Oregon Public Broadcasting

George W Bush has struggled to achieve his environmental legacy. Court after court has blocked his attempts to drill for gas and oil, to allow snowmobiles in Yellowstone, to clear-cut National Forests without worrying about wildlife.

As Christy George reports in the final segment of her series, Forest Politics, what's thwarted Bush is the most powerful environmental law you've never heard of: NEPA.

Before there was a Clean Air Act, before the Clean Water Act, even before the first Earth Day - there was NEPA -- the country's landmark environmental law, the first one Richard Nixon signed.

It's called NEPA for short -- officially, it's the National Environmental Protection Act of 1969.

You may not know it by name, but you've definitely heard what it does.

(Sound of public meeting): "And if you just want to go right to commenting, you can do it there."

This is what NEPA sounds like:

(Sound of public meeting)

Mary O'Brien: "NEPA is extraordinary."

Mary O'Brien has been using NEPA for decades on behalf of environmental groups, like the Grand Canyon Trust.

Mary O'Brien: "You've got to look at all alternatives. You've got to analyze the impacts of each of those alternatives for the environment. And the public has to be part of that from the very beginning and all the way through."

NEPA has been tripping up presidents for decades.

Andy Stahl: "No Forest Service timber sale has ever been stopped by a judge in Oregon on the basis of violating the Endangered Species Act."

Andy Stahl is executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics.

Andy Stahl: "Here in Oregon, NEPA's biggest impact has been to save old growth forests. NEPA required the government to disclose that logging the owl's habitat would really threaten the owl's survival, and the Forest Service just couldn't bring itself to do that. It hedged, and it avoided and it lied. And at the end of the day, the federal courts said, you have violated NEPA by not disclosing the real risk to the owl's survival from logging its habitat."

Then came the Roadless Rule -- meant to be Bill Clinton's wilderness legacy.

His administration spent three years collecting public comments.

When the Bush administration tried to undo the Roadless Rule, courts upheld it because, they said Bush hadn't gone to the people the way Clinton had.

Former timber lobbyist Mark Rey oversees forest policy for the Bush administration.

He'd like to leave behind a more collaborative process.

Mark Rey: "Over the next year, I'd like to have the opportunity to continue to build some of these processes so that we can expand our efforts -- whether the challenges are restoring the health of our forests, or dealing with abandoned mines on federal land, or some other restoration challenge that the standard sometimes adversarial decision-making process hasn't been all that successful in solving."

By Bush's second year in office, the White House and the Republican Congress started streamlining NEPA.

Mary O'Brien: "Congress said Healthy Forests Act, you want to do some logging ostensibly to make the forest healthy and prevent catastrophic wildfires, just skip NEPA."

Peter Frost: "It is very difficult for this administration to tell the truth, because in large measure, it requires this administration to tell the truth."

Lawyer Peter Frost works for the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene.

He's won two cases arguing that the Bush administration didn't follow NEPA.

For instance, Northern Spotted Owls eat red tree voles, but the Forest Service didn't want to ìSurvey and Manageî tree voles anymore.

Peter Frost took the Bush administration to court, and won.

Peter Frost: "What they did is they used the fear of wildfire and its impact on communities in the Northwest, and justified the elimination of the standard based on their efforts to try to do hazardous fuel treatments. But the standard really wasn't getting in the way of those treatments at all. The administration didn't tell the full truth about what was in the standard, and the court realized that and therefore set aside its decision."

Mark Rey says those high-profile losses obscure the Bush administration's track record on NEPA.

Mark Rey: "Obviously when plaintiffs win a victory in court, they want to tout it because it's something they've accomplished, but that sort of cloaks the fact that the Forest Service wins better than two-thirds of the time."

Before NEPA, there were no Environmental Impact Statements, no mandatory public hearings, and no requirement that the government ask the public to comment on its plans.

And that sounds a lot like the Unitary Executive theory, which the Bush administration has used to justify warrant-less wiretapping, detention without trial and signing statements that reverse laws passed by Congress.

Mary O'Brien and Peter Frost say no unitary executive can override NEPA.

Mary O'Brien: "For an administration like the Bush administration that wants to do what it wants to, you know, damn the torpedoes kind of thing in terms of the impacts on the environment, this is anathema."

Peter Frost: "NEPA is a very valuable tool. And it's not simply as a stalling process. It's a democracy in action."

Christy George: "Do you have a personal environmental connection to cases you work on?"

Peter Frost: "Absolutely, and I grew up here. I was a boy scout. I have four kids. My grandma was born here. I want this place, I want this place to be as good as I remember it when I was a kid."

Also in 'Forest Politics' Series

- What's The Value Of Forest Recreation?

- Administration Pushing For More Logging