After years of attempts to weaken protections on public lands and open them up to industry comes further disquieting news. The Forest Service is about to embark on a plan that will send thousands of employees to centralized service centers, removing them from their local roles including firefighting.
PEER Link
Washington, DC — The U.S. Forest Service is on the verge of approving a massive restructuring that will remove land management planning from individual forests, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The resulting reorganization will affect one in four agency jobs, shrink its on-the-ground firefighting militia and rigidify resource planning.
The plan, called a “Business Process Reengineering,” would consolidate virtually all work performed under the National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA, the basic planning law that shapes significant agency resource management actions. Altogether, nearly 8,000 employees out of the agency’s 30,000 person workforce now perform NEPA-related work. Almost all of this work is done at the forest level.
Under the Business Process Reengineering, all of these functions would be moved into six “eco-based Service Centers” where forest planning would be standardized. …
In a time of extended drought and numerous incidents of fire, local fire-fighting ability would be severly curtailed.
This agency-wide displacement would –
Remove thousands of employees with fire-fighting responsibilities from national forests and relocate them in far-away service centers. Nearly half (3,564) of all Forest Service employees doing NEPA work have collateral all-hazard duties;…
PEER’s executive director providies this apt summary:
“It is awfully late in the Bush administration to begin a gigantic game of bureaucratic musical chairs with thousands of people’s jobs that may be reversed by the next Forest Service Chief,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that the Forest Service contracted out its feasibility study to a consultant, Management Analysis, Inc. “Rather than relying on consultants, the Forest Service should first consult Congress, the public and its own employees.“
this is just another prime example of why the failure of pelosi and reid and the demoRATs to demand accountability has, and will continue to have, such a negative effect for whomever is elected president.
your previous diary regarding the administrations’ efforts, re: the usfs roadless areas protection in colorado, combined with the recent epa rejection of california’s waiver request for their plan to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobles last month, and other actions, clearly define the goals…for those who might not have been paying attention the past seven years…for the balance of chimpy’s term.
this from barbara boxer in today’s e/m:
the buck doesn’t stop anywhere near the white house…it doesn’t even know where it is.
now, can we just lTMF’sA
Thanks for posting this, dada.
Bush motto: Sabotage the next President as much as possible!
a companion piece from todays’ denver post:
granted, this is a problem that has existed since the clinton administrations, but nonetheless, the need for planning, fire suppression and control, pre and post active, is going to be massive for the next 15 to 20 years; thus moving those people away from the areas most immediately affected is a recipe for disaster.
the next step is to call for increased logging operations on national forest lands, with all of the inherent problems that brings to the table. the connection to the roadless initiative is pretty obvious.
book your vacations early, it’s going to get ugly up here.
lTMF’sA