Tongass old growth. Photo credit: Becky Knight
On June 24, 2020 federal District Court Judge Sharon Gleason, granted a complete victory to Alaska Rainforest Defenders and seven other environmental plaintiffs, vacating the Forest Service’s 2019 decision to conduct massive logging and road building in a project it euphemistically called the Prince of Wales Landscape Level Analysis (POWLLA).
The fatal flaw was a new planning approach called a “condition-based analysis.” Gleason ruled that the POWLLA planning for logging and road construction failed to include enough site-specific detail to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
A preliminary ruling in March, in the plaintiffs' favor, asked both sides to propose remedies which the judge should issue to address the plan’s deficiencies. The outcome of that is the final blow to the Forest Serve project in the June ruling, that the “economic harm caused” by the project analysis “does not outweigh the seriousness of the errors” contained in the environmental impact statement.
Further, she ruled that the agency cannot "tier to" the POWLLA EIS for future logging projects in the area, and must instead begin from scratch for any such plans.
The ruling is a double hit to the agency because planning for its massive Central Tongass Project – in a large area that includes Petersburg, Wrangell and nearby major islands and mainland -- is well underway but relies on the same, deficient style of analysis that POWLLA did. As a consequence, and as of press time, under the agency’s online public notice for proposed actions, the Forest Service continues to list the Central Tongass Project “on hold’ for an undetermined length of time, and the POWLLA appears nowhere on that public notice.
Under Judge Gleason’s order the Forest Service may proceed with recreation and restoration projects included in the EIS. Alaska Rainforest Defenders and the coalition of groups were represented by the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice.