An overeager legal strategy may endanger Trump’s energy goals: “Sen. Lisa Murkowski was unhappy with an April 5 ruling by Sharon Gleason, a federal judge in Anchorage, Alaska, who found that President Donald Trump had unlawfully lifted a ban prohibiting drilling in the Arctic Ocean, dealing the president’s fossil-fuel energy agenda a major blow. “I strongly disagree with this ruling,” said Murkowski, who wants to open her state’s land and water to increased oil and gas leasing. “I expect this decision to be appealed and ultimately overturned.” If the past is any indication, the Alaska Republican may be disappointed. To achieve his administration’s “energy dominance” agenda, the president has nominated industry-friendly officials to run Cabinet agencies, signed a raft of executive orders in support of oil, gas and coal companies rather than work with Congress to change the law, and overseen a governmentwide rollback of environmental regulations. And in their haste, the White House and federal agencies have suffered dozens of losses in court, often by failing to follow standard federal procedures, submitting shoddy paperwork and, according to federal judges, arbitrarily interpreting the law… A week before, Rudolph Contreras, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., struck down environmental reviews the Interior Department completed in connection with oil and gas lease sales in Wyoming. His ruling was also over NEPA violations. “Simply put, NEPA required more robust analyses of GHG emissions from oil and gas drilling and downstream use,” Contreras wrote. The Institute for Policy Integrity, a program within New York University’s School of Law, tracks the administration’s deregulatory efforts, including lawsuits and rule proposals. The administration has succeeded in about 6% of those efforts, according to the group’s latest figures, from early March. Past administrations won similar legal fights about 70% of the time, Ricky Revesz, the group’s director, said in an interview.”

[Roll Call, 4/5/19] http://bit.ly/2UiTJED

Environmentalists sue Flathead Forest over lack of public comment on management plan: “Conservation groups are suing the Flathead National Forest for not allowing public comment on essential sections of its new forest plan dealing with grizzly bears and bull trout. On Wednesday, the Montana-based Western Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit in Missoula federal court for WildEarth Guardians and Western Watersheds Project against the Flathead National Forest and Supervisor Chip Weber. The groups contend that forest managers didn’t consider threats to wildlife when it approved more areas for motorized snow vehicles, nor allow public comment on protections for grizzly bears, Canada lynx and bull trout, all species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. “The Flathead is one of the last places in the lower 48 where one can see grizzly bears, wolverines, lynx and wolves intermingling on the same landscape,” said Kelly Nokes, Western Environmental Law Center attorney, in a statement. “We must hold the Forest Service accountable to ensure that the increasingly rare habitat security afforded by the Flathead’s intact ecosystems is not swallowed whole by a management plan unwilling to truly conserve.” The Flathead Forest finalized its updated forest management plan in late December after a few years of scoping, studies and public comment. The previous forest plan dated back to 1986 and had several amendments due to more than 30 decades of change in Montana. The problem is that the section in the new plan on preserving grizzly bear habitat is based on the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem Conservation Strategy that was made public in mid-June of last year and approved a month later, with no public comment period. That’s a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act, the groups argue. Beyond that, one of the amendments to the 1986 plan set limits on the density of roads in grizzly bear habitat, but the new plan made changes that would allow that density to increase.”

[Missoula Current, 4/5/19] http://bit.ly/2VnfShu

BLM names new state office director: “The Bureau of Land Management has assigned a new director to the bureau's Montana-Dakotas state office that manages about 8.3 million acres of federal land and temporarily lent another top administrator to duty at the Forest Service. John Mehlhoff, who is currently a senior official in the Interior Department's Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR), will take over the Montana-Dakotas office for Don Judice, who has for a month been acting director of the office, overseeing about 47.2 million acres of federal mineral estate in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. Mehlhoff, prior to joining ONRR as program director for coordination, enforcement, valuation and appeals in 2014, served as associate director of BLM's Colorado state office. He will take over the Montana-Dakotas office "as soon as possible," Brian Steed, BLM's deputy director of policy and programs, announced yesterday in an email to the bureau's executive leadership team. Steed also announced that Kristin Bail, BLM's assistant director of resources and planning, is going to the Forest Service on a six-month detail. Bail, who has worked at BLM and the Forest Service for 34 years, will spend the next six months working as the Forest Service's director of water, fish, wildlife, air and rare plants in Washington, D.C. Bail is replacing, at least on a temporary basis, Robert Harper, who is set to become the Forest Service's acting associate deputy chief, according to multiple sources. Leah Baker, who heads BLM's Division of Decision Support, Planning and NEPA, will fill in on an acting basis during Bail's six-month detail. The assistant director for resources and planning oversees non-energy-related policy and planning issues for the bureau, including threatened and endangered species, as well as the greater sage grouse. Bail was involved in the recently finalized revisions to Obama-era federal sage grouse conservation plans, according to Steed.”

[E&E News, 4/5/19] http://bit.ly/2I1PGWP

Groups ask judge to halt border wall construction: “Several groups filed a motion Thursday asking a judge to impose a preliminary injunction to halt the Trump administration’s construction of a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border under the scope of President Trump’s national emergency declaration. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the motion in federal court in California, as part of an ongoing lawsuit brought forward on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition, challenging Trump’s national emergency declaration. The groups argue that the national emergency declaration is unconstitutional because only Congress has the proper authority to appropriate funds. The groups claim in the filing that building the wall with funds set aside for other purposes could cause “irreparable damage,” leading to their request for the national injunction. “Neither a declaration of emergency nor the statutes that Defendants have invoked permit the President to disregard Congress’s enacted appropriations legislation. Nor have Defendants even attempted to comply with the environmental protections Congress required in the National Environmental Policy Act,” the lawsuit reads. “An injunction is necessary to prevent Defendants’ disregard for the statutes enacted by a coordinate branch of government, and their attempt to usurp its powers.” Trump in recent days has threatened to shut down the southern border.”

[The Hill, 4/5/19] http://bit.ly/2WOCxDA

Justin McCarthy

Communications Director, NEPA Campaign

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