Trump Dooms the Future by Gutting the National Environmental Policy Act: “The National Environmental
Policy Act, better known as NEPA, has served the nation well for 50 years. But last Friday the Trump administration decided to gut the law via administrative rules changes that will allow virtually unhindered development, resource extraction and pollution.
It’s one thing for the Trump cultists to support certain policies, tariffs, sanctions and war-mongering. It’s quite another to allow Trump’s anti-environmental administration to doom the future by leaving generations to come a smoldering, polluted and unlivable
planet — which is just what gutting NEPA will do. In a nutshell, NEPA requires the government to consider the environmental effects prior to issuing permits for industries or taking major action by federal agencies. Importantly, the law also requires the analysis
of environmental impacts to be presented to the public for review and comment. As it always does, industry has targeted the law since its inception in an effort to weaken or eliminate the required analysis and/or public review and comment process. In “industry
speak” NEPA’s prudent measures to ensure impacts are not unduly or irreparably deleterious to our shared environment are dubbed “red tape” and “regulatory hurdles.” Bending, as usual, to unrelenting industry pressure, Congress has already shamefully exempted
any number of projects — such as clearcutting national forests — from the required environmental reviews. These measures are intended, as in the case of national forest “categorical exclusions,” to bolster the timber industry which has largely cut itself out
of a future by logging far beyond the sustainable levels of forest replacement. In the parlance of the timber industry, our national forests are not ecosystems in and of their own right, supporting a vast array of wildlife and producing clean water for our
citizens, but are “100-year gardens” to be whacked down and “harvested.’”
[Counterpunch 1/15/20]
http://bit.ly/2uTYdFO
OPINION: Improving federal environmental impact assessments: “Last week, the Trump administration
proposed significant improvements to how agencies implement one of the most important laws you’ve never heard of: the National Environmental Policy Act. Passed in 1971, “NEPA” requires federal agencies to conduct extensive environmental impact studies before
they do virtually anything that could have a significant impact on the environment. That includes everything from Forest Service management plans to federal funds for major highway projects to the permits that agencies issue for pipelines and coal mines. Under
a Carter-era regulation, NEPA has grown into a behemoth of red tape. Environmental reviews average 4.5 years, and seven years for highway projects—just to produce a single Environmental Impact Statement (or “EIS”). That’s years of bureaucratic process before
a single bulldozer breaks ground. Of course, the resulting EISs often run into the thousands of pages. NEPA’s basic purpose of ensuring that agency decisionmakers are cognizant of the potential environmental impacts of their actions thus falls by the wayside.
Americans spend billions of dollars every year for agencies to create encyclopedias of environmental facts and figures far more detailed than is useful for agency decisionmakers. In practice, the purpose of NEPA has become litigation defense—as activist federal
courts and environmental advocacy groups have learned to use NEPA as a way to slow down or block large projects on the most minute technicalities. The negative impact on job creation is incalculable. Companies have to be prepared to lose hundreds of millions
of dollars on a single project because of delays that are not only lengthy but totally unpredictable. NEPA thus creates third-world levels of risk for large-scale investments, often to the detriment of the environment itself, as even ecological restoration
projects and renewable energy projects drown in NEPA’s ocean of red tape.”
[The Hill, 1/17/20]
http://bit.ly/2sCX0C8
Trump takes on 50 years of environmental regulations, one by one: “It was 1970. Congress
was wrestling with whether to give the right-of-way necessary to build a huge, 800-mile oil pipeline across Alaska, when a district judge blocked the project, using a brand new law requiring federal agencies to consider the environmental impact of projects.
“The Interior Department was stunned,” recalls William Reilly, a staff member in the Nixon administration at the time and later Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator. The law’s environmental impact statements, common today, were completely novel
at the time. Even the authors of the statute, he says, “never anticipated it would have that effect.” Exactly 50 years later, that law – the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) – is under attack. The Trump administration last week announced proposed reforms
to the act that would significantly reduce its scope. It’s the latest move in an unprecedented effort to roll back not only recent Obama-era environmental regulations but also some of the bedrock laws that have shaped federal environment policy since the 1970s.
