Racial Injustice in Environment Policy Becomes White House Focus:
“President-elect Joe Biden has signaled he wants to power up a small White House office, transforming the Council on Environmental Quality into a muscular policy shop to help move
his environmental justice agenda. Under President Donald Trump, CEQ was focused largely on speeding up environmental permitting under the Nixon-era National Environmental Policy Act, revising the statute’s decades-old rules in order to boost infrastructure
and energy projects. But Biden has said that, under his watch, the council—which sits within the Executive Office of the President—will become a kind of central clearinghouse for environmental justice policy, pulling together agencies across the federal government
with a special focus on low-income communities of color. “CEQ has always had the responsibility of engaging with stakeholders,” said Christy Goldfuss, who headed the council during the Obama administration. “The difference here is that the Biden administration
has prioritized environmental justice in a way that no president-elect ever has before.” Jim Connaughton, who was President George W. Bush’s eight-year CEQ chairman, said the council is “uniquely positioned” to integrate environmental justice issues and resolve
inevitable conflicts between agencies on environment, energy, and natural resources issues between federal agencies, states, and regions. “The early gleanings I’ve been getting is they intend to fully empower the CEQ, and that’s great,” he said. The council’s
role as “a central clearinghouse” on policies is ideal for “a final push of removing the environmental burdens on these communities” and ensuring they benefit from new clean energy and other infrastructure, he said.”
[Bloomberg, 11/19/20]
https://bit.ly/33adCAm
A destructive legacy: Trump bids for final hack at environmental protections: “Donald Trump
is using the dying embers of his US presidency to hastily push through a procession of environmental protection rollbacks that critics claim will cement his legacy as an unusually destructive force against the natural world. Trump has yet to acknowledge his
election loss to president-elect Joe Biden but his administration has been busily finishing off a cavalcade of regulatory moves to lock in more oil and gas drilling, loosened protections for wildlife and lax air pollution standards before the Democrat enters
the White House on 20 January. Trump’s interior department is hastily auctioning off drilling rights to America’s last large untouched wilderness, the sprawling Arctic National Wildlife Refuge found in the tundra of northern Alaska. The refuge, home to polar
bears, caribou and 200 species of birds, has been off limits to fossil fuel companies for decades but the Trump administration is keen to give out leases to extract the billions of barrels of oil believed to be in the area’s coastal region. The leases could
result in the release of vast quantities of carbon emissions as well as upend the long-held lifestyle of the local Gwich’in tribe, which depends upon the migratory caribou for sustenance. Several major banks, fiercely lobbied by the Gwich’in and conservationists,
have refused to finance drilling in the refuge but industry groups have expressed optimism that the area will be carved open.”
[The Guardian, 11/22/20]
https://bit.ly/399WNsW
Biden faces uphill battle to 'permanently' protect Alaska wildlife refuge: “President-elect
Joe Biden faces several obstacles to fulfilling his pledge to work toward “permanently protecting” the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but he’ll also have a few executive tools at his disposal that could thwart drilling across large parts of the Alaskan wilderness.
Biden’s climate plan, released during the campaign, included a promise to protect the 1.6 million acres in Alaska that were opened up to oil drilling during the Trump administration. But unlike many Trump-era policies that Biden aims to undo unilaterally through
executive action, the authorization for drilling along the Alaskan refuge’s coastal plain became federal law through the GOP’s 2017 tax-cut bill, which required two oil and gas lease sales in the refuge by the end of 2024. Still, there are some avenues Biden
can pursue to reduce drilling or make it more difficult for the fossil fuel industry. Some of those options will be determined by whether the Trump administration is successful in completing one of the lease sales before Biden takes office on Jan. 20. This
past week, the administration published a “call for nominations” that sought input on which pieces of land should be leased for drilling, noting that a sale was “upcoming.” That came a month after it proposed allowing a company to test for oil deposits in
the refuge, home to grizzly bears, polar bears, gray wolves and more than 200 species of birds. Asked if the administration planned to hold a lease sale before Inauguration Day, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) spokesperson Richard Packer said in an email that
“a sale may take place after the nomination period has closed and a notice of sale [is] published in the Federal Register.” Legal experts say that if no sale takes place before Biden takes office, there are a range of actions the new administration can take
to limit drilling there.”
