The National Environmental Policy Act and the USDA Forest Service: Where We Agree, Where We Disagree, and Why

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Forrest Fleischman ◽  
Cory Struthers ◽  
Gwen Arnold ◽  
Michael J Dockry ◽  
Tyler Scott
Keyword(s):  
Land Management ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
National Environmental Policy Act ◽  
Usda Forest Service ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Comment ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
National Environmental

Abstract In this article, we respond to a critique of our earlier work examining the USDA Forest Service’s (USFS’s) planning processes. We appreciate that our critics introduce new data to the discussion of USFS planning. Further data integration is a promising path to developing a deeper understanding of agency activities. Our critics’ analysis largely supports our original claims. Our most important difference is in our conceptualization of the planning process’s relationship to agency goals. Although our critics conceive of the USFS’s legally prescribed planning processes as a barrier to land management activities, we believe that public comment periods, scientific analysis, and land management activities are tools the agency uses to achieve its goals of managing land in the public interest. Study Implications: The USDA Forest Service’s current planning process has been critiqued as a barrier to accomplishing land management activities, but it is also an important tool for insuring science-based management and understanding public values and interests that the agency is legally bound to uphold.

Legislative Confrontation of Groupthink in US Natural Resource Agencies

1988 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
James J. Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resource ◽  
Professional Organizations ◽  
National Environmental Policy Act ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Usda Forest Service ◽  
The Public ◽  
Amenity Values ◽  
American Society ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
National Environmental

Within the apparent strength of proud, successful, cohesive agencies are often found characteristics that inhibit their ability to adapt successfully in an environment of change. Organizations can be so successful that they feel invulnerable to public petition. They can stereotype, and dismiss as uninformed ‘outsiders’ or biased trouble-makers, any others who criticize them. Janis (1967) has described such organizational tendencies as groupthink behaviour—where proud and successful, professional organizations such as the USDA-Forest Service (USFS), consider themselves superior to the public, and where any external criticism is filtered, rationalized, and stereotyped to minimize the need for organizational introspection and change.This article looks at how groupthink tendencies were a normal, understandable part of USFS behaviour in the 1950–60s—and how these tendencies inhibited its adaptation to a post-industrial American society that was increasingly concerned with forest recreational and amenity values. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA, 1970) was the first of several laws that directly confronted the utilitarian, developmental values and the groupthink tendencies in federal natural resource agencies. Responding to NEPA (1970) and other legislative and policy changes of that era, the USFS has latterly become a much more sexually and professionally diverse agency, that is more open to public input than formerly. This volte-face has reduced the probability of groupthink operating in the agency, and consequently improved the latter's prospects of a useful and equitable future.

Educated Guesses: Health Risk Assessment in Environmental Impact Statements

1990 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 399-427
Author(s):  
Pamela D. Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Disease Risk ◽  
National Environmental Policy Act ◽  
The Public ◽  
Environmental Impact Statements ◽  
National Environmental ◽  
Scientific Tool ◽  
Predicted Risk

Environmental pollution threatens public health. The search for solutions has advanced the frontiers of science and law. Efforts to protect the environment and public health begin with describing potential adverse consequences of human activities and characterizing the predicted risk. The National Environmental Policy Act requires the preparation of environmental impact statements to describe the effects of proposed federal projects and provide information for agency decisionmakers and the public.Risks to public health are particularly difficult to quantify because of uncertainty about the relation between exposure to environmental contamination and disease. Risk assessment is the current scientific tool to present estimates of risk. The methodology has created controversy, however, when underlying assumptions and uncertainties are not clearly presented. Critics caution that the methodology is vulnerable to bias. This Note evaluates the use of risk assessment in the environmental impact statement process and offers recommendations to ensure informed decisions.

scholarly journals Conceptualizing Testbed Planning: Urban Planning in the Intersection between Experimental and Public Sector Logics

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lina Berglund-Snodgrass ◽  
Dalia Mukhtar-Landgren
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Governance Structure ◽  
Formal Structure ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
The Public ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Experimental Logic

