Originally Posted By: RoguePhotonic
Wow! I thought it was bad enough everything we had to go through to work on the trail as it is! This is bad enough news for everyone but worse for the Forest Service in general. They are so under funded and projects are hard enough to get done already!

I'm wondering how this is going to effect the work around Reds Meadow with thousands of trees down?

The Red's Meadow fuels reduction project is actually a good example of the kind of project they were able to do without any public input required whatsoever, no comments, no possibility of appeal. This is a fairly significant project that will affect recreation access and could muck up the area if they don't do it right. It seems reasonable to me they should put this before the public, but it should be a streamlined process to avoid delaying the project. They posted scoping documents but the comment period just ended March 23. You have to know where to look to find the documents anymore here's a link to the project documents.

Due to this new court ruling, it seems they can still claim a categorical exemption for the Red's Meadow project, but they now have to notify the public, accept comments, and consider appeals if they happen. Before this ruling, they could just claim a CE and do the project without any public notice, review, or any possibility of appeal. The FS as an agency now needs to come up with new regulations about how this review process will take place when an exempted project or activity falls into this grey area where an EA or EIR is not required, but the work is part of a larger land management plan that was part of an EIR or EA. Hopefully they can keep the new process streamlined and scalable to minimize the extra paperwork, especially for small routine activities.

Because there are no established time limits for public review in this situation (as far as I can tell), I'm thinking they should be able to move forward with projects as the review is taking place. If they keep it a parallel process, it might not be that much of a burden. Maybe I'm just too optimistic, but I've seen these dire predictions get resolved time and again. It's like making sausage, it's an ugly process but you gotta eat breakfast somehow.