Editorial: Process lacks protections

Saturday, Dec. 16, 2006 | 7:04 a.m.

The U.S. Forest Service no longer will assess environmental impacts in its long-term forest plans, which means whole areas could be marked for logging and other uses before it is known whether such projects will damage watersheds or animal habitat.

The Associated Press reports that the policy change was elicited in part by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned the Bush administration's 2005 changes to rules that had banned most logging in roadless areas of national forests. The court said that Bush's rule changes lacked the environmental assessment required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

The new rule still requires environmental reviews on a project-by-project basis. And Forest Service officials say that is enough. Assessing environmental impacts at the broader, long-range level doesn't result in any actual impacts - good or bad, they say - and the reviews double the amount of time it takes to create a long-range plan.

But removing the broader layer of review could have adverse environmental effects because federal officials use long-range plans to determine what portions of a forest should be open or closed to logging, off-road vehicles and other uses.

It is just like the Bush administration to opt for a planning method that relies on broad generalizations and doesn't sweat the details - especially when such details could restrict or prohibit logging because it could endanger wildlife habitat or the watersheds that protect our drinking water.

These new rules aren't an effort to make government more efficient. They are just another attempt by the Bush administration to limit the public's options for challenging the administration's ongoing assault on the nation's environmental protection laws.

With formal environmental reviews, long-range forest plans were taking up to seven years to complete. Perhaps the process could be streamlined. But there must be a balance between a seven-year review and no review at all. The Bush administration needs to be willing to find that balance.