retention, higher productivity, improved creativity, and heart-centered decision-making;
  7. ASSESS compensation for women and promote paths to pay equity at all levels, including discrepancies in intersectional identities, communities, and demographics;
  8. INTENTIONALLY IDENTIFY and support more women and those from underrepresented groups to achieve leadership positions;
  9. INCREASE the use of storytelling in conferences, trainings, and workshops; and
  10. APPLY models and frameworks to generate and realize solutions to the greatest forest challenges that are built on women’s strengths, such as inclusive, collaborative, and multi-scale holistic thinking.

TSW tries to do many of these things within our community, (but no one gets paid, so there’s that)  but one thing that struck me was “increase the use of storytelling.”   Many of us, both contributors and commenters tell stories as a matter of course in our posts and comments, and so I’m further encouraging that.  Also starting tomorrow I’ll post some stand-alone stories and we’ll see where that goes.  If you have a story, please consider sending it in.

Indigenous fire management and cross-scale fire-climate relationships in the Southwest United States from 1500 to 1900 CE

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Many interesting things about this paper.. (no paywall, yay!) but the fact that effects at different scales can be different and that real world phenomena may not be detectable at larger scales. So a danger if “the science” is only done at a larger scale. People and organisms tend to live at the local scale or landscape,, so one would imagine impacts at that scale are most important to study.  So at least studies should be conscious (and explain in the text?) of their choice of scales, and relevance to the topic and  local people and environment.  Otherwise it may not only discount local observations and experiences, but give a veneer of “science” to those scale-dependent views.

At the landscape scale, drought remained a potent driver of fire activity even during intensive use, suggesting that even in heterogeneous fuelscapes created by Indigenous patch burning, climate could overcome limitations in fuel continuity and promote spreading fires. These observations corroborate prior research that Indigenous patch burning can buffer—but not entirely eliminate—local- to landscape-scale climate influences on widespread fire activity (10). We show that this effect is scale dependent. Locally, the buffering of climate influences was strongest. At the landscape scale, climate impacts were moderated, but drought persisted as an important influence on fire activity. At the regional scale, the canonical climate pattern continued to be the primary driver of fire activity through time. The repetition of this cross-scale variation in fire-climate drivers across all cultural regions and periods hints at a common cause—human impacts on fire regimes were scale dependent, in space and time (13). This scale dependency means that paleofire records composited and assessed at regional scales can mask important, localized Indigenous influences on fire activity and the ecological and social influences of this management (13).

 

Here are the management implications:

 

These results also have implications for modern fire management and policy. In the wake of recent wildfire disasters—fires that damages homes, infrastructure, water sources, and kill humans—there have been calls to restore traditional Indigenous burning practices in western North America (7, 65) and elsewhere (66). Indigenous-managed pyrodiversity offers the opportunity to reduce fire hazard (6), support fire-sensitive plant and animal species (8), reduce carbon emissions (67), and empower Indigenous people (7, 65, 68). Our results show that a further benefit of supporting, restoring, or emulating Indigenous burning practices, including modern prescribed burning efforts, would be the buffering of the impact of increasing fuel aridity on fire activity. To achieve landscape and regional scale fire-climate buffering, however, these applied burning practices would need to be conducted often and at the scales of interest or in strategic locations that have particularly important influence on landscape-scale fire behavior (69). Land managers have struggled to accomplish this goal (70), but future management aims for increasing prescribed burning by more than an order of magnitude (56, 71). As was the case in recent centuries, climate will continue to play a strong role in influencing fire activity even in the best-case management scenarios. However, Indigenous burning, prescribed burning, and managed wildfire at the appropriate scales (7, 65) can all contribute to undermine climate as a “force multiplier” in our wildfire challenges as we endeavor to get more “good fire” on the ground (22, 72).

Study shows how California’s largest wildfires have complex effects on forests

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From the Univ. of Washington’s School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. Link to the research is in the article.