In the case of the trans-Alaska pipeline, it took more than four years of wrangling, an Arab oil embargo, and a special act of Congress before the permits were approved. But Mr. Reilly recalls the chairman of the oil company in charge telling him that the
final project was more robust and sound as a result of the environmental-review process. “In the eyes of the person most closely concerned about it, it was a very constructive intervention,” he says.”
[Christian Science Monitor, 1/16/20]
http://bit.ly/30CJmLW
How Trump's NEPA overhaul could affect 3 projects: “President Trump is trying to overhaul
a bedrock environmental law to end a "regulatory nightmare." Even as he announced the proposed changes to the National Environmental Policy Act last week, his aides promised that the law would remain just as protective of the environment as it always was.
"If it required NEPA yesterday, it will require NEPA under the new proposal," a Trump aide said. But the level of attention that NEPA gives to projects could change. The proposal promises to narrow environmental requirements, opening the door for more cursory
reviews of planned projects like power plants, pipelines and visitor centers at national parks. Trump's pursued changes, which could be final later this year, wouldn't require agencies to demand a true greenhouse gas accounting of projects seeking federal
approval. And it would change thresholds to allow some projects that carry significant environmental consequences to avoid oversight altogether. Nick Yost, who helped write NEPA's regulations when he served as general counsel for the White House Council on
Environmental Quality under President Carter, said the Trump administration's bid to reduce the scope of environmental reviews wouldn't succeed. Courts won't buy the administration's argument that downstream environmental impacts related to climate change
and other problems are too difficult to assess. "The purpose of coal is to burn the stuff, and it's no stretch of the imagination to say if it's mined, it will be burned," he said. "And if it's burned, what are the consequences of it? Those consequences include
climate change." Climate change has figured heavily in these projects, all of which were reviewed under NEPA regulations. Here's a look at how they might have been treated under Trump's proposed changes.”
[E&E News, 1/16/20]
http://bit.ly/362zg7Z
Feds ease NEPA process for major mining projects: “A federal panel yesterday voted to make
the mining industry eligible for easier environmental permitting as part of a push to rebuild American infrastructure. The Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FPISC), which was created by the 2015 Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST)
Act, added mines to its list of "covered projects" alongside roads, bridges and ports. Congress passed the FAST Act to streamline the National Environmental Policy Act process for qualified infrastructure projects. The criteria included at least $200 million
in investment and an environmental review requiring more than two regulatory agencies. Most mines — including controversial proposals like the Pebble mine in Alaska and Twin Metals copper-nickel mine in Minnesota — will easily clear that threshold. Industry
groups hailed the move. "Rebuilding the nation's transit systems, ports and waterways, pipelines and other projects, cannot happen without timely access to raw materials made available through domestic mining," National Mining Association President and CEO
Rich Nolan said. Speeding up the permitting process has long been mining companies' top priority. Industry analysis puts the average mine permitting time between seven and 10 years. Environmentalists decried the vote as the second assault on bedrock environmental
law in as many weeks. Under President Trump, the White House Council on Environmental Quality issued NEPA guidance last week designed to dramatically accelerate environmental reviews. But industry had already spent years lobbying behind the scenes for recognition
on the FAST Act list. "The Pebble Partnership is not seeking to avoid rigorous environmental review," wrote Tom Collier, CEO of the company behind the controversial Alaska mine, in a 2017 letter to FPISC, obtained by mine opponents through the Freedom of Information
Act. "We seek only to avoid the unnecessary delays that have frequently occurred on such projects in the past.’”
[E&E News, 1/17/20]
http://bit.ly/2Tz3Lje
OPINION: America’s renewable energy future limited by onerous regulations: “In recent years,
a number of states and the federal government have been working to increase the amount of renewable energy in America’s power grid. Unfortunately, progress has been slow. For example, when it comes to harnessing offshore wind power, only a single project off
Rhode Island has been installed to date in U.S. coastal waters. Why the delays? In large part the answer is a lot of unnecessary governmental red tape. Although U.S. states have sanctioned nearly 17,000 megawatts of offshore wind power — something that states
and environmentalists both want — the bureaucratic obstacles involved have proven prohibitive. To locate and install these types of projects can require approvals from as many as 20 different federal, state, and local agencies—and the process can take years.