[The Hill, 11/22/20]
https://bit.ly/2J2x8HR
More national forest logging expected from last-minute environmental rule change: “The Trump
administration has finalized a rule change that aims to open up vast stretches of national forests to increased logging in Oregon, Washington and beyond. The rule change took effect Thursday after it was finalized Wednesday by the U.S. Forest Service. It eases
the approval process for activities on public forest lands, including logging and road-building. The newly-revised rule authorizes the Forest Service to bypass requirements under a bedrock conservation law called the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
It applies to areas of national forest land as large as 2,800 acres (4.3 square miles) at a time, allowing the Forest Service to authorize logging and other activities without following NEPA’s public notification and environmental review requirements. The
change to NEPA is just the latest in a wave of moves by the Trump administration to roll back environmental protections and remake the nation’s policy regime to be friendlier to industry — particularly in the extractive fields of mining, drilling and logging,
which have chafed against laws that impede their access to raw, natural resources like coal, minerals, natural gas and timber. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue oversees the Forest Service. In a press statement he lauded the agency’s newly-established
authority to use “categorical exclusions” to bypass NEPA provisions. “The new categorical exclusions will ultimately improve our ability to maintain and repair the infrastructure people depend on to use and enjoy their national forests – such as roads, trails,
campgrounds and other facilities,” he said. But conservation leaders said the rule change will bring unwelcome impacts on the environment stretching well beyond trail and campground improvements. They specifically took exception to the newly created categorical
exclusions — called loopholes by critics — for forest restoration and resilience projects and for certain road-management projects.”
[Oregon Public Broadcasting, 11/23/20]
https://bit.ly/36ZJo46
Alaska regulators worked with Pebble on wetlands plan: “Alaska state regulators have been
working with Pebble mine developers to help offset the thousands of acres of wetlands the project would destroy in the Bristol Bay watershed, state records show. Department of Natural Resources officials were discussing how they could help mitigate the massive
copper and gold mine's environmental damage as far back as July — long before the Army Corps of Engineers rejected the developers' initial plan to offset wetland destruction and protect Bristol Bay's salmon fishery by improving village sewage systems. "There
will be a big push for mitigation on state lands, as you know, and not much time to develop a plan," Deputy Commissioner Sara Longan texted Kyle Moselle, a member of the state's large mine permitting team, on July 31. Longan wrote that Moselle should expect
a call from Pebble LP permitting chief James Fueg, who "will share input" on a recent meeting he had with Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R). "We can do this, but it will take the Corp supporting us, also," she wrote. "We can talk more, but I think PLP is onto
a good approach." The text messages were included with emails and meeting notes obtained under a state public records request by the environmental group SalmonState and shared with E&E News. While DNR has previously claimed that it has only presented information
to Pebble about state land when asked, and that it is entirely Pebble's responsibility to design a mitigation plan the Army Corps would approve, the records show DNR officials actively working with mine backers and the corps to brainstorm potential mitigation
ideas. At an August meeting with state, Pebble and Army Corps officials, DNR asked the federal regulators to "work with the state to identify and evaluate potential compensatory mitigation approaches/options." The Army Corps originally responded that it would
not help but that "the state must work with PLP if they so choose." However, the agency's Alaska District later reversed course, saying it would "look for examples of in kind preservation on state land.’”
[E&E News, 11/20/20]
https://bit.ly/3o1OV11
What did Trump's emergency orders do? Not much: “Six months ago, as the pandemic shook the
country and hit the economy, President Trump promised Americans he would cut regulatory barriers across the government in an "environmentally good" way. "The virus has attacked our Nation's economy as well as its health," the president's May executive order
stated. Trump directed agencies to "continue to remove barriers to the greatest engine of economic prosperity the world has ever known: the innovation, initiative, and drive of the American people." Then, two weeks later, in June, he signed another order that
aimed to use emergency authorities to accelerate infrastructure permitting to "support the nation's economic recovery from the COVID-19 emergency.” Both initiatives were seen as ways for Trump to use the pandemic to bolster his deregulatory push that formed
the linchpin of his campaign. But experts say his actions to save the economy by implementing environmental rollbacks have largely fallen short, and speculation abounds about which executive orders President-elect Joe Biden will ax first. A White House spokesperson
last week claimed the Trump cuts worked. He wrote via email that the president has "taken bold action to spur an economic recovery in the wake of COVID-19, which has led to a record V shaped recovery and 33.1% GDP [growth] in the third quarter." The White
House pointed to a handful of environmental regulatory cuts. One "streamlined" EPA's existing regulations for gasoline, diesel and other fuels. Another EPA emergency exemption allowed the disinfectant product SurfaceWise2 to be used on airplanes in Texas.
The administration has also touted a Department of Energy rule to speed up dishwasher times and an energy efficiency rollback that the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute has long pushed for. Brett Hartl, the government affairs director for the Center
for Biological Diversity, called the permitting order "mostly bluster." He noted Trump has issued a number of "politically motivated" executive orders so it's not surprising they haven't delivered.”
