California sues federal government over environment (again).

Articles — By forcechange on March 2, 2008 2:30 am

The U.S. Forest Service’s plan to open half a million acres of California wilderness to roads and oil drilling has spurred a lawsuit from the state. This comes on the heels of litigation between the two parties over the EPA’s preemption of California’s more stringent fuel efficiency laws. Specifically, this new lawsuit claims that the Forest Service violated federal law by not properly informing the state of potential environmental impacts from the proposal and for failing to work with the state’s laws and policies, which have banned this type of road construction since 2006.

While it is not apparent to us which party has a stronger legal ground, this is another example of a state attempting to provide pro-environment leadership where the federal government appears to be failing. It is unclear how much the Bush administration has played a role in crafting the Forest Service’s policy here, but it is indisputable that the administration has been more in favor of permitting road construction in national forests than the Clinton administration, which crafted a rule banning new roads and logging in national forests. The Bush administration then attempted to repeal this rule in 2005, but was overruled by the courts in 2006. Given the fact that the original Clinton rule was reinstated, it is unclear to us how the Forest Service was able to pursue this policy. We will update this post if we find additional information on this topic.

Photo credit.