President Trump on Wednesday is set to unilaterally weaken one of the nation’s bedrock conservation laws, the National Environmental Policy Act, limiting public review of federal infrastructure projects to speed up the permitting of freeways, power plants and pipelines. (...)
Revising the 50-year-old law through regulatory reinterpretation is one of the biggest deregulatory actions of the Trump administration, which to date has moved to rollback 100 rules protecting clean air and water, and others that aim to reduce the threat of human-caused climate change. (...)
Republican lawmakers, the oil and gas industry, construction companies, home builders and other businesses have long said the federal permitting process takes too long, and accused environmentalists of using the law to tie up projects they oppose.
“This will modernize and rationalize the permitting process so that we can get these projects built at a state and local level,” said Martin Durbin, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute. The expected final rule, he said, “is a big step forward and it’s about our nation maintaining its global competitiveness.”
The final rule sets new hard deadlines of between one and two years to complete environmental studies, according to two people who have seen the document but were not authorized to speak about it publicly.
The rule will also allow agencies to develop categories of activities that do not require an environmental assessment at all.
And in one of the most bitterly contested provisions, the rule would free federal agencies from having to consider the impacts of infrastructure projects on climate change. It does so by eliminating the need for agencies to analyze a project’s indirect or “cumulative” effects on the environment and specifying they are only required to analyze “reasonably foreseeable” impacts.
“This may be the single biggest giveaway to polluters in the past 40 years,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group. He accused the Trump administration of “turning back the clock to when rivers caught fire, our air was unbreathable and our most beloved wildlife was spiraling toward extinction.” (...)
Conservationists like to call the National Environmental Protection Act the “Magna Carta” of environmental law. Just as the charter of rights protected English citizens from monarchical rule, activists note, the foundational environmental policy gives United States citizens a voice in every federal road, housing project, airport or major infrastructure development.
It requires agencies to analyze and disclose the extent to which proposed federal actions or infrastructure projects affect the environment, from local wildlife habitat to the projected levels of greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.
Activists opposed to fossil fuel expansion have used the environmental policy to challenge a proposed major coal terminal in Washington state. Last year a federal judge found that the Obama administration did not adequately take into account the climate change impact of leasing public land for oil gas drilling in Wyoming, a ruling that also presented a threat to Mr. Trump’s plans for fossil fuel development. (...)
Mr. Trump, a former real estate developer who has had personal run-ins with state-level versions of the law, had made weakening it a top priority of his administration.
But despite tasking at least a half dozen people from various agencies to finish the regulation this summer, the final rule is not likely to be safe from the Congressional Review Act, a law that had hardly been used until Mr. Trump took office. Under the law, Congress can overturn a federal agency’s rule-making within 60 days of its finalization, something Democrats have pledged to do next year if they have the votes. Otherwise, the rule is expected to be subject to a lengthy court battle.
The revisions, if they hold up in court, are expected to lead to more permitting for pipelines and other projects that worsen global greenhouse gas emissions. It could also make roads, bridges and other infrastructure riskier because developers would no longer be required to analyze issues like whether sea-level rise might eventually submerge a project.
Revising the 50-year-old law through regulatory reinterpretation is one of the biggest deregulatory actions of the Trump administration, which to date has moved to rollback 100 rules protecting clean air and water, and others that aim to reduce the threat of human-caused climate change. (...)
Republican lawmakers, the oil and gas industry, construction companies, home builders and other businesses have long said the federal permitting process takes too long, and accused environmentalists of using the law to tie up projects they oppose.
“This will modernize and rationalize the permitting process so that we can get these projects built at a state and local level,” said Martin Durbin, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute. The expected final rule, he said, “is a big step forward and it’s about our nation maintaining its global competitiveness.”The final rule sets new hard deadlines of between one and two years to complete environmental studies, according to two people who have seen the document but were not authorized to speak about it publicly.
The rule will also allow agencies to develop categories of activities that do not require an environmental assessment at all.
And in one of the most bitterly contested provisions, the rule would free federal agencies from having to consider the impacts of infrastructure projects on climate change. It does so by eliminating the need for agencies to analyze a project’s indirect or “cumulative” effects on the environment and specifying they are only required to analyze “reasonably foreseeable” impacts.
“This may be the single biggest giveaway to polluters in the past 40 years,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group. He accused the Trump administration of “turning back the clock to when rivers caught fire, our air was unbreathable and our most beloved wildlife was spiraling toward extinction.” (...)
Conservationists like to call the National Environmental Protection Act the “Magna Carta” of environmental law. Just as the charter of rights protected English citizens from monarchical rule, activists note, the foundational environmental policy gives United States citizens a voice in every federal road, housing project, airport or major infrastructure development.
It requires agencies to analyze and disclose the extent to which proposed federal actions or infrastructure projects affect the environment, from local wildlife habitat to the projected levels of greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.
Activists opposed to fossil fuel expansion have used the environmental policy to challenge a proposed major coal terminal in Washington state. Last year a federal judge found that the Obama administration did not adequately take into account the climate change impact of leasing public land for oil gas drilling in Wyoming, a ruling that also presented a threat to Mr. Trump’s plans for fossil fuel development. (...)
Mr. Trump, a former real estate developer who has had personal run-ins with state-level versions of the law, had made weakening it a top priority of his administration.
But despite tasking at least a half dozen people from various agencies to finish the regulation this summer, the final rule is not likely to be safe from the Congressional Review Act, a law that had hardly been used until Mr. Trump took office. Under the law, Congress can overturn a federal agency’s rule-making within 60 days of its finalization, something Democrats have pledged to do next year if they have the votes. Otherwise, the rule is expected to be subject to a lengthy court battle.
The revisions, if they hold up in court, are expected to lead to more permitting for pipelines and other projects that worsen global greenhouse gas emissions. It could also make roads, bridges and other infrastructure riskier because developers would no longer be required to analyze issues like whether sea-level rise might eventually submerge a project.
by Lisa Friedman, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times
[ed. If you care about the environment, weakening NEPA is one of the biggest threats imaginable. It's also a good example of why government doesn't work these days - after years and decades of this type of death-by-a-thousand-cuts subversion, all that's left are zombie laws and regulations that no longer fulfill their intended purpose but exist only to give a false impression of government oversight and accountability.]