Urban planning is, in many countries, increasingly becoming intertwined with local climate ambitions, investments in urban attractiveness and “smart city” innovation measures. In the intersection between these trends, urban experimentation has developed as a process where actors are granted action space to test innovations in a collaborative setting. One arena for urban experimentation is urban testbeds. Testbeds are sites of urban development, in which experimentation constitutes an integral part of planning and developing the area. This article introduces the notion of testbed planning as a way to conceptualize planning processes in delimited sites where planning is combined with processes of urban experimentation. We define testbed planning as a multi-actor, collaborative planning process in a delimited area, with the ambition to generate and disseminate learning while simultaneously developing the site. The aim of this article is to explore processes of testbed planning with regard to the role of urban planners. Using an institutional logics perspective we conceptualize planners as navigating between a public sector—and an experimental logic. The public sector logic constitutes the formal structure of “traditional” urban planning, and the experimental logic a collaborative and testing governance structure. Using examples from three Nordic municipalities, this article explores planning roles in experiments with autonomous buses in testbeds. The analysis shows that planners negotiate these logics in three different ways, combining and merging them, separating and moving between them or acting within a conflictual process where the public sector logic dominates.

Contesting ‘Sustainability' in Infrastructure Planning

2010 ◽  
pp. 213-230
Author(s):  
Kuniko Shibata ◽  
Paul Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Community Groups ◽  
Infrastructure Planning ◽  
Sustainable Infrastructure ◽  
The Public ◽  
Sustainability Concept

Sustainable infrastructure demands that declared principles of sustainability are enacted in the processes of its implementation. However, a problem arises if the concept of sustainability is not thoroughly scrutinized in the planning process. The public interest could be undermined when the rhetoric of sustainability is used to substantiate a proposed plan. This chapter analyses the manifestation of sustainable development in the Boggo Road Busway Plan in Brisbane, Australia against the sustainability agenda set in the South East Queensland Regional and Transport Plans. Although the construction of the Busway was intended to improve public transport access in the region, its implementation drew significant environmental concerns. Local community groups contested the ‘sustainability’ concept deployed in Queensland’s infrastructure planning. Their challenges resulted in important concessions in the delivery of the Busway plan. This case demonstrates that principles of sustainable infrastructure should be measurable and that local communities be better informed in order to fulfill the public interest in regional planning.

scholarly journals Regulating Off-Road: The California Desert and Collaborative Environmentalism

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-343
Author(s):  
Keith Makoto Woodhouse
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Federal Agencies ◽  
National Environmental Policy Act ◽  
The West ◽  
Road Racing ◽  
Federal Administration ◽  
National Environmental

Historians often understand the 1970s and 1980s in terms of a declining New Deal order, in which an antistatist right as well as a conflicted relationship between public interest movements and administrative authorities undermined the notion of an effective federal government. Nowhere was the erosion of federal administration seemingly more apparent than in the West. An examination of the regulation of off-road racing in the California desert, focusing on everyday administration rather than on elections and lawsuits, reveals how federal agencies actually worked more collaboratively and productively with different interest groups than familiar narratives about these polarized decades would suggest. Contrary to depictions of federal agencies as administrating from afar, and of environmental organizations as overly litigious and out of touch, regulatory work in the California desert happened locally and through relationships shaped by new laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act.

Biotechnology, State Economic Development, and Interest Politics: a Troublesome Trinity

1991 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-250
Author(s):  
William P. Browne
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Private Interest ◽  
Strategic Planning Process ◽  
The Public ◽  
Logical Reason ◽  
State Economic Development

When finally U.S. political archives are reviewed comprehensively and definitively, one confusing point will still linger unresolved: were the artisans of politics crafting policy in response to visions of a public or a private interest? Portz and Eisinger's comparative analysis of state economic development efforts, with hopes pegged on biotechnology, grapples with that distinction at least by implication. Their instructive article needs revisiting - - and their useful findings and conclusions need follow-up research — because there is logical reason to fear that the strategic planning process is no more or less directed toward the public interest than is private interest advocacy.

Reconciling Transportation Corridor Preservation and National Environmental Policy Act Process: Evaluation of North Carolina Phased Environmental Approach

1997 ◽  
Vol 1601 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann E. Lackey
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Environmental Policy ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
National Environmental Policy Act ◽  
North Carolina Department ◽  
The North ◽  
Transportation Projects ◽  
Transportation Corridor ◽  
National Environmental ◽  
National Environmental Policy

