OCR Text |
Show Service research program more responsive to research needs on national parks, refuges, and Bureau of Land Management lands. Greater emphasis on environmental quality research should include efforts to provide better measurements, to the extent possible, of esthetic factors and other nonquantifiable amenities. Mandatory Public Hearings Recommendation 22: Public hearings with respect to environmental considerations should be mandatory on proposed public land projcts or decisions when requested by the states or by the Council on Environmental Quality. An Executive order 16 implementing the National Environmental Policy Act directs all Federal agencies to "develop procedures to ensure the fullest practicable provision of timely public information and understanding of Federal plans and programs with environmental impact in order to obtain the views of interested parties," including "whenever appropriate, provision for public hearings" (emphasis added). We believe that this does not go far enough. In our general land use planning recommendations, we suggest, among other things, mandatory public hearings at an appropriate stage in the planning process. This will permit public participation in developing information on all relevant subjects, including environmental factors. While we have generally favored leaving the use of public hearings to agency discretion in specific land actions, in situations where significant environmental considerations are involved, we recommend mandatory public hearings. As the best indication of the "significance" of particular environmental situations, we think a request by either a state or the Council on Environmental Quality 16a is of appropriate dignity to require a hearing. Individuals or groups that may have particular concerns would not be precluded from urging the agencies to hold a discretionary hearing, but when a state or the Council on Environmental Quality are convinced of the importance of their cause, a hearing would then become mandatory. Adequacy of Existing Environmental Control Authority With certain exceptions, our review of the statutory authority of the land administering agencies shows that it is satisfactory-even though no adequate guidelines exist-to permit the agencies to !6E.O. 11514, March 7, 1970, 35 F.R. 4247. 16a Created by National Environmental Quality Act of 1969, n. 3, supra. employ a wide range of control techniques to prevent or minimize the adverse environmental impacts of various lands. Under the contractual and licensing authority which governs most uses of the public lands, there is ample authority to include protective provisions in such control instruments as timber sale contracts, mineral leases, grazing permits, and recreational and other special use permits. The major exceptions to this general situation under the existing system, which would be rectified under recommendations we make in this report, concern recreation activities by the general public on multiple use areas, mining activity under the Mining Law of 1872,17 and certain occupancy uses, particularly road construction and utilization. The failure of the agencies, particularly the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, to make greater use of such authority as they have, emphasizes the need for explicit statutory guidelines. Such guidelines for protection of the public lands are recommended elsewhere in this report. Control of Offsite Impacts Recommendation 23: Congress should authorize and require the public land agencies to condition the granting of rights or privileges to the public lands or their resources on compliance with applicable environmental control measures governing operations off public lands which are closely related to the right or privilege granted. Because there is often a direct connection between public land resource rights and privileges granted to various industrial users and later environmental impacts caused by the utilization of the resource off the public lands,18 the agencies should be authorized and directed to control the adverse environmental impacts of activities off the public lands as well as on them caused by those using public land resources. For example, public land timber may supply a woodpulp mill causing air and water pollution and the degradation of landscape esthetics. Smelters processing public land minerals may cause similar adverse environmental impacts. This recommendation is premised on the conviction that the granting of public land rights and privileges can and should be used, under clear congressional guidelines, as leverage to accomplish broader environmental goals off the public lands. However, we recognize that considerable restraint ^30U.S.C. §§22etseq. 18 See, for example, case study 5, Rocky Mountain Center on Environment, Environmental Problems on the Public Land. PLLRC Study Report, 1970. {Continued p. 82) 81 |