New Mexico passed Senate Bill 1 in 2001 to allow counties to manage national forest lands under certain circumstances that U.S. Forest Service personnel couldn’t handle, and now that Otero County passed a resolution in 2011 to do just that, the Forest Service has filed a lawsuit to stop the action.
Peg Crim of the Lincoln National Forest has confirmed the action by the Department of Justice, but she said she is not at liberty to talk about the suit. “It’s not going to change anything we have now,” she said. “We are going to continue working with the county and state.”
According to a statement from U.S. Attorney Kenneth J. Gonzales on February 7, the Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division and the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of New Mexico, on behalf of the USDA Forest Service, filed a complaint asking for a declaration from the court on whether Senate Bill 1 and an Otero County resolution are pre-empted by federal law and, therefore, unconstitutional.
The statement says the legal action follows efforts by the Forest Service and U.S. Attorney’s office to find a way to legally satisfy the concerns of Otero County commissioners and collaborate with federal agencies to mitigate fire risk due to extreme drought conditions in the county’s forests.
From Las Cruces Sun-News