In recent years, transportation agencies have become increasingly interested in using corridor preservation to protect future highway locations from development. However, the preparation of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) documents in the late stages of the transportation planning process makes uses of these measures difficult. In an attempt to make the corridor preservation and NEPA processes more compatible, the North Carolina Department of Transportation and FHWA have developed the phased environmental approach, an environmental review process that allows early selection of highway location and makes the use of protection techniques feasible and effective. Although the phased approach has been used in several pilot projects and is intended to become a part of the state’s standard planning process, the procedure’s compliance with the requirements of NEPA has not been evaluated. The compliance of the phased environmental approach with NEPA is examined. Several disparities are identified that place the new procedure in violation of the statute. Considering these problems, three options for modifying the phased approach to provide for compliance with NEPA are identified. These options are compared on the basis of their capacity to provide those benefits offered by the phased approach. A tiered environmental impact statement (EIS) is determined to be the best alternative to the phased environmental approach. This option provides the same benefits as the phased approach while remaining consistent with NEPA. Although several potential problems have been cited regarding the practicality of using a tiered EIS in transportation projects, these concerns may not apply in many cases.

Contesting ‘Sustainability‘ in Infrastructure Planning

2011 ◽  
pp. 1539-1557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuniko Shibata ◽  
Paul Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Community Groups ◽  
Infrastructure Planning ◽  
Sustainable Infrastructure ◽  
The Public ◽  
Sustainability Concept

Sustainable infrastructure demands that declared principles of sustainability are enacted in the processes of its implementation. However, a problem arises if the concept of sustainability is not thoroughly scrutinized in the planning process. The public interest could be undermined when the rhetoric of sustainability is used to substantiate a proposed plan. This chapter analyses the manifestation of sustainable development in the Boggo Road Busway Plan in Brisbane, Australia against the sustainability agenda set in the South East Queensland Regional and Transport Plans. Although the construction of the Busway was intended to improve public transport access in the region, its implementation drew significant environmental concerns. Local community groups contested the ‘sustainability’ concept deployed in Queensland’s infrastructure planning. Their challenges resulted in important concessions in the delivery of the Busway plan. This case demonstrates that principles of sustainable infrastructure should be measurable and that local communities be better informed in order to fulfill the public interest in regional planning.

Environmental assessment for wastewater reclamation and reuse projects

1996 ◽  
Vol 33 (10-11) ◽  
pp. 473-486
Author(s):  
Nick Kontos ◽  
Takashi Asano
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Wastewater Reclamation ◽  
National Environmental Policy Act ◽  
Wastewater Reclamation And Reuse ◽  
National Environmental ◽  
Specific Project

The purpose of an environmental review and assessment is to incorporate environmental considerations into the planning process. Prior to the selection of a specific project alternative, a thorough and unbiased analysis of the environmental impacts of every reasonable project alternative should be made. It is intended that environmental concerns be considered on an equal basis with engineering feasibility, economics, and social considerations in wastewater reclamation and reuse. This paper discusses the “procedural” and “substantive” provisions of environmental law in the United States; National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and more specifically the law in California; California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The procedural aspects require the preparation of an environmental document such as an environmental impact statement (EIS) or an environmental impact report (EIR) and the substantive provisions require mitigation of harmful environmental impacts. Suggested outlines of the content of an EIS and an EIR are provided. Specific impacts associated with wastewater reclamation projects such as groundwater impacts and growth inducing impacts are discussed. This paper is intended to be a useful tool for the planning of any wastewater reclamation and reuse project. Two examples are given for this purpose.

scholarly journals Values-Led Planning Approach in Spatial Development: A Methodology

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 461
Author(s):  
Armands Auzins ◽  
Uchendu Eugene Chigbu
Keyword(s):  
Land Management ◽  
Spatial Planning ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Spatial Development ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
Community Leaders ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
The Public ◽  
Planning Approach ◽  
Development Practice

The scope of land management, which includes spatial planning as an activity in the public domain, demands that a planning process that is based on publicly or societally acceptable values is a matter of necessity. This study proposes a methodology for introducing a values-led planning (VLP) approach in spatial development. The motivation of the study is to promote the embrace of assessed values in planning. The study draws from issues evoked in various topical studies on European comparative perspectives. By way of argumentation, the study makes three relevant contributions to the literature and spatial planning and development practice. First, it presents and discusses the essential elements required in the design of methodology. In this way, it figuratively depicts VLP as a consequence of interactions between four key elements of spatial planning. Second, it proposes an actual methodology for action. Third, it discusses the applicability of the methodology. The proposed methodology would be useful for planners, including public authorities, land managers, and community leaders, who make socio-spatial decisions in land management and related activities.

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