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Friday, December 24, 2004

Environment - Recent Stories

"MSD praised on erosion control: Audit says agency still must do more" is the headline of a recent story in the Louisville Courier-Journal. Some quotes:

The Metropolitan Sewer District is doing a good job enforcing an ordinance designed to keep mud from choking the life out of area waterways, but there's still work to be done, according to an agency audit. * * *

As part of the federal Clean Water Act, communities are required to limit erosion, which can cover and kill aquatic life, contributes to conditions that make water unsafe for swimming or drinking, clogs storm drains and fills marinas and river channels.

MSD four years ago concluded that local streams "are dying," in part because of sediment. And in 2001, the former Jefferson County government approved an erosion-control ordinance to deal with Kentucky's most widespread water-pollution problem: sediment in waterways. In Jefferson County, much of the mud comes from building sites.

The audit that MSD released this week follows a Courier-Journal review earlier this year [access the ILB entry here, from 10/24/04] that found the agency often takes longer to act on erosion-control enforcement cases than called for, and that the agency has been reluctant to issue fines.

"New Rules Issued for National Forests: Some Environmental Protections Eased" was the headline to this story Thursday in the Washington Post. The lead:
The Bush administration issued comprehensive new rules yesterday for managing the national forests, jettisoning some environmental protections that date to Ronald Reagan's administration and putting in place the biggest change in forest-use policies in nearly three decades.

The regulations affect recreation, endangered-species protections and livestock grazing, among other things, on all 192 million acres of the country's 155 national forests. Sally Collins, associate chief of the U.S. Forest Service, said the changes will replace a bureaucratic planning process with a more corporate management approach that will allow officials to respond to changing ecological and social conditions.

The new rules give economic activity equal priority with preserving the ecological health of the forests in making management decisions and in potentially liberalizing caps on how much timber can be taken from a forest.

The NY Times story, also published yesterday, reports:
The Bush administration issued broad new rules Wednesday overhauling the guidelines for managing the nation's 155 national forests and making it easier for regional forest managers to decide whether to allow logging, drilling or off-road vehicles.

The long-awaited rules relax longstanding provisions on environmental reviews and the protection of wildlife on 191 million acres of national forest and grasslands. They also cut back on requirements for public participation in forest planning decisions.

Forest Service officials said the rules were intended to give local foresters more flexibility to respond to scientific advances and threats like intensifying wildfires and invasive species. They say the regulations will also speed up decisions, ending what some public and private foresters see as a legal and regulatory gridlock that has delayed forest plans for years because of litigation and requirements for time-consuming studies. * * *

The original 1976 law on forest management was intended to ensure that regional managers showed environmental sensitivity in decisions on how the national forests would be used. During the 1990's, the Clinton administration sought major revisions in the rules governing how the act was carried out. But the Clinton-era regulation was not completed in time to take effect before President Bush assumed office.

The new rules incorporate an approach that has gained favor in private industries from electronics to medical device manufacturing. The practice, used by companies like Apple Computer, allows businesses to set their own environmental goals and practices and then subjects them to an outside audit that judges their success.

These procedures are called environmental management systems. When the Forest Service started investigating these systems, said Fred Norbury, a deputy associate chief at the Forest Service, "what we discovered to our surprise is that the U.S. is a little behind the rest of the world and we in government are a little behind the curve."

In the case of the Forest Service, the supervisors of the individual forests and grasslands will shape forest management plans, and the effects of those will be subject to independent audits.

The auditors the Forest Service chooses could range from other Forest Service employees to outsiders, said Sally Collins, an associate chief at the Forest Service. She said the auditors could come from an environmental group or an industry group like timber "or a ski area, local citizens or a private contractor."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 24, 2004 09:03 AM
Posted to Environment