The News Journal — Community members are concerned about the lack of changes to the proposed Jellico Mountain logging project outlined in a new draft environmental assessment that was released by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Forest Service last week, which still calls for the clearcutting of nearly 1,000 acres of forest.
Last Wednesday, the USDA uploaded several documents to the project website, https://www.fs.usda.gov/goto/dbnf/jellico, including specialist reports detailing potential impacts on hydrology, soil, wildlife, socioeconomics, vegetation, climate change and scenery. Most notably, however, the new draft environmental assessment did little to decrease the overall scope of the logging project from the initial proposal released in 2022.