If you find the weather outside is frightful ? as in frightfully freezing ? you can plan a trip to some warm place, if you can find one, and you won?t miss out on comment periods or meetings on the National Park Service?s effort to formulate an ORV plan for the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
In a November blog I wrote that seashore Superintendent Mike Murray said he hoped the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and the park?s preferred alternative for managing off-road vehicles would be ready for public comment and public meetings at the end of December or early January.
Now Murray says that time frame is being pushed back again. ?The exact release date of the DEIS is still undetermined,? Murray said in an e-mail this week. ?Based on what I am hearing about the status, I would characterize it as ?soon? (as within the next month or so) rather than ?imminent? (as within in the next few days or week).?
Murray said National Park Service and Department of Interior reviewers are ?fine tuning a few final small sections of the draft.?
He adds that after the final editing, it will take an editor about a week to format the document for publication in The Federal Register.
Next, the final publication-ready document will be submitted through channels to DOI for approval. (Translation: Many lawyers will be reading it.)
Murray said he has been told the DOI approval process will take “at least several weeks.” Once approved, the notice of the DEIS will be published in The Federal Register and the 60-day public review period will begin.
So you can do the math.
Looks as if we won?t see the DEIS and the seashore?s preferred alternative until at least February.
Murray has said that there will probably be about five ?hearing-style? meetings for the public to get information and make formal comments. He thinks three will be on the Outer Banks ? perhaps on Hatteras, Ocracoke, and the northern beaches. One will be in central North Carolina, perhaps Raleigh, and one will be in the Northern Virginia-Washington, D.C. area or perhaps the Hampton Roads area. The final decision on where the meetings will be has not been made.
And the superintendent has said that the meetings will be scheduled after the document, which is likely to be several hundred pages, has been out for public review for enough time for all interested parties to look it over. So meetings might come halfway through the 60-day comment period.
Now it seems we are looking at meetings perhaps in late February or early March.
I think Murray and his staff on the seashore are doing all they can to keep the process moving, but bureaucracy moves slowly.
?I appreciate that folks are eager and/or anxious to see the DEIS. I, too, am eager to have it out for review and to start receiving comments,? Murray said in another e-mail this week. ?I also realize that to some, preparation of the DEIS may feel like it has taken ?forever.? To keep things in perspective, it has been less than 10 months since the (negotiated rulemaking) committee submitted its final report, which we then used as a basis for developing a new action alternative.
?Given the complexity of the issues, the number of alternatives being considered, the number of impact topics, and the level of analysis that is applied to each alternative’s impacts, 10 months to prepare a DEIS is not an unusual amount of time.?
Murray is aware that the seashore is up against a deadline that was agreed to in a consent decree that settled a lawsuit against the Park Service for not having an ORV rule, as has been required since at least 1972.
Under the consent decree, the Park Service is required to have a record of decision on a final rule by Dec. 31, 2010, and to implement a special regulation on ORV rules in the seashore by April 1, 2011.
?There are still a number of steps in the process after the public comment period on the DEIS (e.g., review of comments, preparation of the FEIS and ROD, etc.) during which time can either be made up or lost, so it is still too early for me to think we would have a serious problem in meeting the deadline,? Murray said. ?Time we’ve spent in fact checking and carefully preparing the DEIS now will save time and minimize the need to correct DEIS errors later in the FEIS that could have been avoided with a bit more attention on the front end. All of us are committed to moving forward and meeting the deadline.?
For the uninitiated, federal government rulemaking under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and other regulations requires a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) with public comment, a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), and, finally, a Record of Decision (ROD).
Just to further confuse the issue, somewhere along the way, the Park Service must issue a proposed ORV rule, which would be based on the preferred alternative in the DEIS, and would require another 60-day comment period.
It appears in the case of ORV rulemaking at Cape Hatteras, the proposed rule will be issued not too long after the DEIS, which means the public comment periods could overlap.
However, Murray said this week that ?there apparently has been recent discussion among various DOI solicitors about when is the best timing for releasing a proposed rule if the rule is related to an EIS.?
The discussion, he said, is not related specifically to the seashore?s regulation, but since it could affect the timing of issuing the proposed rule, he has asked for clarification of how recent discussions might affect Cape Hatteras.
Finally, I have to share this quote, with all apologies to Mike Murray, who has not written these laws and regulations but must enforce them.
