05/12/05 N.E.P.A. reform?, Finale

William Kennedy said if there was one thing all witnesses testifying in a recent U.S. House of Representatives Resource Committee Task Force meeting on the National Environmental Policy Act could agree on, it is that N.E.P.A. may need to be reformed, but it does not need to be outright repealed. Kennedy is the President of the Family Farm Alliance, which focuses on Western water issues and policy. KENNEDY: N.E.P.A. needs to be strengthened and modernized so that it can be utilized to protect our environment, including our communities. The way that N.E.P.A. and Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act have been implemented or applied by so many groups is to halt development and to halt new projects from moving forward. And as he will tell you of N.E.P.A. requiring environmental impact statements for federal projects, and the misuse of the Act by various groups opposed to projects, Kennedy will add the Act, in his opinion, has also been the subject of selective implementation by federal agencies. Kennedy says the failure of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to implement a N.E.P.A. process in 1999 was a contributor two years later towards the water shut off in Oregon's Klamath Basin. But Kennedy is not the only one who believes a more consistent and fair level of application is needed. Janine Blaelock is Director of the Western Land Exchange Project, a group that monitors federal land exchanges. Now while she thinks N.E.P.A. is fine as is, versus Kennedy's point of view that reform is needed, she does agree with Kennedy that if the government just follows the processes spelled out by N.E.P.A. there would be no problems. BLAELOCK: N.E.P.A. does not allow us to dispute a project just because we think it is harmful, but only if the process itself has not been properly followed. When the public is given good information, fair alternatives, and the opportunity, challenges are not necessarily nor will they unfortunately be successful. So Representative Cathy McMorris of Washington, chair of the House Resource Committee Task Force on N.E.P.A., how soon will there be action, and in what form will the action take? MCMORRIS: It is a six month task force. We're going to go around the country. We're going to have regional task force meetings then come up with our document, our findings, at the end of September and present something. And I don't know if it's going to be recommendations to Congress or just recommendations to the agencies but I am hopeful that we're going to come up with something that will be helpful.