SEFS-led study shows how California’s largest wildfires have complex effects on forests – and present an opportunity for forest management

From the research paper:

Exceptionally large fires (i.e., the top 1% by size) were responsible for 58% and 42% of the cumulative area burned at high and low-moderate severities, respectively, across the study period. With their larger patch sizes, our results suggest that exceptionally large fires coarsen the landscape pattern of California’s forests, reducing their fine-scale heterogeneity which supports much of their biodiversity as well as wildfire and climate resilience. Thus far, most modern post-fire management has focused on restoring forest cover and minimizing ecotype conversion in large, high-severity patches. These large fires, however, have also provided extensive areas of low-moderate severity burns where managers could leverage the wildfire’s initial “treatment” with follow-up fuel reduction treatments to help restore finer-scale forest heterogeneity and fire resilience.

ESA/NEPA: Federal Appellate Court Addresses Challenge to Bureau of Land Management Timber Sales

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Summary and links here.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (“Ninth Circuit”) addressed in a November 25th Memorandum a judicial challenge to the United States Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) North Landscape Project (“North Project”)in the State of Oregon. See Kalamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, et al., v. Bureau of Land Management, 2022 WL 17222416.

The judicial challenge alleged National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) and Endangered Species Act (“ESA”) violations.

The North Project is described as BLM’s site-specific management approach for conducting annual timber sales in the Klamath Falls Resource Area in accordance with the 2016 Southwestern Oregon Resource Management Plan and Oregon & California Revested Lands Act.

Why Is Booz Allen Renting Us Back Our Own National Parks? (and BLM and Forest Service, 13 Agencies Total): Matt Stoller

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Thanks to the Hotshot Wakeup Person for this podcast and the person who contacted him with this piece posted at ZeroHedge… many of us would not be reading financial media outlets.   It traces back to this Substack piece by a fellow named Matt Stoler.  Matt, not being one of our community, talks about parks a lot, but it definitely includes  the Forest Service and BLM (including seasonally relevant Christmas tree permits on the Arapaho-Roosevelt).

Stoller begins with a discussion of historical political philosophy/economics with an aside to Tammany Hall which Anonymous and others might enjoy.

It would be interesting to have more history on Recreation.gov from those involved.  I remember it was part of the same E-gov initiative that produced PALS-  as we worked on it, the idea was “how can we make government run better and serve its citizens better by automating processes.”  We assumed at the time that the government would be paying for egov.  Also it would be interesting to hear the other side of the story.  I recently renewed my passport using a new online service through the State Department. Perhaps they should use the same financial model for passports. What could go wrong?

Like many, I entered the lottery for that BLM area and didn’t realize the bucks were actually going to a contractor.

You can do a lot at Recreation.gov. You can sign up for a pass to cut down a Christmas tree on the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, get permits to fly-fishing, rifle hunting or target practice at thousands of sites, or even secure a tour at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. There are dozens of lotteries to enter for different parks and lands that are hard to access. And all of them come with service fees attached, fees that go directly to Booz Allen, which built Recreation.gov. The deeper you go, the more interesting the gatekeeping. As one angry writer found out after waiting on hold and being transferred multiple times, the answer is that Booz Allen “actually sets the Recreation.gov fees for themselves.”

….

Following the U.S. Digital Service’s playbook is what led the government to bid out and allow the creation of Recreation.gov, with its weird and corrupt fee structure. In 2017, Booz Allen got a 10-year $182 million contract to consolidate all booking for public lands and waters, with 13 separate agencies participating, from the Bureau of Land Management to the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration to the National Park Service to the Smithsonian Institution to the Tennessee Valley Authority to the US Forest Service.

The funding structure of the site is exactly what George Washington Plunkitt would design. Though there’s a ten year contract with significant financial outlays, Booz Allen says the project was built “at no cost to the federal government.”In the contractor’s words, “the unique contractual agreement is a transaction-based fee model that lets the government and Booz Allen share in risk, reward, results, and impact.” In other words, Booz Allen gets to keep the fees charged to users who want access to national parks. Part of the deal was that Booz Allen would get the right to negotiate fees to third party sites that want access to data on Federal lands.

