Chattooga Conservancy • Defenders of Wildlife • Georgia ForestWatch • Sierra Club • Southern Environmental Law Center • The Wilderness Society Via U.S. Mail and Electronic Mail Ms. Betty Jewett January 10, 2020 Forest Supervisor ATTN: Stephanie Israel Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest 1755 Cleveland Highway Gainesville, GA 30501 [email protected] [email protected] RE: Foothills Landscape Project Draft EA Comments Dear Ms. Jewett: Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Foothills Landscape Project Draft Environmental Assessment (“Draft EA”). Please accept these comments on behalf of the Chattooga Conservancy, Defenders of Wildlife, Georgia ForestWatch, Sierra Club, Southern Environmental Law Center, and The Wilderness Society. As you know, many of us have participated in the process to develop the Foothills Landscape Project (“Foothills Project” or the “Project”) from the very beginning. We have attended nearly every public meeting, field trip, workshop, and symposium. We submitted comments at every formal and informal opportunity and we participated in the agency’s online discussion forum. Every time we saw a problem, we named it; every time we could offer support, we did. We have done everything the agency has asked of us even when we questioned the value in it. We continue to do that in this letter, recommending ways to improve the various proposed treatments even though we are deeply troubled by your approach to implementing those treatments. The staff of the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest (“the Chattahoochee” or “the Forest”) has clearly put significant time and energy into this project, which we greatly appreciate. But they are being told to force a square peg through a round hole – and its shows. As a result, these comments are overwhelmingly critical of the analysis in the Draft EA but they are certainly not critical of the staff or the effort they have put forward. We know the agency can complete sufficient analysis; we have seen it do so before. Its flawed pursuit of condition-based management has led it far afield here. 1 Every major concern raised in this letter has been brought to your attention previously, most of them over two years ago. We paired our concerns with suggested resolutions that would allow the agency to expeditiously pursue its goals, including, in the spirit of partnership, goals we do not share. Regrettably, the Forest Service has wholly disregarded our core suggestions. The Draft EA is rife with errors stemming from the same fundamental problems we have been pointing out to you for years. If this project is delayed because the agency has to take extra time to resolve these problems, it is not because we have not been exceedingly upfront about our concerns. What should we have done differently to bring these concerns to your attention? We too have invested significant time and energy in this process with the hope that it would succeed. You are of course free to ignore us but do not expect us to stop raising these concerns. We can have different opinions but our concerns are not “nonsense.”1 With this single project, the agency is proposing in 20% of the acreage of the Chattahoochee National Forest more logging than occurred from 2009-2019 on the Chattahoochee, Cherokee, George Washington-Jefferson, and Pisgah-Nantahala National Forests combined.2 This is on top of 50,000 acres of prescribed burning,3 up to 74,500 acres of herbicide application,4 untold “new temporary” road construction,5 potential undisclosed changes to over 100 miles of trails,6 over 350 miles of new bulldozed fire lines,7 and converting wood to chips on potentially 80,000 acres.8 The list does not stop there. These activities will affect endangered and threatened species,9 wetlands,10 cultural resources,11 a Wild and Scenic River,12 and Inventoried Roadless Areas.13 The proposal is “not constrained by a time limit”14 and the “pace and scale” of work is predicted to remain the same15 as the agency's present work on the Forest. At that rate, it will take more than 40 years to complete. Yet the agency has not proposed any 1 See Attachment 1. 2 See Southern Appalachian Project Analysis, included as Attachment 2. 3 Draft EA, App’x B. 4 Vegetation Report, AP7. 5 Soil Report, 22. 6 Draft EA, App’x B. 7 Soil Report, 32. 8 Aquatic Resource Report, 25. 9 See Terrestrial Wildlife Resources Report, Aquatic Resources Report, Botanical and Rare Communities Report. 10 Botanical and Rare Communities Report, 12. 11 See Cultural Resources Report. 12 See Draft EA, 70; Draft EA Maps 15-17. 13 See Inventoried Roadless Areas Report. 14 Scoping Summary Report, 11. 15 See Attachment 1 (Deciding officer: “As far as implementation, the pace and scale will be the same”). 