The White House Council on Environmental Quality released a draft revision of the Principles and Guidelines for planning federal water projects - a process that the Corps Reform Network worked to initiate in the WRDA 2007, and has since followed closely - many of us signed onto comments to CEQ in June 2008, and again in July 2009 (see comments here http://www.corpsreform.org/sitepages/ToolsAndResources.html#Reforms).
The draft guidelines will now go to the National Academy of Sciences for review (a provision we also worked to get into WRDA 2007) and this opens up a 90-day public comment period. We thank our Members - all of you - so much for helping to bring us to this turning point in water resources planning. This draft revision, while it is a step in the right direction, still does not prevent the Corps and other agencies from choosing projects that damage the environment, and needs to go further to ensure that federal water-related projects protect and restore our water resources.
Please find below a press release that American Rivers and National Wildlife Federation sent around this morning, and attached are the draft guidelines and more info from CEQ can be found here http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/initiatives/PandG.