It’s a bit hard to tell how much Booz Allen was paid to set up the site. Documents suggest the firm received a lot of money to do so, but it’s also possible that total amount was the anticipated financial return. I wrote to Recreation.gov team leader Julie McPherson at Booz Allen to find out what they were paid to build the site, and I haven’t heard back. Regardless, there’s a lot of money involved. For instance, as one camper noted, in just one lottery to hike Mount Whitney, more than 16,000 people applied, and only a third got in. Yet everyone paid the $6 registration fee, which means the gross income for that single location is over $100,000. There’s nothing criminal about this scheme, but it is a form of Honest Graft, or of handing a Ticketmaster-like firm control of our national park

In 2020, an avid hiker named Thomas Kotab sued the Bureau of Land Management over the $2 “processing fee it charges to access the mandatory online reservation system to visit the Red Rock Canyon Conservation Area.” He claimed, among other things, that the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act mandated that this fee was unlawful, because it had not gone through the notice-and-comment period required by the act. Kotab, an electrical engineer by training, is one of those ass-kickers in America, who just goes after a grift because, well, it’s just wrong.

A few years later, a judge named Jennifer A. Dorsey, appointed by Obama in 2013, agreed with him. She looked at the statute and found that Congress authorized the charging of recreation fees for the purpose of taking care and using Federal lands, not administrative fees that compensated third parties. As such, Booz Allen’s ability to set its own prices was inconsistent with the law mandating the public’s right to comment on what we are charged for using our own land.

The BLM sought to appeal, but then dropped it in July. Rather than a bitter procedural argument about classifying fees, the government and Booz Allen have decided they’ll just go through the annoying process of having the public comment on Booz Allen’s compensation, and then ignore us using their phony advisory council process. Here, for instance, is the Mojave-Southern Great Basin Resource Advisory Council Meeting in August simply proposing to substitute new standard amenity fees “equal to the associated Recreation.gov reservation service fee.”

One notable part of this saga is that technically, the BLM and Booz Allen owe refunds to everyone who went through Red Rock Canyon’s timed entry system from 2020-2022, but they’ll probably ignore that and steal the money. That verges into actual graft from the ‘honest’ type, but I suspect Plunkitt did that as well from time to time.

Stoller also recommends some fixes.

And yet, it’s not over. The Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act authorization runs out in October of 2023, which means that Congress has to renew it. Hopefully, an interested member of Congress who loves Federal lands could actually tighten the definitions here, and find a way to stop Booz Allen and these 13 government agencies from engaging in this minor theft via junk fees. It wouldn’t be hard, and it would be fun to force a bunch of government agencies to actually do their job and either take over the site themselves or pay Booz Allen a fee for its service. (Another path would be Joe Biden, through his anti-junk fee initiative, simply asserting through the White House Competition Council to the 13 different agencies that they end Booz Allen’s practice of charging these kinds of fees.)

BLM kicks off process to develop new West-wide solar plan

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Dry Lake Solar Energy.. BLM photo

 

 

Here’s the press release from yesterday…

As part of this update, the BLM is considering adding more states, adjusting exclusion criteria and seeking to identify new or expanded areas to prioritize solar deployment.

it should be interesting to watch how 30×30, EJ and Tribal co-management goals are woven together by the BLM in this decision.

 

“This Administration is committed to expanding clean energy development to address climate change, enhance America’s energy security and provide for good-paying union jobs,” said Secretary Haaland. “Our review of these proposed projects in Arizona, and a new analysis of the role public lands can play in furthering solar energy production, will help ensure we keep the momentum going to build a clean energy future, lower costs for families and create robust conservation outcomes on the nation’s lands and waters.”

“We take seriously our responsibility to manage the nation’s public lands responsibly and with an eye toward the increasing impacts of the climate crisis. The power and potential of the clean energy future is an undeniable and critical part of that work,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Daniel-Davis. “The Bureau of Land Management is working diligently to ensure that its processes and pace maintain the momentum we are seeing from industry.”

