Ecology Law Currents

The Legislative History of the National Park Service’s Conservation and Nonimpairment Mandate

Caitlin Brown

Caitlin Brown is a 3L at Berkeley Law and Co-Editor in Chief of Ecology Law Quarterly. This post is part of the Environmental Law Review Syndicate (ELRS).

 

Introduction

The National Park Service manages over 84 million acres of land divided between 413 different sites, and in 2015 alone, served 307.2 million visitors.[1] Their management goals are based on the 1916 National Park Service Organic Act (“the Act”). Section 1 of the Act defines the Park Service’s purpose as “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”[2] How are conservation and impairment from section 1 of the Act defined in the legislative history? How did these concepts originally enter the legislation, and what did Congress think the implications of the standards were? Professor Eric Biber of Berkeley Law posed these questions to me to assist with his research for an article he wrote with Elisabeth Long Esposito, The National Park Service Organic Act and Climate Change.[3] Given that 2016 is the centennial of the National Park Service’s founding by the Organic Act, a deep dive into the legislative history of the National Park Service seemed timely.

In the legislative history, Congress never explicitly defined conservation or impairment. However, the concerns of the Congressmen and the experts who influenced the legislation allow inferences about what these provisions mean. Generally, one can interpret these terms by reference to the differences between National Parks and National Forests. In comparison to National Forests, managed for consumptive use of their resources, National Parks were to be preserved for their scenic value and protected for the benefit of future generations.

As the Park Service manages millions of acres of land vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, these questions are important.[4] The Organic Act and subsequent amendments could offer leeway to Park Service managers as they try to respond to those impacts. Because neither the Organic Act nor its amendments set out specific management directives, I searched the legislative history for any evidence from the debates, conferences, and hearings that was useful in interpreting the extremely broad language of section 1. Ultimately, nothing in these documents prohibits active management by the Park Service to conserve and protect against the effects of climate change.

An Argument For Placing Logging Roads Under the NPDES Program

Kevin Boston & Matt Thompson *

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Introduction

Recent judicial decisions addressing the impact of forest management on water quality suggest that EPA’s clarification of regulations under the Clean Water Act (CWA) may become increasingly important. Courts currently must decide whether water pollution from forest roads and their drainage systems meets the criteria for point source pollution, rendering such sources subject to National Pollution Elimination Discharge System (NPDES) permit requirements under the CWA. Two federal district courts recently reached conflicting decisions regarding this very issue. In Environmental Protection Information Center v. Pacific Lumber Co. (“EPIC”), the court found that ditches and culverts associated with a forest road drainage system fall within the CWA’s point source category.[1] However, in Northwest Environmental Defense Center v. Brown (“NEDC”), a case now on appeal in the Ninth Circuit, another district court reached the opposite conclusion.[2] Differences in the rulings center largely on whether the disputed pollutant—fine sediment generated from forest roads—is discharged into streams naturally or as a result of human activity.[3]