BLM: Agency bids to speed land-use planning, address larger landscapes
Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
Published: Thursday, April 24, 2014
The Bureau of Land Management is looking for ways to revamp the land-use plans that govern energy development, wildlife protections and recreation on the agency's roughly 250 million acres of public lands.
The effort -- dubbed "Planning 2.0" -- could mark a major shift in how BLM revises and maintains roughly 160 resource management plans (RMPs) that dictate nearly every decision the agency makes in the West.
The agency wants to make RMPs more dynamic by ensuring that they are updated more frequently and are more conducive to landscape-level planning and mitigation required under an October 2013 order signed by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.
BLM last modified its planning regulations in 2005 in a rule designed to enhance the role of state, local and tribal governments in crafting land-use plans.
"We are starting a conversation about how to best move our planning towards a landscape-scale approach while making it a faster and more durable process," BLM spokeswoman Celia Boddington said.
The agency revises its RMPs roughly every 15 years under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976. The plans cover millions of acres and can cost millions of dollars each to revise. They dictate which areas will be made available for oil and gas leasing, which will be managed in their primitive state and which will be left open to motorized recreation, among many other things.
But officials from Republican and Democratic administrations say the process is costly and inefficient and sometimes lags behind ecological and economic changes. The RMPs currently take up to several years to revise.
"It's taking longer and costing us more to get them done," BLM spokesman Mitch Snow said. "The idea is to make that process more efficient, more effective."
The agency plans to revise portions of its planning regulations, which will trigger formal public comment and review periods under the National Environmental Policy Act. It also intends to update its planning handbook so field personnel can more effectively plan across jurisdictions and landscapes.
Such efforts could improve how BLM manages for wide-ranging species like the greater sage grouse, a species that is a candidate for protection under the Endangered Species Act. BLM is currently in the process of amending up to 98 RMPs in nearly a dozen Western states under 15 separate environmental impact statements in order to enhance protections for the bird.
"How can we better plan across boundaries?" Snow asked. "It's not going to be easily done."
Snow said the planning changes were first recommended by an internal team assembled by former BLM Director Bob Abbey about five years ago to explore a range of improvements to BLM's management.
The agency in the coming days or weeks is expected to seek public input on how the RMP process could be improved and made more accessible to the general public.
It said it wants to find ways to keep plans current through amendments and regular maintenance and to conduct planning at multiple scales.
There could be a lot at stake for the conservation groups, energy companies, recreation advocates and local governments that help BLM craft its RMPs. Most are reserving judgment until more details are announced.
"It is a little amorphous," said a conservationist who asked not to be named. "It's kind of an 'everything to everybody' thing."
Industry group sees 'red flags'
BLM has already begun to incorporate landscape-level planning through its rapid eco-regional assessments and the regional mitigation plans for commercial-scale solar projects in the Southwest, the conservationist said.
Earlier this month, Jewell unveiled the outlines of a new landscape-level mitigation strategy across millions of acres of federal land that she said is designed to take the department's agencies away from narrowly focused, project-by-project assessments (Greenwire, April 10).
But some conservationists are wary of BLM seeking changes to its planning regulations, a process that can be time-consuming and controversial in its own right. They argue that BLM could achieve its landscape goals through internal updates to its planning handbook, which require no NEPA reviews.
"I'm a little worried they'll bite off more than they can chew," one conservationist said.
The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, a Washington, D.C.-based conservation group that advocates for sportsmen and women, said the Planning 2.0 proposal is an opportunity for BLM to recognize the value of public lands to hunters and anglers and migratory species like mule deer.
RMPs should take stock of important wildlife migration corridors and critical stopovers -- places where animals pause for food and rest -- said Ed Arnett, who directs the partnership's Center for Responsible Energy Development. For example, the RMPs should be informed by studies such as one released this week by the University of Wyoming that identified what is believed to be the longest mule deer migration in the United States in southwest Wyoming, he said (Greenwire, April 22).
"We believe BLM should incorporate explicit language into their handbooks to identify and protect those areas," he said.
Oil and gas officials are wary of the changes, arguing that BLM is already busy crafting controversial rules governing hydraulic fracturing and methane emissions for drillers and is pursuing master leasing plans within RMPs that are expected to curtail development.
"It raises some red flags," said Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of government and public affairs for the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance, who said yesterday that she was unaware of the proposed planning changes.
"We've just seen so much churn at BLM these last few years," she said. "At a time of constrained budgets, they're spending more and more time redoing plans, redoing policies. I don't know when they have time to go out in the field and manage what they already have."
Rebecca Watson, an attorney in Denver who served as the Interior assistant secretary who oversees BLM during the George W. Bush administration, said more frequent RMP revisions could be taxing for the local governments and stakeholders that take time to participate in BLM's planning process.
"Is it realistic BLM will get funding for more frequent revisions and counties and the public will be able to participate in a meaningful way?" she asked. "What is the problem they're trying to fix?"
'Very ambitious'
But other former Bush administration officials acknowledged that the RMP process is out of date.
"In a resource-starved agency, the existing process right now I would actually describe as completely broken," said a former official, who asked not to be named. "It is in need of a very significant overhaul to make it more efficient."
For BLM, crafting a 15-year planning window for oil and gas development and sage grouse protections is sometimes unpractical.
Prices of energy commodities can change rapidly, incentives for renewable developers can wax and wane, and litigation with environmental groups can set unexpected deadlines for endangered species decisions, as was the case with the grouse.
At the same time, industry will view the changes with caution, the official said. More frequent RMP revisions could cloud the regulatory horizon for companies whose projects are planned decades ahead.
"It sounds like it would be a very ambitious process," the official said. "If the intent is greater efficiency in decisionmaking, that would be a worthy cause."