In 2012, the BLM and the Department of Energy issued a Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Solar Energy Development in six southwestern states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. The 2012 Solar PEIS identified areas with high solar potential and low resource conflicts in order to guide responsible solar development and provide certainty to developers. A decade later, in light of improved technology, new transmission and ambitious clean energy goals, the BLM is updating the 2012 Solar PEIS. As part of this update, the BLM is considering adding more states, adjusting exclusion criteria and seeking to identify new or expanded areas to prioritize solar deployment.

A notice to update the BLM’s 2012 Solar Programmatic EIS will be published in the Federal Register this week. This will begin a 60-day public comment period, with interested stakeholders invited to submit written feedback or participate in one of many upcoming in-person and virtual public scoping meetings. Following the public scoping period, the BLM will develop a draft programmatic environmental impact statement for public review and comment.

Secretary Haaland also celebrated initial reviews for new, major solar projects proposed on public lands in Arizona. First, the scoping meetings will soon be announced for environmental analysis of the proposed Jove solar project, which would produce up to 600 megawatts of utility-scale renewable energy from solar photovoltaic modules on 3,495 acres of public land located in southeastern La Paz County. Second, there will be a two-year segregation of more than 4,400 acres of public land associated with two proposed utility-scale solar energy projects. The segregation action supports review of the proposed 250 megawatts Pinyon Solar project in Maricopa County, and the proposed 300 megawatts Elisabeth Solar project in Yuma County.

During the trip, the leaders also announced that the BLM is issuing updated guidance to improve consistency in processing rights-of-way for utility-scale solar projects under the variance process established by BLM’s 2012 Western Solar Plan, which is used for solar projects outside of Solar Energy Zones.

Let’s Look At: The Environmental Justice for All Act

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Sorry for this long post, but it is a long and  complex bill and I only hit part of it.

There was an interesting article in E&E News about permitting reform.

“I understand, and I’ve tried to give to senators the reassurance that the transmission and grid issues — the promotion of renewable and alternative energies — have to be dealt with, but not like this,” he continued. “Taking a hatchet to [the National Environmental Policy Act] is not the way to go.”

It seems like to Grijalva, any changes to NEPA are off the table.  Which doesn’t seem rational to me (is there a human institution that couldn’t be improved in some way?).. but that’s politics.

The chair feared, he said, a scenario where leadership would offer a “trade” in which advocates would get a vote on the environmental justice bill while also having to swallow the permitting overhaul in the NDAA.

Representatives from several environmental justice groups met with staff for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) last week, and many left Capitol Hill with that same sense of foreboding, said one attendee of the meeting granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Grijalva said he has already told leadership the “EJ for All Act” should be brought to the floor under three specific parameters.

One is that only approved changes could be made to the “cumulative impacts” portion of the bill.

That title of the legislation, perhaps the most polarizing even among Democrats, would require permitting decisions under the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act to account for the cumulative effects of harmful emissions.

So what’s in the EJ for All Act? It seems to me that it was perhaps written to deal with urban kinds of problems. The intentions are great (everyone should have equal access to healthy communities and to decision-making)I, but difficulties may well reside in the details.  I tried to interpret this through a lens of “poor and Tribal communities who do not want renewable energy development” and “poor and Tribal communities who want fuel treatment projects” and couldn’t see if those relate to this.  In the fact sheet, it says about NEPA:

National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) – Requires federal agencies to provide early and meaningful community involvement opportunities under NEPA when proposing an action affecting an environmental justice community. Ensures robust Tribal representation throughout the NEPA process for an activity that could impact an Indian Tribe, including activities impacting off-reservation lands and sacred sites.

and

Requires consideration of cumulative impacts in permitting decisions under the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act and ensures that permits will not be issued if the project cannot demonstrate a reasonable certainty of no harm to human health.

This seems fairly stringent to me.. “no harm” but perhaps things like CWA and CAA do not regulate transmission lines, solar and wind facilities, and nuclear? Seems unlikely, but… Also in our area, renewable energy occurs on private lands so isn’t subject to NEPA.

