WASHINGTON – President Trump is slated to unilaterally weaken one of the nation’s mother rock conservation laws, the National Environmental Policy Act, which limits public review of federal infrastructure projects to accelerate highway permits, power plants power and pipes.
In doing so, the Trump administration will claim hundreds of millions of dollars in savings over nearly a decade by significantly reducing the amount of time allowed to complete reviews of major infrastructure projects, according to two people familiar with the new policy.
The White House confirmed that the President plans to announce the final changes to the rule at an afternoon event at the UPS Hapeville Airport Hub in Atlanta. Trump will argue that lengthy permitting processes have delayed major infrastructure projects across the country, including a lane expansion to Interstate 75 in Georgia.
Revision of the 50-year-old law through regulatory reinterpretation is one of the Trump administration’s most important deregulatory actions, which to date has moved to override 100 rules that protect clean air and water, and others that they aim to reduce the threat of human causes. climate change.
Because the action comes so late in Trump’s term, it raises the stakes in the November election. Under federal regulatory law, a Democratic president and Congress could eradicate the reversal of NEPA with simple majority votes on Capitol Hill and the president’s signature.
Republican lawmakers, the oil and gas industry, construction companies, home builders, and other companies have long said that the federal authorization process is taking too long and accused environmentalists of using the law to link the projects they oppose.
“This will streamline and streamline the permitting process so that we can build these projects at the state and local levels,” said Martin Durbin, president of the United States Chamber of Commerce Institute for Global Energy. The expected final rule, she said, “is a great step forward and it is about our nation maintaining its global competitiveness.”
The final rule sets new strict deadlines of one to two years to complete environmental studies, according to two people who saw 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 contested provisions, the rule would free federal agencies from having to consider the impacts of infrastructure projects on climate change. It does this by eliminating the need for agencies to analyze the indirect or “cumulative” effects of a project on the environment and by specifying that they are only required to analyze “reasonably foreseeable” impacts.
“This may be the greatest gift to polluters in the past 40 years,” said Brett Hartl, director of government affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group. He accused the Trump administration of “turning back the clock when the rivers caught fire, our air was unfathomable and our most beloved wildlife was spiraling towards extinction.”
With the economy still recovering from the coronavirus pandemic, the president has repeatedly said that we must loosen environmental standards to get the country back on its feet. In June, it signed an executive order allowing energy and infrastructure projects to omit parts of certain laws such as the National Environmental Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act, with the justification that it “will strengthen the economy and restore Americans to work. “
Belinda Archibong, an assistant professor of economics at Columbia’s Barnard College, said that if the Trump administration wanted to improve the economy, the president would actually call for more regulations to protect vulnerable communities that are already highly susceptible to the coronavirus from the threat of a increased air pollution.
“Saying ‘we are going to withdraw the regulation’ does not mean that companies will start hiring more people. That is complete nonsense. All that will happen is it will lead to further contamination, period, “said Dr. Archibong.
Conservationists like to call the National Environmental Protection Law the “Magna Carta” of environmental law. Just as the bill of rights protected English citizens from the monarchical government, activists point out, fundamental environmental policy gives citizens of the United States a voice on all federal highways, housing projects, airports, or major infrastructure developments.
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 projected levels of greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.
Activists opposing the expansion of fossil fuels have used environmental policy to challenge a major proposed coal terminal in Washington state. Last year, a federal judge found that the Obama administration failed to adequately account for the impact of climate change on the leasing of public lands for oil gas drilling in Wyoming, a ruling that also poses a threat to plans for Trump for fossil fuel development.
Earlier this month, a district court closed the Dakota Access Pipeline, an oil route from North Dakota to Illinois that has inspired intense protests and legal battles, pending a more detailed environmental review. Oil and gas industry officials said that while changes to the law will not retroactively help the Dakota Access pipeline case, it will speed up decisions on future permits. The same week, the United States Supreme Court upheld an order from the district court citing the environmental policy law when it halted construction of the Keystone pipeline. The decisions were a severe blow to Trump, who has decided to make those projects a reality.
Trump, a former real estate developer who had personal clashes with versions of the law at the state level, made weakening him one of his administration’s top priorities.
But despite at least half a dozen people from various agencies completing the regulation this summer, the final rule is likely not to be spared from the Congressional Review Act, a law that had barely been used until Trump took office. position. Under the law, Congress can revoke a federal agency’s rulemaking within 60 days of its completion, something Democrats have vowed to do next year if they have the votes. Otherwise, the rule is expected to be subject to a lengthy court battle.
The reviews, if kept in court, are expected to lead to more pipeline permits and other projects that worsen global greenhouse gas emissions. It could also make roads, bridges, and other infrastructure more risky because developers would no longer have to analyze issues such as whether rising sea levels could submerge a project.
Documents obtained under the public records laws by Documented, to The watchdog group that tracks corporate influence in the government shows that the White House has worked with conservative allies to build support for the measure.
On February 20, Francis Brooke, Mr. Trump’s energy adviser, made a call with Republican governors, according to an email describing the discussion. In the call, Mr. Brooke urged state leaders to submit official comments praising the rule, and encouraged them to detail “illustrative examples of states where projects have been delayed or delayed due to NEPA permits.”
The NEPA change is likely to have a massive impact on low-income neighborhoods that are already disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards, said Kerene N. Tayloe, director of federal environmental affairs at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a group of defending. The polluting effects of a new toxic waste incinerator or an expansion of the port or a highway that attracts a lot of traffic cannot be considered in isolation in neighborhoods that already have a large number of industrial sites.
“A new ‘cancer alley’ refinery might not emit much alone, but combined, that cumulative effect would pose an unacceptable health risk,” said Ms. Tayloe, adding: “If we are not looking at inherited contamination, yes we are not. If we observe a long pattern of environmental degradation, we are only going to harm communities even more. ”
