Protecting Species or Endangering Development? How Consultation Under the Endangered Species Act Affects Energy Projects on Public Lands

Executive Summary Throughout its forty-three-year history, the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”) has been one of the most celebrated environmental laws but also one of the most reviled. After passing with strong bi-partisan support in 1973, the ESA has recently faced growing opposition, amid concerns that it has failed to adequately protect species, while unreasonably impeding economic development. Much of the criticism has been directed towards section 7 of the ESA, which requires federal agencies to ensure that actions they undertake or authorize do not jeopardize threatened or endangered species, by consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”). Industry groups have argued that the consultation requirement frequently stops or delays much needed energy, transportation, water supply, and other projects. This study seeks to assess the impact of consultation, under section 7 of the ESA, on energy development on public land. To this end, the study analyzes 179 consultations undertaken between FY2010 and FY2014 with respect to oil, gas, solar, and wind energy projects on public land managed by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”). Basic information about each consultation, including a brief description of the project involved and a list of species affected, was obtained from FWS’s Tracking and Integrated Logging System. We also reviewed the biological opinions and concurrence letters issued by FWS and, for a subset of consultations, interviewed agency staff and industry representatives involved. Key findings from the analysis include: A relatively small number of energy projects authorized on federal lands between FY2010 and FY2014 went through the consultation process. The majority (eighty percent) of consultations that were carried out involved oil and gas drilling projects. Fifteen percent of consultations related to solar energy projects and five percent to wind energy projects. Only a small proportion (ten percent) of all oil and gas drilling projects approved by BLM from FY2010 to FY2014 were subject to consultation. In contrast, eighty-two percent of BLM approved solar energy projects and seventy-one percent of BLM approved wind energy projects underwent consultation. Most of the energy project consultations undertaken between FY2010 and FY2014 were completed within the 135 day time limit set in the ESA. There was, however, often significant back-and-forth between FWS, BLM, and the project proponent prior to the official start of consultation. This is a concern for industry, as pre-consultation discussions can add significant time to the review process and thereby lead to project delays. The need to consult can also give rise to significant uncertainty for industry. The assessment of project effects and the measures required to mitigate those effects often differs markedly between, and even within, FWS offices. Similar projects may, therefore, be assessed differently depending on the FWS staff handling the consultation. FWS has recently taken steps to address industry concerns regarding the potential for project delays and inconsistencies in the review process. To this end, FWS has issued a number of programmatic biological opinions, which cover multiple similar actions. Where a project is covered by a programmatic biological opinion, consultation tends to proceed more quickly, and there is less need for pre-consultation discussions. The existence of a programmatic biological opinion can also greatly reduce the complexity of consultation and generally leads to increased certainty for project developers.The Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Busines

Protecting Species or Hindering Energy Development? How the Endangered Species Act Impacts Energy Projects on Western Public Lands

Since it was enacted in 1973, the ESA has been one of the most celebrated environmental laws, but also one of the most reviled. Industry groups argue that the consultation process frequently delays and sometimes halts much needed energy, transportation, water supply, and other projects and often dramatically increases project costs. Environmentalists disagree with this view, contending that the process actually rarely stops anything and that the FWS lacks the backbone to impose meaningful conservation requirements that would be costly or inconvenient for the project developer. In 2015, the authors decided to delve deeply into ESA §7 to analyze how it actually works in practice and to assess the validity of various parties’ claims about the consultation process. They focused on the impact of §7 consultation on energy development on public land. This Comment is an overview of that study and key findings. In a nutshell, the authors learned that only a small fraction of energy projects developed on public land are reviewed at all under §7. When it applies, the consultation process appears to go quickly and smoothly for the vast majority of oil and gas projects, for a variety of reasons. On the other hand, consultation on solar energy and wind energy projects tends to be lengthy and complicated.The Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Busines

Review of \u3cem\u3eColonialism and Welfare: Social Policy and the British Imperial Legacy.\u3c/em\u3e James Midgley and David Piachaud (Eds.). Reviewed by Melinda Williams Moore.

Book review of James Midgley & David Piachaud (Eds.), Colonialism and Welfare: Social Policy and the British Imperial Legacy. (2011). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. $110.00 (hardcover.

