Lawsuit Challenges Uranium Development in New Mexico

WildEarth Guardians demands transparency in Forest Service Permitting.

Santa Fe—WildEarth Guardians filed suit Thursday in federal court challenging the Forest Service’s rules that preclude citizen objections to Uranium exploration permits. The first nuclear bomb used in war, Little Boy, relied on uranium fission and ever since the tsunami in Japan; nuclear energy has faced more scrutiny in the United States. The Cibola National Forest in central New Mexico is a named because it regularly employs a Bush Administration rule baring public appeals of categorical exclusions to approve uranium exploration.
 
WildEarth Guardians is one of a handful of plaintiffs challenging the public notice, comment, and administrative appeal regulations that the United States Forest Service promulgated under the authority of the Appeals Reform Act in 2003. Plaintiffs seek to again restore their rights to appeal excluded projects under the ARA.
 
“We want Uranium to stay in the ground where nature put it.” Said Bryan Bird, Program Director with WildEarth Guardians. “If anything, the nuclear disaster in Japan demands we treat this poison with extreme transparency not by shutting out the public, we want to challenge uranium mining.”
 
The Appeals Reform Act requires that all “proposed actions of the Forest Service concerning projects and activities implementing land and resource management plans” must be subject to public notice, comment, and administrative appeal, yet the challenged regulations illegally exempt all actions that are “categorically excluded” from the need to prepare an EA or EIS under NEPA from notice, comment and appeal. The Bush rules are problematic because they allow many harmful projects to go forward without appeal.
 
On Sept. 17, 2010, the Forest Service approved the White Mesa Uranium Exploration project on the Cibola National Forest, which would allow exploratory drilling for uranium mining, employing a categorical exclusion under its NEPA rules and exempting it from administrative appeal under the regulations.  WildEarth Guardians commented on the proposal and would have appealed this project, but were denied the right under the Forest Service rules.

“Denying us the right to dispute Uranium development is contrary to our democratic system.” Said Bird. “Our country prides itself on a civic engagement and the right to question our government’s actions, these rules foreclose that option.”

The same rules were successfully challenged in California in 2003, and the Ninth Circuit later upheld the district court’s judgment that the rules violated the ARA, finding: “Had Congress wanted to categorically eliminate the right of appeal for timber sales and other categorically excluded Forest Service actions, the ARA would not have been necessary.”  Earth Island Inst. v. Ruthenbeck, supra, 490 F.3d at 698.  However, on March 3, 2009, the United States Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit on standing, allowing the challenged regulations to spring back to life after being enjoined for 3 ½ years.  Summers v. Earth Island Inst., 129 S. Ct. 1142 (2009).  But the Supreme Court did not address the Ninth Circuit’s holding on the merits that the challenged regulations violate the ARA.
 
Eight excluded projects are challenged in this case, including projects in the Cibola National Forest in CA, Giant Sequoia National Monument in CA, the Lassen National Forest in CA, the Umpqua National Forest in OR, the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in CA, the Ouachita National Forest in Arkansas, the Manti-La Sal National Forest in Utah, and the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming.
 
ATTORNEYS:
Matt Kenna: (970) 385-6941
Email:   matt@kenna.net
René Voss:  (415) 446-9027
Email:  renepvoss@gmail.com
 
FORUM: 
United States District Court for the Eastern District of California
 
PLAINTIFFS:
Sequoia Forestkeeper; Conservation Congress; Earth Island Institute; Oregon Wild; Cascadia Wildlands; Ouachita Watch League; Utah Environmental Congress; Western Watersheds Project; and WildEarth Guardians
 
DEFENDANTS:
Tom Tidwell, Chief of the U.S. Forest Service
United States Forest Service

Read the complaint.


 

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