The Trump administration is weakening a bedrock environmental law that requires assessing the impacts of infrastructure projects on the environment, in order to expedite development on public lands.
The Department of the Interior announced plans this week to pare back regulations for implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
The changes will restore NEPA to its intended role as a “focused, efficient decision-making tool,” the department said in a press release.
“For decades, NEPA has been twisted into a weapon to block American energy, infrastructure and conservation projects,” said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in a statement. “We are cutting unnecessary bureaucracy, speeding up approvals, and putting Americans back to work, while enforcing NEPA as Congress originally intended.”
NEPA was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970, and is a foundational environmental law in the U.S., requiring federal agencies to assess the environmental impacts of major projects, such as pipelines or new highways.
The changes made by DOI are in line with a draft rule unveiled last July. It rescinds over 80% of the department’s prior NEPA regulations, with the “majority of those regulations moved into a non-binding “Departmental NEPA Handbook of Implementing Procedures.” The department said these changes will reduce delays and costs for projects across public lands.
Examples of recent projects requiring NEPA assessments in Colorado include the I-25 South Gap connecting Castle Rock to Monument, and Denver International Airport’s Peña Boulevard Expansion project.
NEPA’s critics have blamed the reviews for slowing down development of energy and infrastructure projects across the country.
Supporters of the law, however, counter that it’s important to safeguard public health and the environment. And they’re concerned that the final rule does not allow for public input.
“The rule takes away the public’s right to comment on proposed projects,” said Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “That could mean drilling, mining, logging projects — that cover larger areas of public lands — and we wouldn’t even know about these projects when they’re proposed or in some cases when they’re approved….We should have the right to comment on projects that are happening right in our backyards.”
Her group, as well as the Sierra Club, have sued Interior and the U.S. Department of Agriculture over the NEPA changes both departments have made in final rules, and the lack of public comment.
Chris Winter, executive director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center at CU Boulder’s School of Law, noted that NEPA guaranteed the public a voice in decisions that impact public lands and the environment, and what really concerns him is the uncertainty that the changes bring with it.
“We had this long-standing set of regulations that have guided the NEPA process and really provide some certainty around how the public would be engaged in the type of environmental review that would happen,” he explained. “This decision to rescind the regulations wholesale, I think, is going to create a lot of uncertainty and it’s going to result in less public engagement.”
Other groups, however, are encouraged by the changes, but think Congress should be playing a role.
“We are encouraged by the Department of the Interior’s steps to let America build again through NEPA reform, but there is still work to be done,” said Karly Matthews with American Conservation Coalition Action.
“For instance, the bipartisan SPEED Act, which passed the House late last year, would further unleash our ability to permit energy projects of all kinds. We need more energy, period, and robust permitting reform will help us get there,” she added.
Congress has been trying for years to move legislation on permitting reform to allow for more energy infrastructure, but bipartisan talks broke down after the Trump administration halted wind projects at the end of last year.
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