ENCINO VISTA PROJECT NEWS
Forest Service releases public comments and postpones objection period for two months
Jonathan Glass updated May 8, 2024
On April 29, the Forest Service pushed back its estimate of the start of an official objection period for its Encino Vista Project from May 1 to July 1. That same week, the agency also finally released 89 public comments it received on the project’s draft Environmental Assessment (EA). The Forest Service did not issue a news release for either event.
An objection period starts after a comment period for a Draft EA only after an agency makes a determination of No Significant Impact and releases the following three items for public inspection:
♦ a Final EA, which will contain any final revisions to the Draft EA
♦ the agency’s responses to the public comments it received on the Draft EA (responses are either released as a standalone document or incorporated into the Final EA)
♦ a “Draft Decision Notice and Finding of No Significant Impact,” which includes the decision to proceed with the project, the rationale for proceeding, and an explanation of the agency’s determination that the project will not significantly affect the quality of the human environment
The Forest Service now has the option of doing none of that and instead preparing an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project. There would be no imminent objection period in such case, but in the current case, the agency anticipates an objection period early this summer. As a result, it appears there will be no EIS prepared for Encino Vista.
During the objection period, which will most likely last for 45 days, anyone who previously submitted comments may object to the project based on issues they raised in such comments. Objections are submitted to the Reviewing Officer who will be named by the Forest Service; this must be someone senior to the Responsible Official for the project (the Coyote District Ranger). After the objection period, the Reviewing Officer will respond in writing to the objections and – depending upon the objections’ perceived validity – possibly instruct the Responsible Official to make clarifications and/or changes to the project proposal before issuing a Final Decision Notice.
The Forest Service estimates that such final decision will come on November 1. The agency’s tight timeline this year suggests that it expects to receive no objections which will cause it to substantially revise the project or to prepare an EIS.
Final Decision Notices are final in the sense that they leave objectors with no further possible administrative remedies from within the Forest Service. After a final decision, a request for change to a project is generally adjudicated in federal court.
Recent Background
On March 14, the US Forest Service released new details about its Encino Vista project and offered the public a second opportunity to comment on its plans. The new Draft EA proposes the cutting and/or intentional burning of up to about 82 thousand acres of forest. The stated purpose of the project is to “restore overall forest health, lower uncharacteristic high severity fire risk, improve watershed health, and protect wildlife habitat across the project area.” However, many people living near the project area — as well a number of conservation organizations — have questioned whether it is possible for the proposed project to achieve such purposes. The total extent of public opposition to Encino Vista is unknown, because the Forest Service, for unclear reasons, has chosen not to release the public comments for public viewing.
Since the Encino Vista Project was announced in 2019, the Forest Service has reduced by over thirty percent the total acreage proposed to be cut and/or intentionally burned within the project area. However, the new proposal more than quadruples the maximum amount of area to be intentionally burned without first being cut; this is now about 48 thousand acres, which is more than half the total area proposed for burning.
Another new addition to the agency’s proposal is commercial logging across over seven thousand acres. Through timber sales, the agency proposes to offer saw timber between 14″ and 24″ in diameter.
Below is a map of the approximately 130-thousand-acre project area relative to the cities of Los Alamos and Santa Fe. The colored lines on the map are roads, many deteriorated, including 761 miles of forest roads within the 203 square mile Encino Vista area. Most of the roads were constructed to facilitate decades-old logging operations. The Forest Service now proposes to improve up to 500 miles of these roads to accommodate the logging trucks, masticators, and other heavy equipment that will be needed to implement the project.
CLICK TO ENLARGE
Project Publicity
The Forest Service announced Encino Vista and a corresponding public scoping meeting about the project in November 2019 with a paper flyer which was posted locally and mailed to some post office boxes near the project area. For further publicity about the scoping process, the agency issued no public news release, placed no legal notice in a newspaper, and contacted no news source to announce the project, even though Encino Vista was proposed to be the largest cutting and burning project in Santa Fe National Forest history.
The Forest Service received only 14 comments from the public during the 2019 scoping comment period for Encino Vista. In contrast, also in 2019, thousands of people submitted scoping comments about the agency’s smaller but much better publicized cutting and burning project – the Santa Fe Mountains Project. When in 2019, the Santa Fe National Forest Supervisor of the time went on public radio to discuss the Santa Fe project, he did not so much as mention the much larger Encino Vista project which the agency also had in the offing that year.
