Bush Reviews Key Environmental Law

By: Matthew Daly

The Bush administration is reviewing a landmark environmental law both reviled and praised because it requires lengthy studies before foresters cut a tree or developers start to dig.

White House officials say they want to modernize the 32-year-old law they blame for bureaucratic gridlock, but environmentalists fear it's a move to roll back crucial protections.

"Given this administration's past record on the environment, it's hard to imagine they are up to any good", said Maria Weidner of Earthjustice, an environmental law firm and advocacy group.

At issue is the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. Signed by President Nixon in 1970, the law requires developers, loggers, and others to describe in detail the impact a proposed project will have on the environment and come up with measures to minimize them.

A typical environmental impact statement includes detailed analysis by several federal agencies and extensive public comment.

Environmentalists consider it a fundamental law and rely on it to limit development on public land and block projects that threaten endangered species, including the spotted owl and steelhead trout. But critics say the law has burgeoned into a swamp of regulations and logistical hoops that stall federal action for years at a time.

"The simple fact is, (NEPA) has been used and abused by those who want to obstruct activities" such as logging in national forests, said Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group.

"As more and more agencies can weigh in and make stipulations and requirements, the process in many cases has become much more costly and has proved to be an obstacle to development", said Darren McKinney, spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers.

The review was launched last month by the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which says the law needs to be updated after three decades of being essentially unchanged. A nine-member task force is accepting public comment through Sept. 23 and expects to issue a report by early next year.

"We're not out to gut" the law, task force director Horst Greczmiel said. "We're out there to try to make it better. In common parlance, we want to cut the fat if there's fat out there and we want to beef up the beef."

Environmentalists are not convinced. They point to the President's Aug. 22 proposal to step up logging in national forests to prevent wildfires as an example of the kind of changes the administration wants to pursue under a watered-down NEPA. A key element of the plan would make it more difficult for environmentalists to appeal federal decisions that allow logging.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), pushed a similar measure in July to exempt some logging in his home state from the law to prevent wildfires. Republicans are seizing on Daschle's maneuver to underscore the need for change.

Environmentalists also worry about a recent Justice Department decision that NEPA and other U.S. environmental laws do not apply in waters more than three miles off U.S. shores. The policy would give less protection to whales, dolphins, and other marine life, environmentalists say. It also could bar lawsuits such as one recently filed over the Navy's use of ocean sonar, which environmentalists say can harm some marine mammals.

"On every level in every area they are taking steps backward instead of forward", said Weidner, citing administration proposals to roll back protections for some endangered species, increase use of public lands, and change clean air and water standards.

While the forest plan has attracted more media attention, the NEPA review is potentially even farther reaching, environmentalists say.

"Efforts to waive laws like NEPA are particularly egregious", said Amy Mall, a forest policy specialist for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "NEPA was intended to... balance competing public needs by increasing public input."

But some Western lawmakers call the review long overdue. Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID), said he hopes the task force "will bring some sanity and common sense back to the process". Environmental review has "come to represent nothing but gridlock in the West", he added.

Environmentalists are gearing up for a fight. "More people than ever before care about the environment, and people want to get involved in governmental actions that are going to affect environmental quality", said Chris Wood, director of public lands and watershed programs for Trout Unlimited.