The phenology of cyanobacteria blooms and carbon cycling in eutrophic lake ecosystems

Anthropogenic eutrophication is fundamentally changing the role of lakes in global carbon cycles. Without eutrophication, lakes function as net sources of CO2 to the atmosphere via watershed inputs and degradation of terrestrial organic carbon. In eutrophic lakes, however, this process can be reversed due to sustained phytoplankton blooms and thus high primary producer demand for CO2. Global increases in these blooms over the past two decades suggest the theoretical framework we currently use to explain phytoplankton community assembly may not fully account for the environmental stochasticity associated with climate change processes and anthropogenic landscape manipulation. As human populations increase, so does the proportion of our terrestrial landscape devoted to agriculture and urban areas, and thus the proportion of inland waters subject to eutrophication. Moving forward, it is critical to understand the response of lakes to anthropogenic disturbance, both to better predict harmful blooms and to evaluate the changing role of lakes in global carbon cycles. My dissertation addressed three primary questions: 1. Can eutrophication render lakes net sinks of atmospheric CO2?, 2. When CO2 is depleted from surface water, what mechanisms sustain cyanobacteria bloom biomass?, and 3. Do blooms act to stabilize or destabilize aquatic primary producer communities? To address these questions, sixteen eutrophic lakes were chosen along orthogonal gradients of interannual variability in watershed hydrologic permeability and Cyanobacteria dominance. My work demonstrated that in these lakes, CO2 and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) were derived primarily from internal lake processes, and never from heterotrophic degradation of terrestrial organic carbon. Stable isotopic analyses revealed that DIC came from heterotrophic recycling of autochthonous carbon, atmospheric uptake, or mineral dissolution. Additionally, as production increased and CO2 was depleted from surface waters below atmospheric equilibrium, Cyanobacteria blooms developed that shifted from diffusive uptake of bioavailable CO2 to energetically costly active uptake of scarce CO2 or HCO3-. This mechanism creates a positive feedback loop, where high production is maintained under CO2 depletion, allowing eutrophic lakes to act as net carbon sinks. Finally, I show that long term cyclic fluctuations in cyanobacteria biomass are a mechanism of instability in primary producer communities. These findings suggest that as growing human populations force more nutrient intensive agriculture, lakes will continue to shift to impacted, eutrophic conditions. These processes have the potential to alter the global CO2 budget and cause shifts to harmful algae that can efficiently use non-CO2 DIC

A Study of the Overlap of School Counselor Identity and Duties

Professional school counselors (N=92) across grade levels completed the Professional Identity of School Counselors survey (PISC) online to provide their views of professional identity and the concepts of leadership, collaboration, advocacy, multiculturalism, and the general delivery (e.g., counseling, consulting, individual planning, and guidance curriculum), management (i.e., how school counselors organize their time in meeting student needs), and accountability (e.g., collecting, using, and reporting the results of data) tasks of the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) National Model. Participants identified advocacy, delivery services, and collaboration as most important to the professional identity of school counselors. None of the top activities were leadership or da-ta collection tasks. Implications and practical suggestions for counselor educators and professional school counselors are provided

"I had to give up so, so much": a narrative study to investigate the impact of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) on the lives of young people.

The aim of this research was to explore the experiences of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome among a small group of adolescents, through three research questions: What are the personal experiences of young people with CFS – how does the condition affect their daily lives – including educational, social and psychological perspectives. Secondly, how does CFS impact family life – how does the condition influence not only the lives of sufferers but also those closest to them? Finally, can the knowledge base be deepened to help guide practice for those caring for the needs of adolescent CFS sufferers and their families? The study used a narrative approach in an attempt to capture young people‘s stories, and to provide a window of insight into the personal impacts of CFS on the lives of individuals. Open-ended interviews with eight young CFS sufferers (11 to 18 year olds) were employed that explored personal experiences of CFS. In addition four email interviews were conducted with primary caregivers to explore the impacts of CFS from a carers perspective. Five themes arose from a generic qualitative analysis of data - adolescent CFS is experienced as: (1) having to adapt to debilitating physical symptoms; (2) living with changes in family relationships and loved one‟s life experiences; (3) living with isolation and a disruption to a full and satisfying teenage life; and (4) feeling misunderstood and judged. Also a fifth and universal overarching theme, that CFS in adolescents is experienced as having to put life on hold. This is a major life adjustment, not only for the individual sufferers but for their family members also, who have to adapt to a new way of life accommodating for the limitations of one member. The implications for clinical practice and further research are discussed

Adaption of the distress thermometer problem list for an Australian cancer population

Qualitative interviews were used to explore the common psychosocial concerns experienced by Australian cancer patients to adapt a psychosocial Problem List (NCCN Problem List). In total 32 new psychosocial items not listed on the original NCCN Problem List and two new domains Supportive Care Services and Information Needs were identified by Australian cancer patients supporting the need to adapt the NCCN Problem List for an Australian context. A pilot of the adapted Problem List with Australian cancer patients and clinicians to establish face and content validity identified differences by gender and age, and between patients and clinicians, between the type and number of psychosocial items endorsed on the adapted Problem List. The pilot supported the adaption of the NCCN Problem List for an Australian context