By SHERRY DEVLIN of the Missoulian
Baucus counters Republican proposal
Western senators, including Montana Democrat Max Baucus,
introduced competing measures Tuesday intended to hasten logging
in fire-prone national forests by temporarily suspending environmental
reviews.
But environmental leaders warned that any suspension of the National Environmental Policy Act is dangerous, as NEPA is the law that guarantees citizens access to the federal government's decision-making process.
"We need some safeguards to keep them from going out into the backcountry, doing a big old-fashioned timber sale, calling it fuel-reduction work and shutting the public out of the process," said Bob Ekey, northern Rockies representative for the Wilderness Society.
"They need to be hobbled some," he said.
First into the hopper Tuesday morning was a proposal by Republicans Larry Craig of Idaho and Pete Domenici of New Mexico calling for the logging of 10 million acres of federal land considered at highest risk of catastrophic wildfire.
The work would be excluded not only from NEPA review, but also from the Forest Service's administrative appeals process and from any work stoppages during legal challenges.
Craig and Domenici asked that their measure be attached to the Interior Appropriations bill now under consideration on the Senate floor, but also asked for more time to recruit Democrats to their cause.
"We want to get something done this year that will allow us to have active management on our forests, so we can try to put a stop to these catastrophic fires," said Will Hart, a spokesman for Craig. "We are still hoping for a bipartisan agreement, although that is looking less likely all the time."
Baucus responded Tuesday afternoon with a separate piece of legislation proposing hazardous-fuels work on 3.75 million acres of the most fire-prone national forests. His proposal would exclude some projects from environmental review and formal public comment, but under more tightly controlled circumstances.
To earn the "categorical exclusion" from NEPA, each timber sale would be limited to 250,000 board feet of merchantable wood or 1 million board feet of burned, but merchantable timber. All projects would be limited to so-called "Class 3" lands - those considered at highest risk of wildfire.
In addition, the Baucus proposal would require that at least 10 percent of hazardous-fuel reduction funds be spent on projects benefiting businesses in small, economically disadvantaged communities "like Libby, Montana."
The proposal would prohibit any new road construction and would require protection of old, large and fire-resistant trees. If an agency found "extraordinary circumstances" in any proposed logging area, then a full environmental review would be required.
By comparison, Craig's proposal would leave no less than 10 of the largest trees per acre in any treatment area, and would prohibit construction of new, permanent roads in roadless areas.
Both the Baucus and Craig measures would replace the traditional environmental review process and public comment session with a "collaborative process" that involved "all interested stakeholders."
Baucus press secretary Bill Lombardi said his boss is worried that politics has polarized the debate over the growing wildfire danger on public lands, but believes there remains "plenty of room to find common ground."
"That's why Max introduced this bill," Lombardi said. "Max agrees we need to fix the problem of fuels buildup in our national forests. But he's concerned about completely eliminating the public's right to appeal or participate in any meaningful way in public lands decisions."
The Baucus bill does not place limits on court challenges or reviews. Craig's proposed amendment would limit any legal challenges of fuel-reduction timber sales to 360 days "unless the District Court determines that a longer time is needed to satisfy the Constitution."
It would also prohibit any issuance of a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction - measures that would stop work while the case was heard. And it would limit the court to determining whether a project was "arbitrary and capricious."
Environmental leaders had not seen a copy of the Baucus bill by day's end, so could not comment on its approach. All, however, denounced the Craig-Domenici amendment.
The Republican rider "has nothing to do with protecting people from wildfires, and everything to do with protecting profits for the timber industry," said William Meadows, the Wilderness Society's president. "In its very first sentence, this rider would exempt virtually all activities in forests from the National Environmental Policy Act. By the second page, it has repealed the entire administrative appeals process."
Under Craig's proposal, the Forest Service "could approve logging projects in old-growth forests with absolutely no environmental analysis and no public involvement at all," Meadows said.
"The last time Congress approved environmental loopholes this huge, the timber industry and the Forest Service ran riot over our public forests," he added, referencing the so-called timber salvage rider of 1995, which was passed and then repealed by the same Congress.
In Baucus' office, Lombardi said the Montana senator is trying to find a mid-point between the Craig proposal and another possible amendment suggested - but not yet introduced - by South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle and New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman, both Democrats.
That proposal would put 70 percent of the Forest Service's fuel-reduction money into projects within a half mile of communities. It, too, would exclude the work from environmental review and the traditional public-comment process.
"The Daschle-Bingaman bill doesn't go far enough to remedy the problem," Lombardi said. "It's also important to address problems in community watersheds and other areas in states like Montana that aren't necessarily included in a narrow definition of the wildland-urban interface."
"Max's proposal," he said, "is fair and equitable to all parts of the country and will fix the problem in an expeditious manner."
Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268
or at sdevlin@missoulian.com.