How Trump agencies' NEPA reviews lowball climate impacts: “Agencies under President Trump
are cataloging climate impacts in the mandatory environmental reviews that precede major federal actions. They describe worsening damage to virtually every ecosystem, from entire forests down to the ocean's smallest life forms. But officials use those same
documents to minimize the connection between that damage and human-caused emissions, especially when the government is considering the impacts of fossil fuel projects, like drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. What emerges from these documents
is a story of the Trump administration in microcosm. While officials tell the public not to worry about climate change, they're running departments that warn of massive damage already unfolding. The administration masks its contribution to that damage by pointing
to the small impact of individual oil wells and coal mines — a distraction, experts say, from its energy agenda's huge cumulative impact. The documents show that without a broad look at government-sanctioned emissions, the Trump administration has been able
to downplay the climate impacts of individual fossil fuel projects and regulatory rollbacks as too insignificant to affect global temperatures. For example, the administration has said it's impossible to estimate an oil lease's emissions because it depends
on the drilling equipment, extra infrastructure like pipelines and the oil's final use. Officials claim it's impossible to know if forgoing an oil lease would lower emissions. Whatever the true drilling impact, they often say, it's too small on its own to
change global temperatures.”
[E&E News, 10/9/19]
http://bit.ly/2oiklHf
BLM Colo. plan did not fully consider climate — lawsuit: “Environmental groups filed a lawsuit
yesterday in a federal court opposing a Bureau of Land Management plan for oil and gas leasing on about a million acres of public lands in western Colorado. The Center for Biological Diversity, Wilderness Society and Wilderness Workshop say BLM's 2015 resource
management plan for surface lands and mineral estates did not adequately consider indirect, cumulative or downstream climate change impacts of the leases as required under the National Environmental Policy Act. The groups also say the agency did not do enough
to consider a range of alternatives to leasing. The groups noted that the leases would include the area staked out for BLM's proposed new headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo. "It's clear that the federal government is violating the law across the board when
it comes to authorizing millions of acres of oil and gas without taking a required hard look at the impacts to the climate," said Diana Dascalu-Joffe, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity's public lands program. This latest legal challenge
is part of a series of lawsuits targeting the federal government's climate analysis in plans for oil and gas development, including a recently filed case against another BLM resource management plan in Utah.”
[E&E News, 10/9/19]
http://bit.ly/310OQ1i
How Elizabeth Warren would address environmental justice: “Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
today released an environmental justice plan to help disadvantaged and minority communities deal with pollution and the natural disasters that are worsened by climate change. Warren's plan calls for cleaning up pollution that disproportionately affects low-income
communities, building wealth and improving access to health care for affected areas, and helping at-risk areas adapt to global warming. Her plan leans heavily on the Green New Deal, which calls for a rewiring of the U.S. economy as part of the effort to fight
climate change. Warren‘s plan calls for spending at least $1 trillion on vulnerable communities over the next decade to address the decades of pollution that has harmed low-income and minority communities. She would use the National Environmental Policy Act
and increase requirements that all federal agencies take carbon emissions into account when developing rules. She also called for improving maps of disadvantaged communities to better assess the risk of climate change-enhanced damage from threats like flooding
and wildfires. She would also instruct the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice to step up enforcement against polluters, with a particular emphasis on violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act. Warren also linked her environmental
justice plan to her green manufacturing strategy to clean up the industrial sector and help workers adapt to a clean energy economy. And the plan describes how implementing "Medicare for All" would help disadvantaged communities suffering from pollution by
improving access to health care.
[POLITICO, 10/9/19]
https://politi.co/2OzpPYA
Fight for quiet in Olympic National Park pits Navy versus nature: “What do the Navy’s unique
Growler jets have to do with one man’s mission to save silence? A self-described “sound tracker,” acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton claims fewer than 10 places in the U.S. remain free of noise pollution. He considers true quiet not an absence of sound, but
the complete removal of human-caused noise. “Silence is so important to me, because without silence I don’t think I’d even know who I was,” said Hempton on a recent afternoon in Washington’s Olympic National Forest, a place he considered one of the least noise-polluted
in the country… until recently. In recent years, air travel has increased over the park, drowning out some of its natural sounds. That includes an average 2,300 training flights a year by Boeing-made EA-18G Growlers, fighter jets built for electronic warfare.
