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A federal judge has temporarily halted the U.S. Forest Service’s Houston South Vegetation Management and Restoration Project, ruling that the agency violated federal law again by failing to adequately analyze the project’s potential impact on Lake Monroe.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt ordered the project be halted until an appropriate remedy is determined, according to the Sept. 18 order.
This ruling stems from the third lawsuit filed by plaintiffs Indiana Forest Alliance, Monroe County Board of Commissioners, Hoosier Environmental Council and Friends of Lake Monroe against the U.S. Forest Service and its plan to harvest trees, perform controlled burns and apply herbicides in thousands of acres of the Hoosier National Forest.
Since filing their first challenge in 2020, the plaintiffs have argued that the USFS has failed to fully evaluate the potential impact of the project on Lake Monroe by not submitting an environmental impact statement, thus violating the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and the Administrative Procedure Act.
“This ruling makes it clear that the decision made by the Forest Service to proceed with the project without first complying with the agency’s NEPA obligations was arbitrary and capricious and will not stand,” Elizabeth Mahoney, board president of the Indiana Forest Alliance, said in a press release.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, which represents the USFS, said in an email that the department did not have a comment on the case.
The project, which was projected to take 10-15 years to complete, included commercial logging and controlled burns on national forest land in Jackson and Lawrence counties. As part of the project, trees would be cut on about 4,300 acres, and controlled burns would be conducted on another 13,500 acres.
The goal of the project was to promote the long-term health of the forest by treating the vegetation.
The project was also set to address erosion to the Lake Monroe watershed by fixing and relocating roads and trails around the lake, which abuts the national forest. According to court documents, Lake Monroe is the largest lake in Indiana and serves as the sole source of drinking water for more than 145,000 people.
The plaintiffs have opposed the project because they believed sediment from the area could run off into the lake and negatively affect its water quality, which is already a concern because roughly 76% of the Lake Monroe watershed is considered “highly erodible soil,” making the lake sensitive to pollution caused by soil erosion.
In the first lawsuit, the Indiana Southern District Court granted in part and denied in part for the parties.
The plaintiffs had raised several claims in that first challenge, alleging violations of NEPA, the National Forest Management Act, APA and the Endangered Species Act. Pratt ruled in favor of the defendants on all arguments, except for the NEPA accusation, saying they had failed to fully evaluate the environmental effects on Lake Monroe.
The project was remanded for further analysis.
Then, in 2022, the USFS submitted a supplemental information report to evaluate the environmental effects of the project on Lake Monroe.
A month later, the plaintiffs submitted their second lawsuit, requesting a preliminary injunction on the project, alleging the report had violated NEPA and APA. The district court granted the plaintiff’s motion for preliminary injunction, finding that the USFS improperly prepared a supplemental information report rather than prepare a new NEPA document, like an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement.
The USFS announced in 2023 a draft of a supplemental environmental assessment, with the agency concluding that the implementation of best management practices would eliminate any significant impact on Lake Monroe.
The plaintiffs responded with comments expressing concerns that the USFS had not supplied information as to why those practices would be completely effective.
Nonetheless, the USFS published its final assessment, signed a final FONSI and decided to implement the project without preparing an environmental impact statement. The plaintiffs filed the newest lawsuit shortly after, with similar claims from the second challenge.
In the recent ruling, Pratt found issue with the claims about the best management practices, or BMPs, writing that the USFS “offers no support for its conclusion that its BMPs will reduce any negative effect of the Project on Lake Monroe to an insignificant level.
“The Forest Service summarizes some studies related to BMP effectiveness… but even a brief review of those studies shows that the Forest Service’s reliance on them is entirely misplaced,” Pratt wrote.
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