A fair and just transition to a pollution4 free economy is necessary to ensure that workers 5 and communities in deindustrialized areas have ac6 cess to the resources and benefits of a sustainable
7 future. That transition must also address the eco8 nomic disparities experienced by residents living in 9 areas contaminated by pollution or environmental 10 degradation, including access to jobs, and members
11 of those communities must be fully and meaningfully 12 involved in transition planning processes.
13 (11) It is the responsibility of the Federal Gov14 ernment to seek to achieve environmental justice, 15 health equity, and climate justice for all commu 16 nities.

There’s a definition for low-income communities..

LOW-INCOME COMMUNITY.—The term 13 ‘‘low-income community’’ means any census block 14 group in which 30 percent or more of the population 15 are individuals with an annual household income 16 equal to, or less than, the greater of— 17 (A) an amount equal to 80 percent of the 18 median income of the area in which the house19 hold is located, as reported by the Department 20 of Housing and Urban Development; and
21 (B) 200 percent of the Federal poverty 22 line.

It would be interesting to see a map of these areas, and where they are close to federal lands.

Here’s a policy statement:

Potential environmental and climate threats to environmental justice communities merit a higher level of engagement, review, and consent to ensure that communities are not forced to bear disproportionate environmental and health impacts.

It seems to me that this bill is about “keeping bad things that people do from happening.” Whereas disproportionate climate impacts can be due to lack of infrastructure and resilience in EJ communities.. so pointing those kinds of projects to EJ communities might be equally important.  Certainly Congress could require this from agencies, or maybe it already does?

If some areas are to be deindustrialized, then other areas must become industrialized (where rich white people live?), or perhaps we can just get rid of industry? Most countries have an industrial policy, perhaps ours needs a deindustrial policy? What about keeping the industry production and jobs, and reducing the pollution?

What if an EJ  community supports a project, but it doesn’t pass the new legal bar of “reasonable certainty of no harm to human health?” and the project is litigated on that basis?  What does it mean to have community support? Is that evidenced via elected officials or opinion leaders or ???

In the bill, there’s a mandatory training requirement for every employee of DOE EPA DOI and NOAA, as far as I can tell not USDA. So conceivably DOI firefighters for example, but not USDA?

I’ll defer to the legal experts at TSW, but it seems to me that there are a variety of legal hooks in this bill that are likely to be used by people opposed to all kinds of projects.  And many opportunities for arguing that something is disproportionate.

Here’s what the bill says about NEPA .  It seems like agencies might do the outreach anyway, but it sounds like analysis would be added that focuses on the “ej community”?

(f) National Environmental Policy Act Requirements For Environmental Justice Communities.—When carrying out the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.) for a proposed Federal action that may affect an environmental justice community, a Federal agency shall—

(1) consider all potential direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts caused by the action, alternatives to such action, and mitigation measures on the environmental justice community required by that Act;

(2) require any public comment period carried out during the scoping phase of the environmental review process to be not less than 90 days;

(3) provide early and meaningful community involvement opportunities by—

(A) holding multiple hearings in such community regarding the proposed Federal action in each prominent language within the environmental justice community; and

(B) providing notice of any step or action in the process under that Act that involves public participation to any representative entities or organizations present in the environmental justice community, including—

(i) local religious organizations;

(ii) civic associations and organizations;

(iii) business associations of people of color;

(iv) environmental and environmental justice organizations, including community-based grassroots organizations led by people of color;

(v) homeowners’, tenants’, and neighborhood watch groups;

(vi) local governments and Tribal Governments;

(vii) rural cooperatives;

(viii) business and trade organizations;

(ix) community and social service organizations;

(x) universities, colleges, and vocational schools;

(xi) labor and other worker organizations;

(xii) civil rights organizations;

(xiii) senior citizens’ groups; and

(xiv) public health agencies and clinics; and

(4) provide translations of publicly available documents made available pursuant to that Act in any language spoken by more than 5 percent of the population residing within the environmental justice community.

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Community input on the bill did not seem to involve disadvantaged rural people of whatever color (my bold).

2022 Community Input Tour

The unique community-led process for drafting the Environmental Justice for All Act was founded on the belief that policymaking should be led by the people most affected by the issue.