Murray said in one of his e-mails this week:
?In any case, a key point about the timing of our proposed rule is that it will be issued after the DEIS, but before the final EIS (FEIS), and then the final rule will be issued after the FEIS and Record of Decision (ROD) and will reflect the final decision described in the ROD.?
Now, is that not perfectly clear?
? just BREATHTAKING
If Mr. Murray is not careful he?s going to find himself in front of Judge Boyle again answering contempt charges for dragging his feet again?
The most important document is the “proposed rule” and not a range of alternatives indicated in an EIS. Have no doubt about it, the preferred alternative has already been determined by NPS. Why play games with the public? Hopefully the public hearings or comment sessions will be more than just process eye-wash related to the EIS and will give opportunity for the public to address the regulation that will actually determine public access to the national seashore. By my estimation the end of year date as indicated the consent decree for a ORV plan will not be met. It will interesting to hear what the judge says about that. It?s going to be a very frustrating year. Thanks for the update Irene.
Mike,
I couldn?t agree with you more.
Hope we?re not SOL.
Jim & Paula
How ironic?.a illegal outside the NEPA Process Consent Agreement document dictating and controlling a NEPA process document??.they will do what ever they want to do and when they want to do it?it?s already been decided
Of your final paragraph, Irene, one word: gobbledygook!
I?m having visions of the central NC comment hearing being held in Derb Carter?s conference room. . .
So if I have this right, we were said not to have a rule because of the technicality that they didn?t follow the process years ago. Now we?re going to get a rule pushed through while not following and short cutting the process? Clear as mud. There is a good chance this whole mess could be DOA just based on NEPA process shortcoming.
I said from the start that NPS should have just bundled up the interim plan and pushed it through as the final rule. Then the technicality of “there being no rule” would be gone so the consent and the closing of the beaches due to the failure of following the EO?s would be gone and we could head to court to argue the science. At least that way the two issues would be properly separated.
This whole thing is going to land in court anyway, instead we?ve wasted 3 years doing all kinds of gymnastics.
I agree with Dr. Berry, the rule has been written, they just haven?t decided which font to print it in.
I was a member of the Negotiated Rulemaking Committee and I just became a bit confused.
If the point of holding public hearings on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) is to get comment on the info in that document so that the proposed ORV rule can incorporate that public input, how can both comment periods overlap. It sounds like we were just told NPS is not going to listen to the comments on the DEIS.
If this wasn?t about a matter that touches the lives and livelihoods of so many people, the ridiculous complexity and shear silliness of this whole rule making process would be laughable.
The tactic here is clear to me.
The preferred alt and rule have been decided.
The delay is to make the FIRESTORM as short as possible.
Which issue will drive a spike into the heart of the seashore?
With no bridge we are toast, with wintering critical habitat there might not be any beach access for the NPS to rule over.
I hope Supt. Murray, who has proved to be an able administrator, is actually instrumental in the ORV plan. If it’s being decided above his pay grade we are dead and just don’t know it yet.
years ago, some guy invented a bike with big terra tires and a super low gear set?-that could be our transport on the sand at this rate?-I really think the public is in for a real big screw job in feb/march the way things are going?and that makes me sad and angry
All this reminds me of one of my favorite quotes.
“”Blessed is he who expects nothing “”
“”For he shall not be disappointed””
After the release of the DEIS, it will be something to see Hatteras Island rise 6? or more with the outflow of people leaving the island.
The so-called ocean level rise won?t be much of a problem after NPS implements its new ORV plan.
It is a sad commentary that things have been allowed to get so bad.
As a Hatteras homeowner and a Federal Regulations analyst, I would caution anyone to believe that decisions have already been made regarding this issue. I have seen proposed provisions many times turned upside down by huge volumes of comments. When this proposed rule is released, it will be imperiative that someone read and interpret the rule very quickly to construct a list of arguments against the rule. Once the arguments are constructed, you must get the comment info to a large number of people. The government accepts comments through Regulations.gov and it is a very easy way to submit comments. Interested parties need only to give their name and city (in most cases) and then can write (or copy) a comment into the appropriate field. There is also the possibility of a ?form letter? that can be attached to act as a petition. The important thing is the numbers. As a federal agency, you cannot refute the beliefs of tens of thousands of comments. Therefore, this is the time to begin thinking about how to disseminate the need for comments. That could include sending the request to everyone in your address book, asking the schools to have students submit comments or write letters, AND getting the rental property companies to contact their clients to also submit comments. Please do not bury your heads in the sand now?This is the time to act!