Upon the release of its Draft Environmental Assessment (Draft EA) in March, the Forest Service finally issued its first news release ever on the project, placed a legal notice about the project in the Albuquerque Journal, and posted on its online project page most of the scoping comments which it received from the public in 2019. The agency had chosen not to post the scoping comments online for public view at the time of scoping, and it continued not to post the comments for more than four years, including when the agency released its responses to the scoping comments in 2021. Its stated position was that its posting public comments was an optional courtesy, as opposed to a requirement. However, this policy appears inconsistent with Forest Service regulations governing public participation in land management planning, which state that
the agency should be “proactive and use contemporary tools, such as the Internet, to engage the public, and should share information in an open way with interested parties”
For unknown reasons, the Forest Service waited until April 29 to release the public comments it received on the Encino Vista Draft EA. In the past, public comments submitted online about many other Forest Service projects have become immediately viewable in an online reading room. Public Journal tried to understand the decisions the agency made about handling the comments for Encino Vista:
PJ: Why has the Forest Service not made the comments received from the public on the Encino Vista PEA available to the public?
USFS: The comment period for the Encino Vista Landscape Restoration Project ended April 15 and comments will be available to the public the week of April 29, 2024.
PJ: In the past, the Forest Service has typically set up CARA (Comment and Analysis Response Application) so that public comments submitted to the agency via CARA are automatically posted in the online reading room for a project. Why was it decided not to have public comments on the Encino Vista PEA appear in the Encino Vista Reading room when they were submitted via CARA?
USFS: Posting public comments in the online reading room during the comment period is not a requirement of the NEPA process. Public comments will be available to the public the week of April 29, 2024.
PJ: Why did the Forest Service not provide email as an option for submitting public comments on the Encino Vista PEA, as it has done for past SFNF projects?
USFS: For the Encino Vista Landscape Restoration Project the Santa Fe National Forest accepted comments through CARA, by mail, and in person (hand delivery to Mark Sando, Coyote District Ranger).
A Question of Significance
Management of US forests is governed by the nation’s foremost environmental statute: the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Before a federal agency can implement a major project “significantly affecting the quality of the human environment,” NEPA requires preparation of an EIS about the environmental impact of what the agency proposes to do.
An EA, such as the Forest Service has produced in draft form and released for the Encino Vista Project, requires a lesser type of analysis of impacts than is required in an EIS. Under NEPA, the public comments received about a Draft EA are to help an agency assess a project’s impacts and decide whether it is required to prepare an EIS.
Cañones Community Concerns
Santa Fe National Forest’s Cañones Vegetation Project, in development in early 2019, was designed to protect the Cañones watershed. As the agency expanded that initiative into the much larger Encino Vista Project, members of the Cañones community became alarmed that their concerns about the project were not being heard. Concerns included the possibility of escaped burns as well as the enormous amounts of flooding and sediment runoff that can occur during rainstorms, particularly after cutting and/or burning in the mountains above the village.
The Forest Service seems to have come to understand that it neglected Cañones in the scoping process. In its October 2020 Encino Vista Scoping Comment Content Analysis, the agency wrote:
The Forest intends to hold several public meetings in Cañones to better understand needs and concerns that the community may hold. (p. 21)
In April 2024, when it was clear that the Forest Service was not even going to hold a meeting in Cañones before the end of its suddenly announced 30 day comment period on the draft EA for Encino Vista, community members in Cañones decided to hold a meeting of their own and invite the agency. The Forest Service accepted the invitation. On April 11, 2024, the Santa Fe National Forest Supervisor along with five forest officials attended a community meeting in Cañones.
At the meeting, the Forest Supervisor stressed that his top priority for Santa Fe National Forest – higher priority than any specific project – was to know and relate to local communities and to be a community asset. The Supervisor said he heard the agency had “really missed the bar” during scoping and that they had work to do on the project which they did not get to. “I’m hoping,” he said, “that this is the beginning of more of that dialogue with the community here in Cañones.”
The Coyote District Ranger, who is the Responsible Official for Encino Vista but did not hold that position at the time of scoping in 2019, also expressed regret about having “dropped the ball” in respect to community requests of the agency for more transparency and more meetings. “I take responsibility for that,” he said. “However, if I can somehow redeem myself a little bit, I am willing to do that.”
During the meeting, agency officials heard many concerns from the Cañones community, including about the hazard of choking smoke that descends into the canyon when there is fire in the area, about the single route available for evacuating from the canyon in case of an emergency, about the agency’s inadequate analysis of the Cañones Creek Watershed, and about the agency’s focus on industrial logging as opposed to small-diameter logging which community members have traditionally carried out in the area.
Toward the end of the meeting, the Forest Supervisor suggested that working collaboratively will help the agency not miss things. Collaboration, he said, will enable the agency to address many questions and concerns and also help it prioritize communities and local operators.
In response to community members suggesting that the Forest Service must prepare an EIS for Encino Vista because of likely significant impacts of the project, the Forest Supervisor stressed that “significance” is a legal term defined by the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). He said that the Responsible Official has to address ten questions, and that the responses determine whether a project’s impacts are significant. “If you can describe why it’s not significant in response to those ten questions,” he said, “then you go to a FONSI, and if you can’t, then you go to an EIS.”