This same brand of inefficiency has also created major hurdles for the development of new roads, bridges, pipelines, electric transmission lines, and other critical infrastructure. However, these hurdles may start to fall, now that the Trump administration
has proposed improvements to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). For years, NEPA regulations have slowed the development of crucial infrastructure projects throughout the nation. For example, NEPA reviews often take up to seven years to approve a
single federal highway project. In revising NEPA, the administration hopes to establish more reasonable timeframes for the completion of environmental impact statements. Such streamlining, along with improved information sharing, could help the nation launch
new energy and infrastructure efforts. Improving NEPA could also help to revitalize the nation’s essential hardrock mineral industry.”
[The Mercury, 1/16/20]
http://bit.ly/364hIbN
OPINION: National environmental policy act updates are needed: “The Trump Administration
recently announced efforts to make critically needed revisions to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). These common-sense revisions are long overdue and vitally important. NEPA was signed into law by President Nixon in 1970. Modernizing NEPA will
benefit the economy, the environment and untangle delays that have been hindering needed investment in energy projects around the nation. The Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) and the thousands of oil and natural gas explorers we represent
commend the Trump Administration for taking this much-needed action. Since its enactment, requirements involving NEPA have grown considerably and place a heavy burden on independent oil and gas producers operating on federal lands, including those in New Mexico.
While the law itself remains unchanged over the past 50 years, the courts, Presidential directives and significant regulatory modifications have made NEPA unworkable and far more complicated than the original intent of the law. Modernizing NEPA will reduce
delays hindering American oil and natural gas projects and badly needed infrastructure initiatives across the nation. The Trump Administration’s efforts to modernize NEPA will also spur key efficiency efforts that will actually enhance environmental protection.
A wide array of issues affect timeframes for complying with NEPA. In an attempt to respond to relentless court challenges, federal land management agencies endlessly revise information requirements throughout the NEPA review process. Instead of working with
the users of public lands to implement reasonable environmental and conservation efforts, the federal land managers get caught in a “paper chase” to create “appeal proof” NEPA documents. This is not only highly inefficient, but hampers efforts to find innovative
solutions to protect the environment, unlock investments and create jobs.”
[Carlsbad Current Argus, 1/17/20]
http://bit.ly/2u8VckC
Trump Proposes Speeding Up Climate Change to Build More Coal Mines: “With the bulk of his
recent time and energy being devoted to extorting Ukraine and assassinating a world leader without getting approval from Congress, you might have forgotten that Donald Trump has many other items on his four-year plan, or as it’s known internally, Operation
Do as Much Damage as Possible in the Little Time I’ve Got. Top items on the agenda include, but are not limited to: demonizing immigrants; emboldening white supremacists; making life extra miserable for the poor; alienating allies; and cozying up to dictators.
Truly, the list goes on and on. Somewhere near the tippy-top is, of course, his pledge to turn the earth into an uninhabitable hellhole, an undertaking to which he’s shown a bigger commitment than to any of his current or former wives, and upon which he bestowed
some presidential attention just today. On Thursday, in between complaining that he‘s a victim of harassment and trying to take credit for lower cancer rates in the U.S., Trump announced from the White House his proposal to gut the National Environmental Policy
Act, a 50-year-old law that requires federal agencies to assess the impact of major projects on the environment, and to loop the public in on the process. Why? To build more coal mines, among other planet-heating enterprises, of course. And quickly! As has
been the case virtually every time the administration has proposed scrapping an existing regulation for one that would, say, kill 1,400 Americans a year, the move was cheered by the industries that stand to profit. Jay Timmons, president and chief executive
of the National Association of Manufacturers, for example, told the Washington Post that his organization had called for “exactly” the changes proposed by the White House. What a crazy coincidence that turned out to be!”
