The US Bureau of Land Management announced on May 5 that it was beginning to review how it develops its resource management plans (RMPs). But the idea that the process needed to be revised began much earlier.
RMPs provide a framework for the US Department of the Interior agency's employees to manage federal onshore public lands. "We want to plan more efficiently," said Joe Stout, BLM's decision support, planning, and national Environmental Policy Act division chief.
"RMPs now take an average of 8 years to complete," he told OGJ on June 17. "That's too long."
Stout noted that in 2011, then-BLM Director Robert V. Abbey put together a roadmap of where the agency should be in 2016 which included a more nimble planning process and litigation reduction efforts. Internal assessments tried to identify issues and ways to address them in the time since. The RMPs were last amended in 2005.
"Our planning process is very collaborative, but we want to hear from a lot of groups on how we can do better," Stout said. "A lot of folks on the ground have good, practical experience. We hope they can tell us how to be more effective."
In the review it launched in May, BLM said it also aims to plan effectively across state lines and other landscapes and clearly define boundaries for different types of decisions. It also wants to create a more durable and dynamic planning process that allows the agency to keep plans current with amendments.
Two teams are at work, according to Stout. The first will consider what he termed "more surgical, process-oriented changes" in the planning process and regulations themselves. One question has emerged already: Does BLM really need separate Federal Register National Environmental Policy Act notices in addition to the US Environmental Protection Agency's in every case?
Implementation team
The second team, which BLM formed in early June, will develop implementation guidance for planning officials. "They're working a little later than our regulation team so they can see where the new rules are headed," Stout explained.
He said MLPs are part of a three-legged stool at BLM that also includes regulatory consistency and parcel leasing plan reviews. "We think they can be a more effective tool," Stout said. "The aim is to allow some oil and gas leasing, but mitigate conflicts through thoughtful, up-front planning."
BLM will solicit input through the summer and hopes to give information to its two teams by the end of August, he told OGJ. The implementation team will go to work in earnest later this fall, with the goal of having handbooks updated by 2016, Stout said.