Environmental groups sued the Trump administration Thursday over an interim Interior Department rule for implementing the National Environmental Policy Act, arguing that a hard look at environmental impacts required by the landmark 1970 law is being squelched as energy projects advance.
The lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California accuses the department of cutting public input long required under NEPA and violating the Administrative Procedure Act by advancing its interim rule for NEPA.
The White House Council of Environmental Quality unveiled an interim rule in February scrapping roughly a half-century of rules interpreting NEPA. The office’s voluntary guidelines shifted the responsibility for interpreting NEPA to the agencies to comply with an executive order President Donald Trump signed on Inauguration Day, directing the government to boost U.S. energy production and revoke a 1977 order authorizing CEQ to make NEPA rules.
The order’s goal was to “expedite permitting approvals” and “prioritize efficiency and certainty over any other objectives, including those of activist groups,” responding to conservative complaints that green groups use environmental regulations to slow down fossil energy projects on public lands.
