The long wait to see what access to the Cape Hatteras National Seashore beaches might be like in the future is apparently almost over.
The National Park Service?s notice that the Draft Environmental Impact Statement and preferred alternative for off-road vehicle use at the seashore are available to the public could be published in the Federal Register as early as late next week, according to Cyndy Holda, the seashore?s public affairs specialist and assistant to Superintendent Mike Murray.
?The NPS Notice of Availability (NOA) for the DEIS has been cleared for publication in the Federal Register, which is likely to be mid-to-late next week,? Holda said today in an e-mail.
Holda said that when the NPS Notice of Availability is published, the document will probably be available to the public on the Park Service?s planning Web site. Although we will be able to peruse the document online? which is likely to be very lengthy ? we will not be able to submit public comments until the Environmental Protection Agency publishes its Notice of Availability, sometime after the NPS publication, and until hard copies of the DEIS are mailed to those who have requested them and to places such as libraries where they will be available to the public.
There could be a one-week or more wait between the NPS notice and the EPA notice, Holda said today.
The publication of the EPA notice will open a 60-day public comment period on the DEIS. And the Park Service will have public meetings to get input. The meetings will be on the Outer Banks and probably in other locations, such as Raleigh, N.C., the Tidewater area, and perhaps northern Virginia.
Residents of the seashore and visitors have been anxiously awaiting this DEIS for a year.
It was a year ago this month that the Park Service?s negotiated rulemaking committee, made up of stakeholders, ended its work without a consensus on long-term ORV regulation.
The Park Service had hoped that the negotiation process would produce a preferred alternative for ORV use.
When it did not, Murray and his staff went to work on producing the ?preferred? alternative. The superintendent has said that the alternative will be based on work that the negotiation committee did finish and that it will reflect preferences for access from all sides in the negotiation process.
What most of us want to see now is what the Park Service is proposing for access to our beaches in the future.
Although the focus of the process is on ORV regulations, the DEIS and preferred alternative will also influence pedestrian access to beaches, especially during the nesting season for shorebirds and sea turtles.
The fact that public comment won?t start for another week or two is not a problem. If the DEIS comes in at around 500 pages, as Murray has said it might, it will take most of us that long to read it.
Holda said the Park Service will send out a press release, perhaps next week, announcing the NPS Notice of Availability and providing information on online access to the DEIS.
NPS should have printed copies of this pile of bewilderment ready to hand out the day it is published in the Federal Register. The electronic version should also be available in the WORD format so it can be highlighted and quoted easily. If it is a READ ONLY PDF, it will be very painfull to deal with.
Timing could not be better.
Just as I depart for about a month with little to no ?puter access and no hard copy mail.
Jim- If its a PDF, you can highlight what you want to quote and drag it into a blank word document. I am not a computer wizard but I have used this technique before. I hope it works for you.
It all depends on whose favored species survives.
The rest of them are just casualties of ego.
Once you introduce poison into the eco-system, you loose control of it. When I moved down here I never saw turkey vultures in the sky. I now see them on a regular basis.
They are protected under the migratory species act. Does the introduction of poison into the system endanger them?
What I don’t understand is how groups who celebrate the diversity of life on this planet think they can decide which live and which die.
Are they so certain of their knowledge that they can pick and choose which creatures are important and which ones are just in the way of their agenda?
After hurricane Isabel I saw the biggest otter I have ever seen. He was crossing the road at Atlantic View. His nose was almost to the edge of the road and his tail was just crossing the centerline. It was my favorite memory of the storm.
Sadly they that know best decided that otters and a host of other animals where a threat to the chosen few and they had to go.
It seems to me that these groups want to decide how the future will look. What happened to the “Selection of Species’? It surely must be one of their bedrock tenants. Life is in a constant state of evolution. It must be awesome to know what it should be and get rid of the rest of the fauna that doesn’t fit with their ideals.
They eradicate raccoons to save turtle eggs, only to find out that the raccoons ate the ghost crabs, which also preyed on the turtle eggs. No real net gain for the turtle eggs.
I wish I were so certain that I knew best and could decide which lived and which died.
They seem to believe that they are infallible.
Let’s look at Yellowstone National Park. For decades they decided that fire was evil and eradicated it wherever it showed up. We all know how that turned out. Then there was the poisoning of seagulls on Monomoy Island to protect the plovers. This resulted in the town of Chatam suffering dead birds falling from the sky. Snipers shooting coyotes that had found their way to the island followed.
It really sucks to be a species that they decide is not in their best interest.
Taking wagers that the public hearings will be held in Chapel Hill vs. Raleigh to make it convenient for SELC.
Let?s see.
As I recall the Health Care Bill is a little over 2000 pages. The DEIS is about 40%as big at roughly 800 pages. Wonder how many of the signers above Murray have actually read it???
BTW Roninstia I hear the public hearing won?t be in Chapel Hill but will be in Charlottesville where the SELC main hdqtrs is located. That way the really big cheeses can smell up the room.