In early 2022, Chair Grijalva kicked off a nationwide Community Input Tour in environmental justice communities to talk about the bill and gather input about how it can be improved. For more information on each of the stops for the 2022 Community Input Tour, see the links below:

Community Input Tour: New York, March 11-12

Community Input Tour: Detroit, May 6-7

Community Input Tour: New Orleans, June 17-19

Community Input Tour: Southern California, July 8-10 

Community Input Tour: Richmond, Virginia, July 16 

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Also it says you can provide feedback here on the bill, which I think is a great idea.. but I couldn’t figure out how.

Wouldn’t it be nice if bill language had a public comment period where you could go look up what people and groups have to say about it, and then send your own views to your elected Representative? It’s  kind of ironic to me that we probably have more public (open) discussion of 300 acre fuel treatment project than a possibly extremely expensive bill that potentially ties up decarbonization efforts in ways the authors never intended.

 

Permitting Reform and Insights into (Some) Progressive Views

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From Marcela Mulholland’s presentation at the Ecomodernism 2022 conference

Last month, I attended a Breakthrough Institute conference in Middleburg, Virginia. You may have heard of BTI, they promote “ecomodernism.” More on some of their ideas later.

What I like about them is that they are fans of technical solutions to environmental problems- I don’t always agree with them, but they have interesting and unique albeit Coastal, views of the world. Plus, where else can you be at a conference with people from the fusion community, as in energy, not dining.  And they gave me a geographic diversity scholarship to attend, as I am neither from a Coast, nor a member of any elite.

Anyway, permitting reform was on their agenda. “Permitting reform” is a current term used to talk about removing unnecessary obstacles to building needed infrastructure. The difficulty, as we know, is agreeing on what is “unnecessary” and what is “needed.”

It was fascinating to see the perspectives of people way outside our world.  Below is the information about this session and here is a link to the video.

As the nation’s halting attempts to build high-speed rail, nuclear power plants, high-voltage transmission lines, and solar and wind farms reveal, the obstacles to decarbonization stem less from the availability of low-carbon technology than from the capacity for siting, permitting, and building the necessary infrastructure. High-level proposals to address this problem have come from “supply-side progressivism,” “state-capacity libertarianism,” neoliberalism, and beyond. This panel will feature a variety of ideological perspectives on the policy and coalitional imperatives to be sorted out before any such supply-side agenda can be effectively pursued.

Featuring:
Eli Dourado, Senior Research Fellow, Center for Growth and Opportunity, Utah State University

Marcela Mulholland, Political Director, Data for Progress

Jeremiah Johnson, Policy Director, The Neoliberal Project

Jared DeWese, Deputy Director for Communications, Third Way Energy

From the Forest Service historical NEPA perspective, it was fascinating to listen to speakers talk about NEPA. Some of Eli Dourado’s comments (the libertarian), even reminded me of Sally Fairfax’s article in Science in 1978. He suggested , developing more substantive environmental statutes and reducing the emphasis on NEPA.  He also suggested getting rid of NEPA but he is a libertarian..

However, as we know ESA can also be used to slow down or stop projects, so I don’t think it’s that simple.

I thought the most interesting talk was given by Marcela Mulholland, the Political Director of Data for Progress, a progressive polling group.
Her presentation (20:10 ) was fun..
Here she talks some (other) progressives’ views (48:48) “more staffing, no other changes are necessary,” and (51:30) changing agency culture. I think she has a point but that is indeed difficult.

1:04 and on .. there’s a discussion how to get community input without slowing things down too much.

And in the Q&A, there’s even a comment about NEPA being a “decision-making tool”, which may remind FS folks of the Decision Protocol and other efforts. I suggested that policy solutions involve agency NEPA practitioners as sources of information..

As a result, attendees asked for a summary of what we have learned. I think “there’s too much!” say the results of the EADM workshops, and “there’s too little”.. where out there might be a 20 page history of agency efforts, at least from Process Predicament on, what was tried and how it worked.  So I am stuck and would like to respond to his question. Does anyone have any suggestions?