No Significant Impacts from the Santa Fe Mountains Project
In May of 2023, the Forest Service issued a Final Decision and FONSI for its Santa Fe Mountains Project, which like Encino Vista is a wide-scale cutting and burning initiative announced by the agency in 2019. The decision demonstrates how the agency considered the ten factors which the CEQ required for assessing the intensity of a project’s impacts as part of a final determination of significance. Following are excerpts of the agency’s consideration of two of the CEQ significance factors regarding impact intensity (click the links to view the corresponding pages of the Decision).
From USFS consideration of CEQ impact intensity factor #2 – The degree to which the action affects public health and safety. Here, the agency provides no assessment of the probability of an “unplanned catastrophic wildfire” emerging from a planned burn that escapes control:
Due to the emphasis placed on safety in all federal fire management policies and the current NFS practice of using available resources to notify the public of fire management activities, Alternative 2 [the project’s Proposed Action] is not anticipated to impact public health and safety broadly. However, individual impacts may occur but overall impacts are not significant by mitigating impacts and advanced notices as compared to an unplanned catastrophic wildfire.
From USFS consideration of CEQ impact intensity factor #4 – The degree to which the effects on the human environment are likely to be highly controversial. At least 97% of the thousands of people who submitted public comments about the Santa Fe Mountains Project requested an EIS. Here the Forest Service asserts, without evidence, that not one of these commenters documented a substantial dispute about project impacts amidst their thousands of pages of disputes about project impacts:
During the public scoping process for the project, 7,426 scoping comments were received. All substantive scoping comments were addressed in the EA. In addition, 123 comment letters were received during the [Santa Fe Mountains Project] EA public review period. The U.S. Forest Service has determined that none of the comments provided during the public involvement process document a substantial dispute as to the environmental consequences of [the project].
How the Forest Service Gave a Comparable Project Far Greater Publicity
In 2012, the Forest Service planned its Southwest Jemez Mountains Project — a cutting and burning project beginning three miles to the south of the current Encino Vista area. The Southwest Jemez project area at the time of its scoping was about fifteen percent smaller than Encino Vista’s at scoping. The Forest Service produced the required Environmental Impact Statement for Southwest Jemez.
By the end of the public scoping comment period for Southwest Jemez, the Forest Service had already held ten public meetings on the project – four in Santa Fe, four in Jemez Springs, and two in Albuquerque. The agency also invited the public on three field trips to the project area in the Jemez. The meetings and field trips were publicized with multiple news releases and by placing announcements in four newspapers and on public radio.
By contrast, by the end of the initial public comment period for Encino Vista in 2019, the Forest Service had held only two public meetings about the project – both in Gallina, New Mexico. Furthermore, the agency has held no field trips for Encino Vista.
Overall, it appears questionable whether the Forest Service has handled its Encino Vista Project in a fashion consistent with the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) regulation on public participation in effect at the time of scoping, which states that
Federal agencies shall to the fullest extent possible encourage and facilitate public involvement in decisions which affect the quality of the human environment.
Environmental Justice
The Forest Service has a responsibility under its regulation, “Requirements for Public Participation,” to provide opportunities for engagement about projects and encourage participation by low income and minority populations. The Coyote Census County Division (CCD) of Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, encompasses the communities most proximate to the Encino Vista Project Area. This area has less than half of the mean US household income, a poverty rate more than one and a half times the US average, educational attainment of less than half the US average, and households in which the majority speak a language other than English. As a result, it appears that the amount of public outreach conducted by the Forest Service for the Encino Vista Project, including community meetings, field trips, media exposure, and news releases, would be expected to be much more – not less – than that for projects affecting areas of average demographic characteristics.
♦ ♦ ♦
Key Project Details
♦ One of the two largest cutting and intentional burning projects ever proposed for Santa Fe National Forest:
⇒ total project area of 130,305 acres in the northern Jemez Mountains
⇒ up to ~81,892 acres of cutting and/or intentional burning
⇒ up to ~74,690 acres of intentional burning
⇒ up to ~47,990 acres of intentional burning without prior cutting
(why the terms “cutting” and “intentional burning”?)
⇒ up to ~33,902 acres of cutting, including 7,202 acres of commercial logging of 14″ to 24″ diameter saw timber via timber sales
⇒ up to 500 miles of road improvement
♦ Almost twice as much combined cutting and intentional burning than is slated for the Santa Fe Mountains Project (for which 18,000 acres of cutting and 38,000 acres of intentional burning is expected)
♦ Compared with the proposal in the 2019 scoping document, the current proposal entails up to about four times as much intentional burning without prior cutting, at least 25% less intentional burning overall, and at least 65% less cutting overall.
