With only vague plans, Houston races to build new reservoir: "Half a year has passed since Hurricane Harvey overwhelmed this city with torrential rain, and its leaders are only beginning to plot how to protect the region's vital energy infrastructure and workforce. The most visible idea of all is a third flood-control reservoir, to be built somewhere west of the city at a cost as high as $500 million. The idea has garnered support from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), state and federal lawmakers, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, who leads the county commissioners. Some of the politicians think it could be planned and built in five to 10 years, even though most dams take far longer, now that the federal government has begun doling out tens of billions of dollars for hurricane relief. Flood control planners aren't as optimistic about the timeline, and they also caution that the idea hasn't been thoroughly studied. It's unclear, for instance, how much a potential reservoir on the outskirts of the metropolitan area would help with flooding in downtown Houston. And perhaps most importantly, building any kind of flood control in Houston's rapidly growing edges will be a race to acquire land before it can be developed into new neighborhoods. Houston's sprawl is spreading west at a fast clip, and developers are quickly grabbing tracts where a new reservoir could be built. Houston's existing flood control structures, the Addicks and Barker reservoirs, were built by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1940s about 20 miles west of the downtown area. Since then, much of the surrounding area has been converted to suburban neighborhoods and office parks, increasing the amount of water that flows into the lakes when it rains. When Harvey struck, the Army Corps was forced to release water from the two reservoirs for the first time during a major storm, to keep the dams from collapsing. Residents in West Houston say the problems at the dam worsened the flooding in their part of town. Throughout the Houston region, high water damaged 10 percent of the buildings and killed dozens of people. Researchers have warned that Houston has a higher chance of flooding in the future, as climate change causes sea levels to rise in the Gulf of Mexico and increases the frequency of torrential rains. State and local leaders say they want to rebuild Houston and other Gulf Coast communities to withstand stronger storms in the future. They also have said publicly that Houston's growth could come to a halt if would-be residents become too fearful of floods to move to the area. The Harris County Flood Control District, which oversees funding from a dedicated property tax, did a preliminary study in 2015 that found a way to reduce flooding in two critical waterways. A long, low barrier — more like a levee than a full-fledged dam — in the northwest corner of the county would temporarily halt floodwaters going into Buffalo Bayou, which snakes through downtown Houston to the Gulf of Mexico, and Cypress Creek, which flows from west to east across the northern edge of the metro area. The study concluded that the structure could cost $350 million to $500 million, said Matt Zeve, the flood district's director of operations. "You've got to take it with a grain of salt because hardly any engineering and no environmental permitting has been done, no land acquisition has been done," Zeve said. There are a number of other caveats, too. The Army Corps would be the best agency to build the dam, with the flood district as the local partner, since the project would affect the Army Corps' two existing reservoirs, Zeve said. However, bringing the Army Corps into the project would likely trigger a review under the National Environmental Policy Act, which would take three to five years, Zeve said. And that would have to happen before the Army Corps and local authorities could begin acquiring land.

[E&E News, 2/22/18] https://goo.gl/3dvwiW

Zinke grants industry wish list while shutting out the public: "The Department of the Interior, under Secretary Ryan Zinke, wants to stop the public from “interfering” with its ongoing efforts to hand control of America’s public lands over to commercial and industrial interests. According to a report finalized in September and leaked to the Washington Post last week, the department plans to eviscerate the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and explore other ways of clamping down on public involvement.  NEPA has long been a target of extractive industries seeking to exploit public resources for private profit because it requires federal agencies like the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to study the environmental effects of their proposals before taking action. If BLM opens public lands to oil and gas leasing, for instance, NEPA requires the agency to consider how exploration and drilling will affect wildlife habitat, endangered species, water quality, air quality, and aesthetics. Under NEPA, federal agencies must consider a full range of alternatives, including environmentally preferable ones. The agencies must also provide opportunities for public input, and then meaningfully respond to any input they receive. In short, NEPA requires a “look before you leap” approach to management. But extractive industries seeking to exploit America’s public lands would rather have the agencies “leap” recklessly toward highly profitable — and highly destructive — industrial development. It looks like they may get their way. The Interior Department’s leaked recommendations for “streamlining” NEPA read like an industry wish list. The recommendations would permit — and in some cases require — BLM to rubber-stamp actions like oil and gas leasing, livestock grazing, logging, mining, and large-scale deforestation, all without considering environmental consequences or public opinion. For example, the recommendations would effectively eliminate environmental analysis of “vegetation treatments” — a euphemistic term for large-scale deforestation projects, typically in the sensitive sagebrush habitats and pinyon-juniper woodlands of the arid West. BLM has been clearing pinyon and juniper from Western landscapes since the 1950s. The agency will often drag an anchor chain from a U.S. Navy battleship across the land, uprooting all native vegetation and leaving behind thousands of acres of bare ground. Initially, these deforestation projects sought to increase the land available to domestic livestock. More recently they have been re-branded as habitat restoration. However, there is no evidence that these so-called “treatments” improve wildlife habitat, and most of the available scientific literature shows that they do more harm than good. Nevertheless, the Interior Department wants to exempt “vegetation treatments” from NEPA, eliminating any environmental analysis, and any opportunity for public comment regarding these devastating projects. The department likewise seeks to log public forests, spray pesticides across public rangelands, and slaughter wild horses without any kind of formal deliberation or public oversight. All of these projects — and more — would be fast-tracked through the approval process and implemented without analysis."