It takes them only about ten minutes to fly past the rain forest from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, approximately 75 miles away. “We have a unique mission. We’re the only one that does it in the world,” said Commander David Harris, Commanding Officer for
the Electronic Attack Squadron at NAS Whidbey, the Navy’s only Growler training team. The stealthy planes contain electronic jammers that are used to scramble, confuse, and shut down enemy signals. They train in the Olympic Military Operations Areas, airspace
established by the Federal Aviation Administration in 1977.”
[My Northwest, 10/9/19]
http://bit.ly/2IBPdZW
Town seeks rationale for Snow King expansion alternatives: “Federal officials last week
released four potential blueprints for future development on Snow King Mountain, and in many ways they’re all essentially identical. Jackson officials want to know why. None of the options proposed by the Bridger-Teton National Forest departs drastically from
what the ski resort owners have already proposed, despite concerns of elected officials and the public. Some watchdogs have criticized the alternatives, but Tyler Sinclair, community development director for the town, said he’s giving the U.S. Forest Service
the benefit of the doubt. “They’ve vetted the pros and cons of any number of different alternatives,” he said, “but often the ultimate release of a document or plan doesn’t reflect that.” Sinclair has asked the Forest Service to explain its rationale for the
striking similarities, in the hope that that will reveal the logic behind its decision not to outline a more conservative approach to transforming the Town Hill. “It’s helpful for the community and electeds to see the journey that the Forest Service went through
to come up with what they did,” he said. Besides the customary “no action” option, all of the “alternatives” on the table seek to expand Snow King’s boundaries to the east and west essentially by the same amount. All options would permit a high-speed quad
lift on the undeveloped southern face and a summit gondola. Each course of action also allows for a zip line from Snow King’s summit, though routes down the hill vary. A longer, lower-grade road replacing the current summit road is also part of all the options.
Bridger-Teton Ski Area Administrator Sean McGinness said any significantly scaled-back or altered designs for the 7,808-foot-high hill overlooking town would make it challenging to meet the “purpose and need” of the resort updates.”
[Jackson Hole News & Guide, 10/9/19]
http://bit.ly/31594aB
Not Enough Grizzly Protection in Kootenai Timber Project: “A federal court judge ruled Thursday
that an additional Environmental Impact Statement is needed for the Pilgrim Creek Timber Sale Project in the Kootenai National Forest. The decision was made after research showed faulty road berms weren’t blocking motorized vehicles from entering grizzly bear
habitat in the Cabinet-Yaak. A request for summary judgement from the Alliance for the Wild Rockies was granted by U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy. The Alliance filed the lawsuit against the Kootenai National Forest Service in April of 2018. According
to the court order, “while the agency [Forest Service] considered bear disturbance and displacement, the actual effects analyzed were limited by its assumption that public use would be effectively restricted. “As argued by Alliance, that assumption has shown
false, making the ineffectiveness of the road closures a ‘significant new circumstance or information relevant to environmental concerns’ that was not previously considered.” The Forest Service’s Environmental Impact Statement for logging, which contains seven
pages of grizzly bear analysis, presumed no motorized vehicle access would occur behind berms in fragile grizzly bear habitat in the Cabinet-Yaak. But researchers conducted a survey of berm-closure effectiveness in the Kootenai National Forest in 2017 and
discovered there were numerous berms that failed to effectively prevent motorized access. “Photographs showed people were driving over and around the berms,” Mike Garrity, executive director for the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, said. “Regardless, the Forest
Service prepared a Supplemental Information Report in February of 2019 maintaining that additional National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Report was not necessary.”
[The Western News, 10/8/19]
http://bit.ly/2p0MlPr
Justin McCarthy
Communications Director, NEPA Campaign
The Partnership Project
1300 L St NW
Washington, DC 20005 USA
C: (540) 312-3797
E: jmccarthy@partnershipproject.org
The Partnership Project, a registered 501 (c) (3) non-profit, is a collaborative effort of over 20 of the country’s most influential advocacy organizations, including Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, League of Conservation Voters,
Earthjustice, and Natural Resources Defense Council.