USFS: Public has been involved all along
A conservation group is asking the Methow Valley Ranger District to start over on the Twisp Restoration Project, alleging that some groups and individuals had a chance to comment and influence the project design, while the general public was not given the same opportunity.
The North Cascades Conservation Council (NCCC) wrote to Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest Supervisor Kristin Bail on April 4, saying that members of the North Central Washington Forest Health Collaborative have gotten special access, including an opportunity to help shape the restoration project, while other groups and individuals have been left out of the process.
The collaborative includes the U.S. Forest Service, conservation groups, the timber industry, and an Okanogan County commissioner. They work toward a consensus-based approach to forest restoration.
In addition, NCCC alleges that a brand-new forest project, the Midnight Restoration Project, was created with input from the collaborative, when no one else even knew the project existed.
The 77,000-acre Twisp Restoration Project, first proposed in 2019, was reduced in size last year after 14% of the area was affected by the 2021 Cedar Creek Fire. The ranger district presented plans for a significantly smaller footprint — just 24,000 acres –—at a public meeting this January.
In a response to NCCC dated April 7, Bail said the Forest Service had provided opportunities for public input on the Twisp Restoration Project starting with scoping in November 2019. The Forest Service provided two extensions for comment on the environmental analysis of the project in 2020 and made substantial changes based on those comments. Other projects are in the development stage and will have their own opportunities for input, she wrote.
The Forest Service is regularly invited to attend the collaborative’s quarterly meetings to provide updates on projects as they are planned and implemented, Bail said. In November, the ranger district showed the collaborative how the fire had affected the Twisp Restoration Project area and “described how the district’s interdisciplinary team was developing a plan to reduce the footprint of the project area” and were considering addressing aquatic treatments through another project, Bail wrote.
“Subsequently, Forest Service staff internally discussed and fully developed a project plan for the Twisp Restoration Project,” which was presented to the public in January, Bail wrote.
‘Special treatment’
But NCCC says these plans were further along, without full public participation. Not only were people not given a chance to comment on the restructuring after the fire, but a separate project called the Midnight Restoration Project was split off from the larger Twisp Restoration Project without the required notice to or input from the general public, the NCCC letter alleges.
In fact, at the January public meeting, “the public was told that no further planning for the lands eliminated from the Twisp Restoration Project was in the works,” NCCC told Bail.
NCCC also asserts that the ranger district failed to adequately involve the public early in the development of the Twisp Restoration Project in 2019 during scoping. Scoping gives the public a chance to provide input on project design and should be done when a project is still a broad concept with a range of options, NCCC spokesperson Ric Bailey said.
The original scoping notice was “deceptive,” NCCC contends, because it made no mention of the fact that the Twisp Restoration Project had already been developed. Moreover, the collaborative had been involved in that process, they said. The ranger district is free to talk with people before developing a project, but needs to involve everyone, not just its preferred constituents, Bailey said.
“The record of special treatment for the Collaborative is extensive. Other publics have not had access to the information about, nor the opportunities to influence the Twisp Restoration Project and its companion projects, the Twisp Aquatic Restoration Project, and the Midnight Restoration Project, that the Collaborative has enjoyed. This is unacceptable, and appears to violate the National Environmental Policy Act, and possibly other federal laws,” NCCC wrote to Bail.
NCCC board president Phil Fenner said he has contacted the collaborative twice in recent months, asking to be admitted as an observer, but had received no response.
The collaborative hadn’t responded by press time to a request from the Methow Valley News seeking minutes of meetings.
“The collaborative was in the game while the rest of us are on the bench trying vainly to influence a project that’s already been established,” Bailey said.
New project underway?
NCCC asserts that the ranger district discussed details of changes to the Twisp Restoration Project with the collaborative in November 2021. “Thus, the Collaborative was able to provide direct, in-person input, while other publics had no opportunity,” they wrote.
NCCC’s letter came after a January 2022 conference call between NCCC board members and Bail, where Bail had promised more transparency and equal access for all parties, Bailey said. “Bail said she would fix it,” he said.
NCCC learned about the Midnight project only by accident, when they received a copy of a Landscape Evaluation and Prescription published on March 14 that had been commissioned by the Wilderness Society, a member of the forest collaborative. “No one else had even heard of it,” Bailey said.
The Midnight project covers logging and restoration in upper elevations of the Twisp River watershed. The author of the study told Bailey he’d worked on it for “a couple of months,” suggesting it had been commissioned before the January public meeting, Bailey said.
Midnight Restoration will be a new project developed as a result of the reduction of the Twisp Restoration Project footprint, Bail said in her response to NCCC. The landscape evaluation for the 53,000 acres dropped from the project will help determine if there is still a need for treatment after the fire, she wrote.
Midnight Restoration will have its own planning process, including public input on scoping, but that process hasn’t started yet, Bail wrote.
The original Twisp Restoration Project said that the proposed logging, thinning and forest health interventions were necessary to achieve their objectives. Once the project changed, with a different footprint and different interventions, the ranger district was obliged to solicit input as to whether it still met the project’s objectives, Bailey said.
The ranger district received almost 1,000 comments on the Twisp Restoration Project. The district is finalizing the environmental analysis on the project and hope for a signed decision this summer, with the possibility of starting work this fall, it said in January.
“NCCC sees only one solution that will ensure equity among all public interests in the fate of the Twisp River Watershed: as the responsible official for the decisions on these projects, we respectfully request that you re-initiate the … process from the beginning with a fresh scoping notice, and ensure that all publics are henceforth given equal opportunity for influencing all federal projects impacting the Twisp River Watershed, and elsewhere on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest,” NCCC told Bail.
NCCC is an all-volunteer nonprofit created in 1957. Its mission is to protect and preserve the North Cascades’ scenic, scientific, recreational, educational and wilderness values.
