Trump guts conservation rules for permits
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday unilaterally weakened 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.
In doing so, the Trump administration claimed it will save hundreds of millions of dollars over almost a decade by significantly reducing the amount of time allowed to complete reviews of major infrastructure projects.
The president announced the final changes to the rule at the UPS Hapeville Airport Hub in Atlanta, making the case that “mountains and mountains of red tape” and lengthy permit processes have held up major infrastructure projects across the country, including a lane expansion to the perpetually clogged Interstate 75 in Georgia.
“All of that ends today,” he said. “We’re doing something very dramatic.”
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 roll back 100 rules protecting clean air and water, and others that aim to reduce the threat of human-caused climate change.
Because the action is coming so late in Trump’s term, it elevates the stakes in the November elections. Under federal regulatory law, a Democratic president and Congress could eradicate the NEPA rollback with simple majority votes on Capitol Hill and the president’s signature.
Republican lawmakers, the oil and gas industry, construction companies, homebuilders 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 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.”
With the economy still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, the president has repeatedly said we must loosen environmental rules to get the country back on its feet. In June he signed an executive order allowing energy and infrastructure projects to bypass parts of certain laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, with the justification that it will “strengthen the economy and return Americans to work.”
Belinda Archibong, an assistant professor of economics at Barnard College of Columbia University, said if the Trump administration wanted to improve the economy, the president would actually call for more regulations to protect vulnerable communities already highly susceptible to coronavirus from the threat of increased air pollution.
“Saying ‘We’re going to pull back on regulation’ does not mean that firms are going to start hiring more people. That’s complete nonsense. All that’s going to happen is it’s going to lead to more pollution, period,” Archibong said.
Conservationists like to call the National Environmental Policy 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 U.S. 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.
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 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.