ROLLBACK OF EPA RULES
The Trump administration, citing the pandemic, has moved to waive environmental reviews of projects and weaken air and climate protections.
used co-benefits to calculate the mercury rule and other rules — they were playing a shell game,” he said.
Critics said the change defies the intent of the landmark Clean Air Act of 1970. “These economic cost-benefit analyses have been an important driver of Clean Air Act regulations for 40 years,” said Richard Morgenstern, a former EPA official who served from the Reagan to the Clinton administrations. “What this rule is doing is altering the math in such a way to potentially downplay the economic benefit to public health so they are justified in writing weaker rules in the future.”
Allies of Trump celebrated that prospect.
“This helps the Trump agenda because it limits EPA’s freedom to push out new regulations,” said Steven Milloy, a member of Trump’s EPA transition team and author of the book “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA.”
The future of Thursday’s actions will depend on the outcome of this November’s election.
“If a new president takes office on Jan. 20, 2021, it’s extremely unlikely that this regulation will survive,” said Richard Revesz, an expert on environmental law at New York University.
Thursday’s executive order would be even more vulnerable, because it could be undone with a new president’s signature. Trump’s order cites “the nation’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 emergency” to justify directing federal agencies to use their emergency authorities to “expedite construction of highways and other projects,” according to the White House.
The policy, first reported by The Washington Post, will “continue the administration’s efforts to reform burdensome and outdated bureaucratic processes that prevent projects from moving forward,” a White House senior official said.
Two people familiar with the details said the order would encourage agencies to bypass requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the federal government to prepare detailed analyses of projects that could have significant environmental effects.
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, an association of independent oil and gas producers, declined to comment on the order until it was made public but noted that there were “statutes and precedent on which President Trump could rely” to bypass certain requirements.
“Infrastructure projects are certainly an effective way to jump-start economic recovery and get people back to work while supporting growth far into the future,” she said.