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Lawless Logging
The Bush administration has attempted to use this year's dramatic fire season as a smoke screen to pass a lawless logging bill that waives environmental laws, shuts out the public and interferes with the courts. Because the administration’s proposal (the Craig amendment) has stalled in the Senate, on October 8th, the House Resources Committee passed a bill to weaken environmental law and public participation in decisions affecting these logging projects. You can stop this bill, HR 5319, by contacting your Representative now!
| Sample Letter for Campaign |
Subject: Oppose H.R. 5319
Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,
I urge you to oppose H.R. 5319, the McInnis-Walden bill. H.R. 5319 attempts to prohibit enforcement of the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act and limit the ability of citizens and the courts to protect our national forests.
H.R. 5319 seeks to circumvent the National Environmental Policy Act by allowing the Forest Service and the BLM to evaluate only a single option, instead of a range of alternatives, when conducting their environmental analysis of a proposed project, thus eliminating the very heart of NEPA. H.R. 5319 also attempts to permit the Forest Service and BLM to limit citizens' rights to challenge agency decisions. The agency may be able to turn away citizen input unless it uses the "magic word" from the agency's lexicon.
H.R. 5319 attempts to dramatically interfere with any review of these logging projects by the courts. One has merely 15 days to bring a challenge in court. This timeline conflicts with other environmental laws, like the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act that require 60-day written notice. Under H.R. 5319, the courts must reach a final ruling in 60 days, with the potential of one-time extensions of 15 and 30 days. In essence, this tells the courts that these logging projects are more important than all other pending civil and criminal cases.
Instead of H.R. 5319, I urge you to support an approach that requires the Forest Service and BLM to help at-risk communities and assist private landowners within the quarter-mile Community Protection Zone. By cosponsoring the Inslee bill, H.R.5358, you would be supporting protection for communities, not wasting scarce fire protection funds in areas far from them.
Sincerely,
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Campaign Launched:
August 29, 2002
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President Bush's "Healthy Forests Initiative" for a new wildfire policy for National Forests and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands calls on Congress to waive environmental laws, block meaningful public participation and prevent the courts from reviewing any logging projects conducted under the initiative. (Read a detailed analysis of the proposal.) Senator Larry Craig's (R-ID) efforts to offer portions of the Bush administration's "lawless logging" proposal to the Interior spending bill have been stalled on the Senate floor, thanks to input from concerned Americans like you.
Meanwhile, Representative Scott McInnis (R-CO) has passed his own bill, H.R.5319, through the House Resources Committee on October 8. The McInnis bill permits agencies to circumvent the very heart of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by evaluating only a single option -- the logging or other project being proposed. The evaluation of a range of alternatives, including the option of not doing the project, is central to NEPA and to making better decisions for our environment.
The bill also seeks to permit the Forest Service and BLM to deny Americans the right to administratively appeal either agency's decision to proceed with a project if they do not have the foresight to raise the "specific" issue on which they are appealing in the earliest, and generally the least detailed, public comment period. In other words, if one did not use the "magic word" from Forest Service's lexicon, the agency may be able to turn away that citizen input.
Furthermore, H.R. 5319 attempts to dramatically interfere with any review of these logging projects by the courts. Concerned parties have merely 15 days to bring a challenge in court. The timber industry or the Forest Service could try to claim the bill is attempting to prevent citizen suits allowed under other environmental laws, like the Endangered Species Act or Clean Water Act, that require 60-day written notice in advance of bringing a challenge. (Click here to read more about Endangered Species Act implications.) The bill also tells the courts that they must reach a final ruling in 60 days, with the potential of one-time extensions of 15 and 30 days. In essence, H.R. 5319 is telling the courts that these logging projects are among the most important judicial matters facing the nation, ahead of health issues, civil rights and unscrupulous corporations. To consider these claims, the courts will have to make room at the top of their dockets, setting aside other pending civil and criminal cases.
Representative Jay Inslee (D-WA) has introduced a positive alternative, H.R. 5358, that will do far more to protect communities than the McInnis bill without waiving the law, shutting out the public or closing the courthouse doors. His bill, H.R. 5358, requires that 85 percent of the federal fuels reduction funds of these agencies be spent within the critical quarter-mile community protection zone. Moreover, he establishes a fund to provide assistance to local communities and landowners for brush disposal and thinning projects on properties within this zone.
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