This item is cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet.
Last week, Interior Secretary Salazar and Commerce Secretary Locke issued a press release announcing that they were withdrawing the Bush administration’s midnight rules relaxing the ESA section 7 consultation requirements. (Background on the Bush rules is here, here, and here.) The notice formalizing that decision has now been published in the Federal Register. As Congress authorized them to do in the omnibus spending bill, the Secretaries have flat-out withdrawn the Bush administration’s last-minute consultation changes, reinstating the consultation rules as they stood prior to that rule. At the same time, recognizing that the consultation rules have not been comprehensively revised in more than 20 years, they have invited public comment on “ways to improve the section 7 regulations while retaining the purposes and policies of the ESA.”
A broad review of the Section 7 consultation rules is a good idea. There is no question that understanding about the threats facing listed species has advanced since the existing rules were developed, and that there are lessons to be mined from experience with those rules. As I wrote with Margaret Giblin and several other Center for Progressive Reform scholars in comments on the the Bush administration’s proposed rule and a letter to the Secretaries requesting this withdrawal, a genuine review of the rules should take enough time to allow full exploration of the issues, include consideration of ways that they may be under- (as well as over-) protective, and rest on review of all available data.
The Bush administration’s hasty rule changes showed none of those features. Not surprisingly, it looks like this administration will do much better, undertaking a sincere close look at the consultation process. The notice solicits comments on:
The applicability of section 7, the definitions of ‘‘jeopardy’’ and ‘‘adverse modification’’, the definition of ‘‘effects of the action’’, the definition of ‘‘action area’’, the appropriate standard of causation, the informal consultation process, methods to streamline both formal and informal consultation, flexibility for ‘‘low effect’’ consultations, formal consultation requirements, programmatic consultations, consideration of effects related to global climate change, incidental take statements, and reinitiation standards.
Comments will be accepted until August 3, 2009.
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Holly Doremus | July 2, 2009
This item is cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet. Last week, Interior Secretary Salazar and Commerce Secretary Locke issued a press release announcing that they were withdrawing the Bush administration’s midnight rules relaxing the ESA section 7 consultation requirements. (Background on the Bush rules is here, here, and here.) The notice formalizing that decision has […]
Ben Somberg | July 2, 2009
A string of recent developments have brought the issue of contaminated drywall back into the headlines (we last wrote about the issue here). Last week EPA released the results of tests it did on two Chinese drywall samples taken from a Florida home. They found sulfur, as well as two organic compounds associated with acrylic […]
Rena Steinzor | July 2, 2009
The Chesapeake Bay watershed covers 64,000 square miles, measuring 200 miles in length and 35 miles at its widest point. The watershed is one of the most beautiful and economically productive in the world. Tourism, which depends to a large extent on the preservation of pristine environmental conditions, contributes billions of dollars to the economies […]
James Goodwin | July 1, 2009
Earlier this month, representatives from the military and a number of defense contractors had a closed-door meeting with officials at OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). The topic under discussion was ostensibly a Safe Drinking Water Act regulation for perchlorate—a highly toxic chemical used in the manufacture of rocket fuel—that the EPA is currently […]
Ben Somberg | June 30, 2009
The drywall debacle continues. Inez Tenenbaum, President Obama’s nominee for head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, got a number of drywall questions from senators at her nomination hearing earlier this month. They said the government response seemed too slow. Tenenbaum pledged she’d work on the problem, and was subsequently confirmed by a voice vote […]
Ben Somberg | June 29, 2009
Waxman-Markey passed the House. Was it the right thing to do? What’s the outlook from here? Here are a few views from around the web. Dan Farber: The concerns about measuring and enforcing offsets are genuine (and increased because of Waxman-Markey’s reliance on USDA to do the job.) But those problems aren’t insurmountable either. Instead […]
Bradley Karkkainen | June 26, 2009
The House Agriculture Committee yesterday released the language of an amendment by Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-MN), which Rep. Waxman has agreed to accept as part of the final House climate change bill in order to secure support from Peterson and other farm-state representatives. Peterson represents a large, heavily ag-dependent district in central and […]
Victor Flatt | June 26, 2009
Wednesday, I explored the various ways that the USDA takeover of bio-sequestration offsets could affect how well the offsets provision of the Waxman-Markey Climate Security Act would work. Today, we have legislative language in the form of an amendment offered by Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN), which fills in some of the details. While some of […]
Ben Somberg | June 25, 2009
What was the cost, in dollar terms, of the nine lives lost in the DC Metro crash on Monday? And how does that compare to what the cost would have been to prevent the accident, or lessen the severity of it? Should we do a cost-benefit analysis to determine the best policy? Edward Tenner's post […]