[E&E News, 11/23/20]
https://bit.ly/3kX35OT
FERC eminent domain pipeline battle heats up:
“Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week to provide documents on how it handles landowner complaints about natural gas pipelines, reviving
a debate about the federal role in eminent domain. In the letter, the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties requested FERC produce information about a number of agency practices, including certificate extensions
for pipelines and the status of FERC's dispute resolution service, which is intended to assist landowners in conflict with pipeline companies. When FERC determines that a pipeline is required for "public convenience and necessity," an energy developer is permitted
to take private land under existing rules through eminent domain. If companies are running behind schedule, they can apply for a certificate extension. Raskin said these extensions prolong landowners' "suffering and lack of access to their full property."
He cited the delayed Mountain Valley pipeline, which is under construction to run through Virginia and West Virginia. FERC recently granted the pipeline a two-year extension to complete the project. Raskin also pressed FERC on the disposition of property for
canceled projects. With the recent termination of the Atlantic Coast pipeline, he said he is concerned about what happens to land taken through eminent domain for a pipeline that will no longer be built. "There appears to be no process to ensure that this
land reverts back to the property owner, or that the land is not used for an entirely different purpose than the one approved by FERC and accepted by the courts in eminent domain proceedings," he said. Raskin further asked for FERC information on land restoration
tied to the Midship pipeline in Oklahoma. The National Environmental Policy Act requires FERC and companies to develop plans to mitigate environmental impacts of pipeline development and to restore disturbed land after work is completed.”
[E&E News, 11/23/20]
https://bit.ly/39a0Bu3
Where the Great American Outdoors Act stands now: “In August, when President Donald Trump
signed into passage the Great American Outdoors Act, Democrats warned that he was only doing so as a political favor for Colorado’s Cory Gardner and Montana’s Steve Daines, two vulnerable Western Republican senators who co-sponsored it in an attempt to keep
their seats in the November election. (Gardner lost his bid for re-election.) Whatever Trump’s motives, the bipartisan bill was a huge victory for conservation, permanently funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund at $900 million annually and creating
a separate pot of money, up to $9.5 billion, to be used for maintenance at national parks and other public lands over five years. Still it was a surprising shift for the Trump administration: Prior to announcing Trump’s support, his administration had previously
recommended cutting the LWCF’s budget by 97% in the 2021 fiscal year. But now that Trump’s term is nearing its end, the law’s implementation is coming into focus after Interior Secretary David Bernhardt issued an order last week laying out how the Land and
Water Conservation Fund will be managed. The fund has two separate objectives: One is to provide funding to states for their own recreation and conservation priorities, and the other is to enable public-lands agencies to make land acquisitions, among other
things. In a significant departure from the way the fund has been allocated in the past, states and municipalities will now be required to sign off on these federal land transfers, which could make it difficult for agencies like the National Park Service or
Bureau of Land Management to acquire land from private parties. For example, if the federal government wanted to use LWCF funds to buy land from a property owner with parcels in a national forest, a state governor or county board could conceivably block the
transaction, said Randi Spivak, public-lands program director for the Center for Biological Diversity.”
[High Country News, 11/23/20]
https://bit.ly/2UUH5JK
Vineyard Wind Sees More Permitting Delays, But Stays on Track to be First in U.S. Race to Build Offshore Farms:
“Vineyard Wind, the international business consortium that plans to build the nation’s largest offshore wind farm 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, has been hit with yet another
delay after a federal agency moved back its review timeline for a key permitting document last week. The $2.8 billion dollar offshore energy project was originally expected to have its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) completed earlier this week,
with a final recorded decision before the New Year. The impact statement is required before the federal government can make a decision on the project. But the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management — the federal agency responsible for issuing the environmental
impact statement and permitting the project — updated its timeline late last week, moving back the expected date for the final impact statement to Dec. 11. The BOEM online timetable for Vineyard Wind now lists Jan. 15, 2021 as its expected date to issue a
formal record of decision on the development. A BOEM spokesman said in an email that the agency is still reviewing a mountain of correspondence related to the project. More than 13,000 comments were received during a public comment period on the supplemental
environmental impact statement, the spokesman said. “BOEM continues to work with cooperating agencies in the review of these comments.” The expected decision date is less than a week before the Trump administration is slated to leave office. The timetable
now states that the final completion of all permitting and environmental review on the project is expected by March 18, 2021. Despite the setbacks, as the race to build offshore wind farms heats up, Vineyard Wind remains on track to be the first industrial-scale
wind farm in the United States.”
