Scientific Lack Detailed for Committee

June 29, 2000

The House Agriculture Committee, meeting to consider the condition of scientific expertise at the Environmental Protection Agency, Wednesday was told the need for additional science in environmental policy making "is unequivocally recognized," according to Derek Winstanley, chief of the Illinois State Water Survey, a division of the Office of Scientific Research and Analysis in the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

The federal Committee on Environment and Natural Resources (CENR) found that "scientific uncertainty is a fundamental condition for most environmental policy making" and that "the need for additional science is unequivocally recognized," said Winstanley. The CENR also recognized that "the question, which has been strongly raised by several reviewers, is whether there is adequate understanding to proceed and how far we should proceed."

Winstanley said there is a need "to undertake a major effort to characterize the status and trends of the nation’s rivers. We also need to design and put in place a suitable monitoring network to evaluate the status and trends of water quality and quantity in the nation’s rivers and streams."

George Ice, a principal scientist with the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, testified on behalf of the Society of American Foresters (SAF). That organization, said Ice, "has expressed to EPA its opposition to the proposal to reclassify forestry as a point source. EPA had argued that this is necessary because forestry is a substantial contributor to the number of water bodies identified by states as impaired.

"This contradicted our understanding of forest management and its impact nationwide on water quality. Because of these concerns SAF joined with the National Association of State Foresters (NASF) in a review of the list of silviculturally impaired water bodies sent by EPA to the Subcommittee on Department Operations, Oversight, Nutrition, and Forestry. What we found is that the information provided to this committee was not the most current nor an accurate representation of the contribution of forest management to water quality impairment."

Nowhere in the EPA’s analysis is there any acknowledgment of the benefits received from managed forests, said Ice. "The health of our streams, lakes, and watersheds is clearly linked to the presence of trees. Scientists have shown that forests are the most beneficial land use for clean water. Forests, acting as a natural buffer, increase watersheds’ ability to deal with disturbances, leading to better water quality. Healthy watershed forests have numerous positive effects. They stabilize soil through a vast root system. Trees (and more importantly the forest floor and soil conditions they create) regulate stream-flow and storm water by absorbing runoff and trapping pollutants. Acting as a living filters, forests reduce the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous that flow into our water bodies. "

EPA has no "defensible rationale for proposing this rule (on total daily maximum loads [TMDLs]) as it relates to silviculture. In fact, based on our findings regarding the EPA data related to silviculture, reports from the Government Accounting Office, and congressional oversight, EPA data supporting other portions of the proposed rule should also be considered suspect. We hope that this committee will work to convince the EPA that it should not consider re-proposing silviculture as a point source of pollution."