Two local environmental groups joined a lawsuit filed last week against the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior over recent directives that opened up parklands nationwide for the use of electric bikes. The suit alleges that the agencies skipped necessary rule-making and environmental analysis steps, in violation of numerous federal laws.
Attorneys with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit based in Washington D.C., filed the lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on Dec. 4.
“Most people tend to focus on the results of decisions, but this lawsuit is really about process,” said Gordon Bennett, an Inverness resident whose group, Save Our Seashore, signed onto the suit alongside the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, the Marin Conservation League, and Amy Meyer, a longtime conservation advocate who was instrumental in creating the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in the early 1970s.
In August, United States Interior Secretary David Bernhardt ordered the National Park Service and other federal land management agencies to permit the use of electric bicycles on all trails currently designated for non-motorized bikes. Shortly after, Dan Smith, then the deputy director of the National Park Service, gave parks 30 days to adopt the secretary’s directive.
His memorandum specified that superintendents should insert new language into each park’s compendium, including a standard definition of electric bikes as a “low-speed electric bicycle” with up to 750 watts of power.
That definition includes the three classifications of electric bikes regulated in California, including those with pedal assistance up to 20 miles per hour and those with pedal assistance up to 28 miles per hour. Another class—which provides throttle assistance up to 20 miles per hour—is also included in the definition, though the memorandum stipulated that operators of such bikes must use the pedals unless they are on a park road that already allows motor vehicles.
Not all of the 419 park units across the country have responded to the order. According to the suit, just 25 units have either amended their compendiums or posted the new rules on their websites to date.
Locally, both the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Point Reyes National Seashore have posted an amended compendium with a new e-bike policy that corresponds to the secretary’s directive. Seashore spokespeople declined to comment for this story.
The suit argues that any current allowance of e-bikes within park units should be considered unlawful, however; it details how the actions taken by the secretary and the N.P.S.’s deputy director offended numerous federal laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Administrative Procedures Act, the Federal Advisory Committee Act, the Federal Vacancies Reform Act and the park service’s Organic Act of 1916.
The suit argues that under NEPA, the park service and Interior Department were required to prepare an environmental impact statement or assessment before approving e-bike use. That act requires that such an analysis accompanies any “major federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human environment.”
It adds that the bikes “create qualitatively new risks, such as high speeds, the increased likelihood of collisions and the startling and disturbance of hikers, runners, equestrians and traditional bicycle riders. Their use also causes environmental impacts such as increased noise, trail damage and disturbance of wildlife.”
The groups not only sued the two agencies but also Sec. Bernhardt, Mr. Smith and David Vela, the current deputy director of the park service who replaced Mr. Smith after the latter resigned in September.
The suit says the directive from Mr. Smith violated the Administrative Procedures Act, which governs the process by which federal agencies develop and issue regulations. “Smith’s action in effect amends the N.P.S. regulations on bicycles and motor vehicles, but was promulgated under the false guise of a ‘policy’ without the notice and comment procedures required by the [Administrative Procedures Act] for regulatory amendments,” it states.
It adds that Mr. Smith and Mr. Vela’s “deregulatory actions were arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, and otherwise not in accordance with the law.”
The suit also challenges the authority of both men to act at all. “Defendants Smith and Vela’s actions allowing e-bikes in the National Park System violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act because they purported to be ‘exercising the authority of the director,’ despite neither having been confirmed as the N.P.S. director by the United States Senate nor appointed by President Trump as the ‘acting’ N.P.S. director.”
Further, the suit states, the deputy director position that Mr. Smith “purported to occupy had been created by [Sec.] Bernhardt in violation of the N.P.S. Organic Act.” That act allocates leadership positions, specifying two deputy director positions, one for operations and one for other programs within the park service. The two allowed-for deputy director positions already had occupants, the suit argues.
Lastly, the suit alleges that the agencies convened an illegal advisory committee, the “ebike partner and agency group,” last fall that included private industry advocacy organizations, such as the Boulder-based People for Bikes. The suit cites violations of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, saying the meetings “were neither open to other participants nor announced in the federal register” and that the committee “was not fairly representative of the range of private or public interests affected by ebike use on N.P.S. land.”
The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, known as PEER, sent letters in November urging the withdrawal of the new policies. The suit says that that group has yet to receive “substantive responses to its letters to date.”
The other plaintiffs outside of Marin are Wilderness Watch, headquartered in Montana, and a couple, Phyllis Koenig and David Perel, New Jersey residents who frequent the Acadia National Park in Maine.
Mr. Bennett believes that in the Point Reyes National Seashore, the impacts of opening bike trails to e-bikes deserves careful analysis and public input, especially in regard to potential impacts to wildlife, the integrity of trails and the fire threat posed by overheated bike batteries.
But most importantly, he said, “there are a number of problems with how this regulation was promulgated. One of them is that the original bike rules nationwide for all national parks were formed with a [National Environmental Policy Act] analysis. A public process with input from people on all sides of the issue is necessary before any change in that policy.”