[Vanity Fair, 1/17/20]
http://bit.ly/2R0TKtE
Rebuild stronger or risk losing disaster aid, FEMA orders: “Communities that use federal
disaster aid to rebuild public facilities now must follow new construction codes to make them more resilient to future calamity. The new policy, published yesterday by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, represents a major shift in recovery funding. It
forces states and municipalities that rebuild with FEMA money to take preventative steps such as locating rebuilt public facilities outside flood zones and a safe distance from wildfire-prone vegetation and using durable building materials. The policy aims
to address a long-standing criticism — that communities are spending federal disaster aid rebuilding damaged facilities to pre-disaster standards only to have them damaged again by a hurricane, flood or wildfire. Those communities will now have to rebuild
in accordance with dozens of the latest construction codes that specify building location, design and materials. "All of this rebuilding now is going to have to start to be rebuilt to these stronger standards," said Gabe Maser, vice president of federal relations
for the International Code Council, which writes model construction codes. The policy will strengthen community resilience, protect lives and property, and save taxpayer dollars, FEMA's Assistant Administrator Keith Turi said. A wide range of officials representing
local government, insurance companies, engineers and emergency managers hailed the policy, which FEMA posted yesterday with no announcement. FEMA was required to implement the policy under a broad 2018 law that aims to shift the agency's focus to preventing
disaster damage. "When you have a disaster and want to rebuild, it doesn't make sense to rebuild to the standards we had before. We're in a vastly different environment now. We have to be thinking about resilient, sustainable infrastructure," said Thomas Smith,
executive director of the American Society of Civil Engineers, which writes dozens of construction codes.”
[E&E News, 1/17/30]
http://bit.ly/2R0CFQz
Savvy senator pumps life into embattled Alabama highway project: “In 2014, road builders
in Alabama broke ground on one of the nation's most costly highway projects. Two years later, they stopped after the state ran out of money. Now, with a jump-start from an influential senator, work on the roughly 52-mile Northern Beltline around the city of
Birmingham is — at least fleetingly — set to inch forward. Under a spending bill signed last month by President Trump, the project is expected to get $30 million in fiscal 2020. In a statement trumpeting the news, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) heralded "the enormous
benefits this corridor will bring to our state and the nation" and credited Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) for securing the money. Despite a congressional ban on earmarking, the episode is evidence that savvy lawmakers can still find
ways to route dollars to favored enterprises. But even by Alabama's official forecast, the Beltline's completion is more than three decades away. With Congress in the early stages of work on a long-term highway and a transit bill that's unlikely to provide
much fresh revenue, critics question the mindset that perennially puts ceremonial digs for new projects ahead of upkeep for those already built. While the Alabama Department of Transportation is still pondering uses for the new appropriation, "it's dribbling
money into a black hole," said Sarah Stokes, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. SELC spent years in litigation in an unsuccessful fight to block the undertaking, partly on the basis that it violated the National Environmental Policy
Act. Since taking office, Trump has vowed to overhaul NEPA regulations on the grounds that they impede major projects, but Stokes said, "It's the funding that has held this up." Nelson Brooke, head of the Black Warrior Riverkeeper group, which was the plaintiff
in the earlier litigation, sees the funds as a symbolic gesture that "the Beltline isn't dead" even though it will probably never be completed. The money will flow from a $100 million set-aside for the Appalachian Development Highway System, a program created
decades ago to pay for roads in the struggling Appalachia region.”
[E&E News, 1/17/30]
http://bit.ly/2TwGPBd
Researcher: SpaceX Satellite Plans Break US Environmental Law: “Thanks to their relatively
low orbit, which makes them extremely bright in the night sky, SpaceX’s internet-beaming Starlink satellites are already wreaking havoc on astronomical efforts despite only having launched a few hundred out of a planned 42,000 so far. Ramon Ryan, law student
at Vanderbilt University, argues in a yet to be published paper that the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) approval for the project might have been unlawful, Scientific American reports. “There is this law, the National Environmental Policy Act [NEPA],
which requires federal agencies to take a hard look at their actions,” Ryan told the Scientific American. “The FCC’s lack of review of these commercial satellite projects violates [NEPA], so in the most basic sense, it would be unlawful.” NEPA was introduced
in 1970 to force all federal agencies to take the environmental toll, covering anything from wildlife preservation to the effects on climate, of projects into account — a requirement that can be skirted with a special “categorical exclusion” if there’s proof
a certain project doesn’t impact the environment. The FCC was granted such an exclusion for almost all of its activities, including in space, in 1986. Ryan argues that such an exclusion would never hold up in court. “If the FCC were sued over its noncompliance
with NEPA, it would likely lose,” Ryan told the Scientific American, as the agency has never actually been able to prove that commercial satellites don’t impact the environment.”
