News

Vegetation Management Project Update - US Forest Service

Updates from the US Forest Service:

The Forest Service will be running another comment period for the Sandwich Vegetation Management Plan. It is very unusual to do this, but the reason for the second comment period is that it appears there are some issues with the Comment Analysis and Response Application (CARA) that is making it difficult for people to submit comments. We have received more comments about CARA than the project itself.  We are working with the program administrators to better understand what the issue is.  It’s important that the comments go through CARA so they can be analyzed and responded to.  The plan going forward is that we will pick a date for a field trip (yet to be determined) and then start the second comment period a week prior to that.  Once we get a date that our staff can be at the field trip, which will be on a weekend, we will send out a press release and e-mail to those who are on our mailing list..  If you decide to post this information on the town boards, which would probably be a good thing so people are not all stressed out, please limit it the fact that after the current comment period expires there will be another comment period due to the issues with CARA.  In addition, we will have a field trip to answer any questions that come up during the comment period. I don’t want to throw out any dates or details and confuse people, I think they are confused enough with all the misinformation being posted on the town boards.  For legal reasons we cannot “extend” the comment period, we must initiate a new one and to do that we have to post legal notices, etc.  I also want to reiterate that I have never seen a comment period extended before so this is not common, but we know that CARA has problems, (we also have problems with it) and we want to make sure everyone has a chance to comment. Any questions give me a call.