Trump scales back environmental laws
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is rolling back a foundational Nixon-era environmental law that he says stifles major infrastructure projects. Environmentalists, however, say it has served for decades as a safeguard for low-income and minority communities.
Trump traveled to Atlanta on Wednesday to formally announce changes to the National Environmental Policy Act’s regulations for conducting environmental reviews, making it easier to build highways, pipelines, chemical plants and other projects. When Trump first announced the effort in January, the administration set a twoyear deadline for completing full environmental impact reviews while less comprehensive assessments would have to be completed within one year.
The White House said the final rule will promote the rebuilding of America, but critics call the Republican president’s efforts a cynical attempt to limit the public’s ability to review, comment on and influence proposed projects under one of the country’s bedrock environmental protection laws.
“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 that works to save endangered species.
Trump has made slashing government regulation a hallmark of his presidency and has held it out as a way to boost jobs. Environmental groups say the regulatory rollbacks threaten public health and make it harder to curb global warming. With Congress and the administration divided over how to increase infrastructure investment, the president is relying on his deregulation push to demonstrate progress.
“The United States can’t compete and prosper if a bureaucratic system holds us back from building what we need,” Trump said when first announcing the rollback of National Environmental Policy Act rules.
Opponents say the change will have an inordinate impact on predominantly minority communities. More than 1 million African Americans live within a half-mile of natural gas facilities and face a cancer risk above the Environmental Protection Agency’s level of concern from toxins emitted by those facilities, according to a 2017 study by the Clean Air Task Force and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
“Donald Trump is taking away the last lines of defense for front-line communities, and continues to demonstrate a total disregard for our environment and for those demanding racial and environmental justice,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
For his announcement, Trump chose Georgia, a swing state in the general election. Trump won the Republicanleaning state by 5 percentage points in 2016, but some polls show him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee. It was Trump’s ninth trip to Georgia and his sixth visit to Atlanta during his presidency.