It has been awhile since I have posted here but magix has asked me to cover for her today while she works on another project. This item from Capital Press seems newsworthy given the current issues being raised on MGx.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has given up defending its logging plans for western Oregon, but that doesn’t mean the legal fight is over.
The federal government has said environmental groups are right that its plan to double logging on 2.5 million acres of public land in the region violates the Endangered Species Act.
While BLM has thrown in the towel, timber industry groups continue to defend the Western Oregon Plan Revisions, known as WOPR.
The BLM is acknowledging defeat to sidestep a previous court ruling that prevented the agency from throwing out the plan, according to timber companies involved in lawsuits in Oregon and Washington, D.C.
“We do feel the federal government is trying to achieve the same outcome,” said Julie Weis, an attorney for timber companies, during a recent court hearing in Portland, Ore.
The WOPR was approved during the Bush administration but was withdrawn after the Obama administration came into power in 2009……Howell said there’s no sense in delaying a ruling in the case, since Douglas Timber Operator’s strategy of forcing BLM to retract its concession is unlikely to work.
“They’re asking for an extraordinary remedy,” he said. “I think it’s a very low possibility they’re going to be successful.”
For more on the lawsuit to force the Obama administration to double the harvest on federal timber lands read this Register Guard article from June 2011.
The ORC mining project is under the jurisdiction of the state and county. Federal involvement is minimal, and well below the point at which the NEPA process would be triggered.
Port of Coos Bay activities are also largely state and county related, with the current exception of the Jordan Cove LNG project and related dredging permits to be issued by the Corps of Engineers. As you are aware, the Jordan Cove project is essentially dead in its tracks because of gross deficiencies in FERC’s pathetic attempts to circumvent the NEPA process resulting in appeals by the State of Oregon, Citizens Against LNG, the Western Environmental Law Center, and other organizations.
Hope this helps, themguys..
Thank you Ron.
I have a question, these issues with the Port of Coos Bay and the ORC mining operations, were any of them vetted through the NEPA process?
Thanks.
Not only did the WOPR violate the Endangered Species Act, but it was also not in compliance with NEPA. The EIS for the WOPR was essentially a justification of a pre-conceived decision, rather than an objective analysis documenting a decision which blended environmental, social, and economic concerns in a transparent process as the regulations require.
The Obama adminstration had no choice but to abandon the WOPR as it was a sure loser if challenged in court on NEPA grounds.