News
FISHERIES: NOAA to propose new rules for assessing management plans, quotas (05/13/2008)
Allison Winter, Energy & Environment News reporter
The Bush administration is preparing sweeping new rules for how fishery management councils assess the environmental impacts of their management plans.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the proposed regulations, which will be published tomorrow in the Federal Register, would "better integrate" the National Environmental Policy Act into federal fisheries management.
When crafting a new fishing quota or management plan, the councils are currently required by NEPA to prepare detailed environmental impact statements. The proposed regulations would replace that with a new review process, called an "integrated fishery and environmental management statement."
Conservationists say the proposals could toss out what they see as critical environmental protections.
"What we see here is a lot of different ways they can limit the scope of analysis and allow councils to develop alternatives outside of that scope, plus very little opportunity for the public to have meaningful comments," said Lee Crockett, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts' federal fisheries project.
NOAA wrote the proposed regulations to comply with the massive rewrite of fisheries law that Congress passed in December 2006. The Magnuson-Stevens Act rewrite directs NOAA to develop a new uniform review process for fishery management (Greenwire, Dec. 11, 2006).
Lawmakers called for NOAA to develop a new review process in response to complaints that the previous environmental review and reporting requirements were too burdensome. The administration is pushing to finish the rules before the end of its term. The proposed rules will be open for three months of public comment.
Magnuson has many of its own requirements for environmental review, but they are on different timelines than NEPA's. Some councils and commercial fishers said the combination of both of the laws created massive paperwork and confusion.
Lengthy reviews
To make their point, fishing groups brought environmental impact statements that exceeded 5,000 pages to congressional hearings. Councils would propose fishing regulations, then take months to years to review them, the groups said.
But Crockett said those reviews are examples of poor implementation of the law, not problems with NEPA or Magnuson.
He and other conservationists suggest councils could complete much of their reviews before even proposing new fishing limits. Then the review would inform the decision, rather than hold it up or reverse it later, they say. They envisioned a process that would resemble NEPA but on different timelines, rather than coming up with a whole new program.
"Why do you need a whole new procedure?" Crockett said.
The requirements in Magnuson specify that the new review process comply with NEPA. Crockett is concerned that the new proposal downscales that requirement to "meet the policy and goals" of NEPA, but not actually comply.
The wide-ranging NEPA statute requires agencies to consider the environmental effects of proposed projects and alternative actions. It has an array of opportunities for public comment. With it come years of case law in which environmentalists have challenged proposals for more stringent review.
Environmental groups credit NEPA for leading to the first large-scale closure of trawling grounds to protect coral, as well as fishing regulations to protect sea turtles and reduce fish bycatch.
"Our concern has always been that we have timely and excellent environmental analysis of fishery decisions and the public be given timely opportunities to comment on these decisions," said Steve Roady of Earthjustice. "My concern in the first reading of the [new] rule is that it might not fully ensure that NEPA is complied with and public comment opportunities are maintained sufficiently."
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