For nearly 50 years, the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, has been an empowering legal tool that allows communities to defend themselves and their environments from dangerous, rushed or poorly planned federal and industry projects. The law ensures that your community has a say when special interests want to build a toxic waste incinerator in your neighborhood or a dangerous pipeline next to your child’s school.
Now, the United States Forest Service, under pressure from the timber and mining industries, is considering putting our nation’s oldest and most important environmental law on the chopping block. This decision could result in massive logging, drilling and other extractive projects being rammed through without proper oversight, accountability or input from people like you.
But under the very law that special interests would like to gut, the Forest Service must solicit public input on their plan to undercut their NEPA process. Tell them that this won’t be the last time you have a say in how your public lands are managed.
To send the following petition, click here.
Dear Chief Tooke,
I urge you to reject any proposal to weaken the Forest Service’s National Environmental Policy Act [NEPA] process, and keep the law as it is. NEPA ensures that our communities have a say in major federal decisions that affect our public lands, health and safety. It is often the only way for people to voice their concerns about the consequences federal projects will have for their communities and demonstrate how local expertise can improve them. Our communities are safer and healthier because of NEPA.
While some argue that environmental analysis required by NEPA takes too long and results in bulky, unhelpful documents, such outcomes are caused by funding, staffing and training issues wholly unrelated to following the law. Instead of amending its NEPA regulations, the Forest Service should fight for more funds, personnel and education to ensure effective environmental review and public participation.
The Forest Service manages 193 million fragile acres of our national forests and grasslands from Puerto Rico to Alaska, from lands close to cities to remote wilderness. The Forest Service should conduct thorough analysis and weigh the irreversible consequences of each project the agency considers. These are serious decisions that deserve the “hard look” at environmental impacts that NEPA requires.
Robust public engagement and sound science are essential to informed decision making. This is, and must remain, the public’s right under NEPA. When we take the time to understand each other, we can jointly develop solutions to manage our public lands. Undercutting our founding environmental law in the name of “streamlining” is not and never will be the answer.
I urge you to reject any proposal to weaken the Forest Service’s National Environmental Policy Act [NEPA] process, and keep the law as it is. NEPA ensures that our communities have a say in major federal decisions that affect our public lands, health and safety. It is often the only way for people to voice their concerns about the consequences federal projects will have for their communities and demonstrate how local expertise can improve them. Our communities are safer and healthier because of NEPA.
While some argue that environmental analysis required by NEPA takes too long and results in bulky, unhelpful documents, such outcomes are caused by funding, staffing and training issues wholly unrelated to following the law. Instead of amending its NEPA regulations, the Forest Service should fight for more funds, personnel and education to ensure effective environmental review and public participation.
The Forest Service manages 193 million fragile acres of our national forests and grasslands from Puerto Rico to Alaska, from lands close to cities to remote wilderness. The Forest Service should conduct thorough analysis and weigh the irreversible consequences of each project the agency considers. These are serious decisions that deserve the “hard look” at environmental impacts that NEPA requires.
Robust public engagement and sound science are essential to informed decision making. This is, and must remain, the public’s right under NEPA. When we take the time to understand each other, we can jointly develop solutions to manage our public lands. Undercutting our founding environmental law in the name of “streamlining” is not and never will be the answer.
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