Billings Gazette: EPA criticizes forest's preferred plan 10/15/04
Casper Star-Tribune
By WHITNEY ROYSTER

JACKSON - An Environmental Protection Agency official told forest managers in northeast Wyoming that their preferred management plan is not the best choice to protect natural resources.

Larry Svoboda, director of the EPA's National Environmental Policy Act program for Region 8, told Bighorn National Forest Supervisor Bill Bass in a Sept. 29 letter that the preferred alternative "may cause more adverse impacts to aquatic and other natural resources than other alternatives.

Svoboda made his comments after Bighorn officials released a draft forest-management plan last month and asked for public comment. Svoboda said Alternative C, the plan widely preferred by conservation groups because it sets aside more land for possible wilderness designation, would better protect aquatic and terrestrial resources.

It would also "enhance nonmotorized recreation, provide financial savings to the Forest Service from reduced timber harvest and road-building activities, and provide other significant benefits for cultural/heritage and virtually all other resources," Svoboda wrote.

"Among the alternatives fully evaluated, we support the direction established in Alternative C to more fully protect the human and natural environment," he wrote.

The agency recommended forest managers choose Alternative C as the preferred plan. Bernie Bornong, planning director for the Bighorn, said the EPA's letter is one of between 18,000 and 19,000 letters the agency has received.

He said if forest managers do not choose what the EPA has identified as the most environmentally friendly alternative, they have to justify why that alternative wasn't chosen.

"We can choose something else," he said, "but we have to identify why we picked something else in the Record of Decision. So there is some regulatory weight to what EPA says.

"Bornong said the agency is still sorting out how the comments broke down in favor of certain alternatives, and the result will likely be known in a month.