Bush streamlining or steamrolling NEPA?

[Nottingham]

Bush streamlining or steamrolling NEPA?
By Dan Whipple
UPI Science News
Published 9/5/2003 12:15 PM
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BOULDER, Colo., Sept. 5 (UPI) -- It seems strange that if you call the White House Council on Environmental Quality, whoever responds declines to speak on the record.
Perhaps even stranger is what is said off the record: The Bush administration supports public involvement in environmental issues and supports the National Environmental Policy Act.

Why such innocuous statements need to be delivered without attribution is not explained.
Whatever. The devil, as they say, is in the details, and as conservationists dig deeper into this administration's emerging environmental record, they are finding it difficult to see where support and public involvement has been manifest.

....snip
The U.S. Forest Service has told the Senate Committee on Energy and Environment that 40 percent of its resources is taken up preparing all that paperwork. Yet a committee staffer told United Press International, "I've never seen anything to back up that statement."
This is not to say considerable time and energy have not been spent by the administration on NEPA compliance. They have. The question is whether anyone thinks that time and energy have been well spent.
Under the "old" NEPA requirements, timber sales of the size the Bush administration wants to offer would have required public hearings and an environmental analysis of their impacts -- an EIS or EA.

On Thursday, the administration issued a regulation in the Federal Register allowing a "categorical exclusion" to NEPA for fuel mitigation efforts of less than 1,000 acres.
At the same time, the administration is removing all forest planning programs from NEPA processes.

more....

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/redir.php?jid=0abdbbf9711e0301

In other words Bush is writing his OWN RULES! and our FORESTS are under major attack!! He is so OUT of Control!

:crazy:

[BeFree]

1. I thought America was a democracy?

*'s detour around NEPA, the National Environmental Protection Act, are meant to keep the citizens OUT of the process of determinig what the government actions shall be. Reminds me of communism, ala, Soviet Russia. Their's was the far-right kind of communism which excludes the people and all decisions are made by a bunch of politicians. Bush is becoming a commie!?.

[Ernesto]

2. NO NO You have it ALL WRONG!

When St. Ronnie "streamlined" the IRS in '87, it became much easier for me to fill out my tax forms. (Did I mention that I paid nearly double in taxes that year?)

[jeffreyi]

3. Yuck

This will cost the taxpayers big time in the long run, and not just money. Maybe ten percent of these projects will be "honorable", and will really effectively reduce the spread and intensity of wildland fires (which are more linked to drought than they are to fuels anyway!) The rest will be a mess; big land impacts for all the wrong reasons. The costs will be those incurred in damaged watershed function, and then the huge costs of watershed restoration, when the damage is just too much. Those who did the damage will not be liable...they haven't been yet; why should this change? In the meantime, oh, forget it. There's just too much. These are every citizen's public lands and this unelected jerk is putting the decisionmaking wholly into the hands of the spoilers. This is not just a skirmish, it's a full on attack, and this is just one of the fronts. So amazing they can get away with this; the NEPA (signed by NIXON, of all people!) has been around for 30+ years and it works...it makes the agencies reveal the logic behind land use decisions which they for the most part would not do voluntarily unless it was the law. The courts have been brutal with the Forest Service, and rightfully so, when the land use decisions have been based on faulty logic and bad or nonexistent evidence, or the FS didn't do what they said they were going to do.
Really upsetting.
:puke: