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Murkowski questions proposed BLM rule
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has sent a letter to the Bureau of Land Management, questioning a new rule that the bureau has proposed for developing resource management plans for federal land. Murkowski, a Republican and Alaska’s senior senator, has asked BLM to drop the rule proposal. The agency manages more than 70 million acres of land in Alaska, including the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The public comment period for the proposed plan ended on May 25.
BLM says that the proposed new method for plan development would enable the agency to apply best practices gleaned from land-use planning over the past 30 years. The new procedure includes a new planning assessment phase prior to the scoping of a plan, and the development of a list of potential areas of critical environmental concern during that new phase. The proposed regulations include changes to the public comment arrangements and to the rules for coordination with state and local land use plans during BLM plan development.
Disadvantage to Alaskans Murkowski told BLM in a May 24 letter that the proposed regulations would significantly disadvantage Alaskans. The regulations would only require consistency between federal plans and state plans which have been adopted and approved. Given that Alaska’s full land entitlement within the state has yet to be processed, the state cannot have approved plans for all of the land that it anticipates owning. Moreover, the proposed rule shortens the review period for identifying plan inconsistencies while shifting responsibility for identifying inconsistencies entirely to state, local and tribal entities, Murkowski wrote.
Murkowski also commented that the new regulations for designating areas of critical environmental concern could compromise the balance between environmental conservation and public land use that is encapsulated in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, especially as, under the proposed rule, there may be no opportunity for public comment on the designated areas.
Murkowski also said that administrative boundaries within BLM for the new regulations could result in BLM officials from outside Alaska making land management decisions over lands within the state with which they are not familiar.
And, being a major federal action with extensive likely human and economic impacts, the proposed rule requires a environmental impact statement, under the terms of the National Environmental Policy Act, Murkowski said.
- ALAN BAILEY
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