[Futurism, 1/17/20]
http://bit.ly/3anoQmL
Will Long-Awaited Changes to NEPA Materially Alter Federal Environmental Reviews?: “On January
10, 2020, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) proposed amendments to National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) implementing regulations. The Proposed Rule would represent the first significant overhaul of CEQ’s NEPA regulations in more than 40 years.
The changes in the Proposed Rule are substantial and numerous. While the stated purpose of the changes is to facilitate more effective and timely environmental review of federal agency actions, the practical impact of the proposed changes is far from clear.
Below, we focus on some of the more significant substantive provisions of the Proposed Rule. CEQ’s regulations always included suggested page and time limits for NEPA reviews. The Proposed Rule strengthens these “suggestions” by implementing presumptive limits
on length of NEPA documents. The Proposed Rule would establish a presumptive 75-page limit on Environmental Assessments (EA) and a presumptive 300-page limit on Environmental Impact Statements (EIS). CEQ states that the purpose of these limits is to focus
NEPA reviews on the relevant analyses and to generate concise, readable documents that will better serve their informational purpose. The efficacy of these presumptive limits will depend in part on the various agencies’ buy-in to their mission, and whether
the resulting impact statements will satisfy the requirements of a large body of NEPA case law. Under the Proposed Rule, Senior Agency Officials are permitted to approve documents exceeding these presumptive limits. Thus, for more complex or controversial
projects, the Senior Agency Officials may determine, in their discretion, that the presumptive limits need not apply. Moreover, the Proposed Rule does not specify what happens where an agency fails to abide by the presumptive limits. It is unlikely that the
presumptive limits proposed by CEQ would significantly reduce paperwork generated during NEPA review at any rate.”
[Nossaman LLP, 1/15/20]
http://bit.ly/37ens4d
Trump Administration Proposes Significant Streamlining of National Environmental Policy Act:
“Updating aging regulations to promote clarity and efficiency is a laudable goal. The NEPA process should be used to promote commonsense consideration of environmental effects in conjunction with federal decision-making, not to endlessly delay projects in
an avalanche of data, studies and red tape. Recognizing changes in technology and promoting inter-agency coordination of NEPA reviews for major projects is simple good management and consistent with the goal of environmental protection. However, the proposed
changes, especially those that relate to the analysis of an action’s cumulative effects, climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, and those imposing artificial deadlines and page limits for complex analyses of large projects, could backfire, leading to
adverse court decisions and project setbacks unintended by the proposed rulemaking. One of the most notable changes is the proposed revision to the definition of “effect.” Mirroring proximate cause in tort law, CEQ seeks to define effects as those that are
reasonably foreseeable and have a reasonably close causal relationship to the proposed action. According to CEQ, an effect for which the agency action has only a “but for” causal relationship would not be enough to meet the new definition. In a similar vein,
CEQ proposes that “effects should not be considered significant if they are remote in time, geographically remote, or the result of a lengthy causal chain.” While CEQ’s stated purpose of the new definition is to focus federal agencies’ attention on only the
most significant effects of an action, some have asserted that the change could reduce the analysis of the potential impact an action may have on, for example, increased CO2 emissions and global warming, depending on the nexus between the action and these
impacts. Along with revising the effects for which federal agencies must give a hard look, CEQ proposes eliminating altogether the longstanding requirement of evaluating cumulative effects. Although federal courts give substantial deference to agencies’ regulations,
courts may find that eliminating the cumulative effects analysis altogether may be overreaching.”
[National Law Review, 1/14/20]
http://bit.ly/37enhG5
Justin McCarthy
Interim Director, NEPA Campaign
The Partnership Project
1300 L St NW
Washington, DC 20005 USA
C: (540) 312-3797
E: jmccarthy@partnershipproject.org
The Partnership Project, a registered 501 (c) (3) non-profit, is a collaborative effort of over 20 of the country’s most influential advocacy organizations, including Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, League of Conservation Voters,
Earthjustice, and Natural Resources Defense Council.