[The Hill, 2/22/18] https://goo.gl/8mv4EF

Border Patrol Union Leader: Federal Land Regulations Endangering Lives: "The head of the Border Patrol union told a congressional panel that environmental regulations and laws protecting federally managed lands are hampering agents’ ability to do their jobs, while an environmental activist argued that the roads border enforcers want to cut through sensitive areas only open up new routes for smugglers. At a House Natural Resources Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing last week, Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) noted that while Customs and Border Protection has nabbed more than 100,000 border crossers along with seizing over 200,000 pounds of marijuana, 113 pounds of heroin, and 196 pounds of fentanyl over the past few months, “God only knows what we’ve really missed coming through our borders.” “While our agents spend time seeking and waiting for authorization from federal land managers to make sure environmental impacts are addressed, criminals trample through environmentally sensitive areas leaving tons of garbage and waste along their paths,” he said. “On federal border lands, it can take months or even years for Border Patrol to receive approval to maintain roads or install tactical infrastructure such as communications relays, video surveillance towers and radars.” The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review process, Westerman added, “can have a crippling effect on border security” due to regulatory delays. “Cartels and illegal immigrants don’t wait for environmental assessments, they don’t participate in Section 7 ESA consultations, and they don’t follow Wilderness Act restrictions,” he said. Ranking Member Donald McEachin (D-Va.) countered that the Homeland Security secretary “already has sole authority to waive all laws and legal requirements that potentially get in the way of building fences, walls and roads along the border.” “That means any law including our bedrock environmental, public health and safety laws can be totally ignored when it comes to building a fence or, worse, the president’s preposterous wall,” McEachin said. “If this sounds like an overreach of power, that’s because it is. In fact, it has been described as having greater reach than any other waiver authority in statute. Some legal experts have even deemed it unconstitutional.” The congressman said of the eight times DHS has used its waiver power, three have been in the past six months as “the people and wildlife that live along the border suffer the most” from “tossed aside” environmental laws."

[HS Today, 2/22/18] https://goo.gl/gWQHDQ

Yolo County files suit over planned Indian Health Service treatment center: "Yolo County has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Indian Health Service over a youth regional treatment facility on County Road 31, just a few miles east of Winters. The federal agency plans to break ground on the 32-bed treatment center this summer, providing culturally appropriate substance-abuse treatment to American Indian and Alaska-native youths on 12 acres of D-Q University, a two-year tribal college that stopped offering classes in 2005. Since the treatment center was first proposed seven years ago, county supervisors repeatedly have expressed concerns about flooding and drainage in that area as well as loss of agricultural land. But concern has been greatest over road safety, given the proposed facility’s location near a sharp curve in Road 31, a two-lane road between Davis and Winters. In a letter to the Indian Health Service two years ago, the board contended that drivers on Road 31 likely would be unaware of cars stopped in the main traffic lane waiting to turn left into the center immediately after the curve. “In addition, County Road 31 is east-west facing, meaning that those traveling eastbound in the morning can be blinded by the rising sun … unable to see cars stopped in the road wanting to turn into the facility,” the board wrote. The estimated 70 employees who will be working at the facility — not to mention other visitors to the center — would add 180 trips per day, the letter said, and those trips “so close to the County Road 31 curve (are) likely to have an impact on traffic and increase accidents.” Indeed, a traffic safety study completed last year recommended a left-turn lane for vehicles entering the facility from the eastbound lane of Road 31 as well as a right-turn pocket. The study found there would be an increased risk of rear-end collisions and T-bone crashes when drivers are entering or leaving the facility without those road improvements. With the Indian Health Service planning to move ahead with construction without road improvements, the county filed suit in federal court on Feb. 9, citing the agency’s “brazen disregard of the safety of Native American youth receiving treatment at the facility, IHS’s staff and the public.” The county argues that the Indian Health Service is violating the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to mitigate the road hazard. “IHS has justified its failure to complete a lawful NEPA process on the basis that it supposedly cannot build improvements needed to address the known traffic hazards due to restrictions imposed by the congressional appropriation for the project,” the lawsuit states. County supervisors repeatedly have expressed support for locating the treatment facility in Yolo County, but repeatedly have urged the Indian Health Service to mitigate their concerns. Because the treatment facility is a federal project on federal land, local and state zoning and environmental laws don’t apply, limiting the county’s authority over the project."

[Winters Express, 2/21/18] https://goo.gl/UzdGgp