♦ According to Forest Service, “the project was developed based on the need to improve ecosystem and watershed resiliency and reduce the risk of uncharacteristic wildfire events to the surrounding communities.”
♦ Project area less than 40 miles from Santa Fe and less than 15 miles from Los Alamos
Key Documentation
♦ US Forest Service’s news release / invitation for public input about Encino Vista
♦ USFS’ online project page for the project
♦ USFS: Draft environmental assessment, Mar 2024
♦ USFS: Appendices to draft environmental assessment
♦ USFS: scoping notification letter, Nov 2019
♦ USFS: scoping document, Nov 2019
♦ The Forest Advocate: selected excerpt from each public scoping comment
♦ The Forest Advocate: public scoping comments obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Nov-Dec 2019
♦ USFS: response to public scoping comments, Oct 2020
♦ Serious concerns and requests regarding the Encino Vista Project, a memo to Santa Fe National Forest Supervisor from community members and scoping commenters, including myself, Feb 2022
♦ USFS: Santa Fe National Forest Land Management Plan, Jul 2022
♦ USFS: Expanding the Pace and Scale of Wildfire Risk Reduction and Forest Health Treatments, Jan 2024
♦ USFS: Chief’s Letter of Intent for Wildfire, Jun 2023
♦ USFS: National Prescribed Fire Resource Mobilization Strategy, Jue 2023
♦ USFS: Confronting the Wildfire Crisis, Jan 2022
♦ USFS: National Prescribed Fire Review, Sep 2022
♦ USFS: Cerro Pelado Report of Investigation – Redacted – May 2023
♦ USFS: Gallinas – Las Dispensas Prescribed Fire Declared Wildfire Review, Jun 2022
♦ National Park Service: Cerro Grande Fire – Board of Inquiry – Final Report – Feb 2001
♦ General Accounting Office: Lessons Learned From the Cerro Grande Fire – Aug 2000
♦ USFS: Meet the Forest Service: Caring for the Land and Serving People – Jul 2018
USFS’ Stated Purpose and Need
The draft environmental assessment defines the purpose and need of the Encino Vista Project as follows:
The Purpose of the Encino Vista Landscape Restoration project is to restore overall forest health, lower uncharacteristic high severity fire risk, improve watershed health, and protect wildlife habitat across the project area. In order to implement restoration activities and improve forest health, there is also a need to improve and maintain a transportation system in a manner that reduces negative impacts to watershed health and facilitates access to project areas.
The Need of the Encino Vista Landscape Project is to move the forest toward desired conditions, as described in the Santa Fe National Forest Land Management Plan (USDA, 2022b), protect local communities and watersheds, protect and enhance wildlife habitat, and create a resilient forest landscape that may withstand unforeseen disturbances.
Public Open Houses about the Project
Hosted by US Forest Service
On Thursday, March 14, 2024, USFS announced open houses:
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m
Coronado High School Boardroom
1903 State Highway 96, Gallina, NM
public attendance: 4
Saturday, March 23, 2024
1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Location: Rural Events Center – Abiquiu
House #122A State Road 55, Abiquiu, NM
public attendance: 5
USFS Project Maps
Project Photos
Note on Terminology
The word “cutting” is used on this site to describe cutting down trees in the forest, whether with chainsaws, masticators, or other machines which cut and/or shred live vegetation. The Forest Service generally uses the word “thinning” to describe its cutting practices, even if it is cutting down most of the trees in an area.
The term “intentional burning” is used on this site to describe intentionally setting an area of forest on fire. The Forest Service typically instead uses “prescribed burning” to describe such practice, or — particularly in past years — “controlled burning.” Because intentionally set fires can escape control, and because the word “prescribed” commonly connotes medical treatment which is beneficial to life, “intentional burning” seems like the clearest descriptor here.
Note that agency documentation typically refers to the collective practices of cutting and intentional burning as “fuels treatments” and/or “restoration.”
For more on the language of forest management, see an article by Sarah Hyden in Counterpunch.
The Public Speaks
Read Excerpts from the Public Comments
Read the Complete Comments
The majority of public commenters on the Draft Environmental Assessment for the Encino Vista Project believe that the Forest Service should prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project.
Of the 89 public commenters, 8 express direct support for the project itself, and 6 express support for at least one goal of the project, but not for the project itself. The remaining commenters express support for neither the project nor its goals.
The selected excerpts below link to the respective complete comments.
Encino Vista Project
Public Comments on Draft EA
Note that two comments posted by the Forest Service were received by the agency after the April 15 deadline: one dated April 19th from the New Mexico State Forester, and the other dated April 30th from the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority. Both comments are supportive of the project.
Go to comment excerpts
Go to comment excerpts