2 specific locations for the work, just general concepts that will be pursued somewhere within a 157,000-acre area. The agency hosted multiple public meetings to discuss these general concepts, and we appreciate that effort. But we have repeatedly raised concerns about the approach being implemented at these meetings and questioned whether the meetings were moving towards any specific conclusion.16 The approach taken in the Draft EA – general concepts with no specificity, no timeline, and no NEPA-mandated public participation – is exactly what we spent all of that energy trying to avoid. The agency seems to expect the public to trade away its right to participate in decades of site-specific decision making—a right it is guaranteed under the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”)—in exchange for a handful of meetings where concepts behind work already occurring on the forest were discussed.17 Surely the agency sees that is a terrible trade for the public. We understand the agency is promising to offer once-a-year meetings with the Districts as they implement this project, as well as the possibility of field trips. But NEPA defines meaningful public participation as requiring the agency to take a hard look at the impacts of its action, disclose its analysis to the public, respond to public concerns, and consider alternative methods of achieving its goals. Many of our concerns would evaporate if the agency would just commit to offer public participation opportunities under NEPA when it proposes site-specific actions in the future. Its refusal to do so forces us to conclude that the agency will not offer that caliber of opportunity. As we explain in these comments, that is illegal. For a steward of public lands, it is also wrong. As the agency’s first Chief said, “consult[ing] the public … is what you are hired for.”18 After two years of little to no public involvement, the agency found it imperative to offer this comment period over holidays at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020, which it knew was the hardest time of year for the public to devote attention to these issues. Numerous requests19 from the public to delay the comment period until after the holidays were denied.20 That does not inspire confidence that the agency is committed to widening public understanding. Nor does the agency’s attempt to satisfy NEPA by offering a single opportunity for public participation, now, for a decades-long project with no site-specific proposals. If you are not trying to remove 16 See, e.g., Patrick Hunter, SELC, phone call with Angie Bell, USFS Foothills Team Leader (Jan. 19, 2017); Letter from Chattooga Conservancy to Chattahoochee National Forest (March 19, 2017); Letter from Georgia ForestWatch et al. to Angie Bell, USFS Foothills Team Leader (June 9, 2017); Patrick Hunter, SELC, phone call with Betty Jewett, Angie Bell, and Nelson Gonzalez-Sullow, USFS (Aug. 15, 2017); Georgia ForestWatch et al. Comments on Draft Restoration Plan (Sept. 28, 2017); Letter from Chattooga Conservancy et al. to Angie Bell, USFS Foothills Team Leader (Oct. 16, 2017); Meeting at the Forest Supervisor’s Office to discuss the Foothills Project’s approach to NEPA compliance (Nov. 14, 2017); Letter from Georgia ForestWatch et al. to Betty Jewett, Forest Supervisor (Dec. 22, 2017); Letter from Georgia ForestWatch et al. to Stephanie Israel, USFS Foothills Team Leader (Feb. 1, 2019); numerous additional personal communications. 17 See Attachment 1 (Deciding officer: “the work we are proposing is work we have been doing for years”). 18 Gifford Pinchot’s 11 Maxims. 19 See, e.g., Letter from Chattooga Conservancy, et al. to Betty Jewett (Dec. 6, 2019). 20 See, e.g., Letter from Betty Jewett to Patrick Hunter (Dec. 13, 2019). 3 the public from the process of making site-specific decisions, why not alter your approach? We have long suggested other ways to increase the pace of work on the forest without cutting the public out. Our repeated calls for meaningful public participation have not been calls for more meetings. We can meet until we are blue in the face but that is not a replacement for meaningful disclosure of critical information: specifically, what the agency is proposing to do, when, how, and where. We do not ask for this information as pointless specificity; these decisions, which the Forest Service wants to defer until a time when the public can no longer participate through NEPA, are consequential. Where, how, and when project activities occur (and how rapidly) matters immensely. The same actions in different locations often cause very different environmental harms in a landscape as complex, both ecologically and culturally, as the Foothills area. In such a complex area, site-specific information is the foundation of any public understanding of the actions envisioned under this project, but the agency has not provided it in the Draft EA or elsewhere.