[Vineyard Gazette, 11/23/20]
https://bit.ly/3pSqO6s
What Joe Biden’s agenda on the environment could mean for the Pacific Northwest:
“From reintroduction of the grizzly bear to its wild North Cascades redoubt to attacking climate change, a wide range of environmental policies could see a new direction in the Pacific
Northwest under a Biden administration. For starters, government and nonprofit policy leaders say they are looking forward to a return to science as a basis for environmental policymaking. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than on climate warming. Gov. Jay
Inslee has championed Washington climate and energy policies sharply at odds with a president who dismissed the threats posed by greenhouse gas emissions in a warming world. Inslee now has a powerful ally in President-elect Joe Biden. Biden’s campaign platform
calls for dramatically stepping up a U.S. transition away from fossil fuels to set the nation on a path to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury, which means that whatever carbon pollution is emitted into the atmosphere is offset by other
measures. And, since the election, there has been speculation that Inslee will be asked to join the new Democratic administration to help Biden pull off this dramatic course correction in climate policy. Biden would need approval from Congress to authorize
$2 trillion in spending he proposes to help the nation move off fossil fuels and reach an interim goal of removing greenhouse gas emissions from power generation by 2035. Passage of such spending or other climate legislation could be difficult even with a
Democratic majority in control of the Senate and an even tougher task if Republicans are able to win runoff races in Georgia and retain control of the upper chamber. From his first day in office, Biden also is expected to use executive orders to take a wide
range of measures, including putting the U.S. back into the Paris Agreement on climate, developing new automotive fuel economy standards weakened by President Donald Trump and increasing regulations to control the release of methane – a potent greenhouse gas
– during oil and gas production. Biden also will try to block a Trump administration effort to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain to oil exploration, which included a post-election announcement of the beginning of a process that could result
in lease sales of land before Inauguration Day.”
[Seattle Times, 11/22/20]
https://bit.ly/35WK1vZ
As Biden promises renewed climate change focus, will his policies help or hurt Idaho?:
“Idaho and its public lands have been out of the spotlight during the past four years of the Trump presidency, and, for the moment, that’s not expected to change. President Donald
Trump made achieving “energy dominance” one of his top policy priorities, which left Idaho out of some of his administration’s most controversial decisions. Expanded oil and gas leasing on public lands and opening places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
to drilling brought environmental opposition and national attention. But Idaho’s small and moribund oil and gas industry was neither benefited by Trump nor will it be affected by the Democratic turnaround expected on that issue. What will change is climate
policy, a recognition the United States and the world need to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide by 2050 or face catastrophic and irreversible effects like rising sea levels, melting glaciers, droughts, floods, and uncontrollable wildfires.
That could bring new standards for building and a further shift of energy use from fossil fuels to wind, solar and nuclear for electrical power. The Biden administration also has called for a transition from gasoline fueled vehicles, as well as farm and industry
equipment, to electricity and other alternatives. The Biden administration has proposed an ambitious $2 trillion plan to transform the economy to a zero greenhouse gas economy that would include thousands of charging stations for electric vehicles, a mandate
for governments to purchase electric and hybrid vehicles and to capture methane for fuels from manure. It also includes investment in mass transit and rail transportation systems and even “carbon banks,” which would pay farmers for planting crops and changing
farm methods to sequester carbon in the soil.”
[Idaho Statesman, 11/22/20]
https://bit.ly/3lXoqZR
Biden Faces Moral Imperative to Advance Climate Regulations: “From the beginning of his
presidency, Donald Trump wasted no time establishing a deregulatory agenda as one of the top priorities for his administration. Just 10 days after taking office, he signed an executive order requiring that two federal regulations be rescinded for every new
regulation implemented. “The American dream is back,” he said in a statement from the Roosevelt Room. In the years that followed, it became clear who was to benefit, and who was to lose, from Trump’s American dream. His administration has rescinded, rewritten,
or replaced over 100 environmental protections, rules, and regulations that reduce toxic pollution and industrial waste, protect endangered species, and draw down the greenhouse gas emissions that are accelerating a global climate crisis. His political appointees
have sought to weaken the democratic process by which everyday people can be heard when federal agencies are considering whether to approve a potentially harmful infrastructure project like a pipeline or chemical plant near their communities. From undermining
the nation’s bedrock environmental laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), rolling back fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, and abolishing and replacing the Clean Power Plan, Trump’s dream turned out to be of a sicker, dirtier,
less democratic America in which corporate interests win out against the people’s interests, and those of a cleaner, more sustainable climate. The deregulatory era of the past four years amounts to an unprecedented stress test of the nation’s environmental
rules and regulations and, in some cases, exposed how vulnerabilities in the way those rules were crafted or finalized can be used to weaken or rewrite them. Climate-minded policymakers can now study those vulnerabilities, and the often sloppy way Trump officials
tried to take advantage of them, to restore and strengthen the nation’s environmental protections in order to make them more ambitious, more durable, and more partisan-proof.”
[Sierra Magazine, 11/23/20]
https://bit.ly/35UB1Y4
Justin McCarthy
He/Him/His
Director, NEPA Campaign
The Partnership Project
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, Earthjustice, League of Conservation Voters, and Natural
Resources Defense Council.