The Interior Department on Monday unveiled a final rule that pulls back more than 80 percent of the agency’s regulations tied to implementing the National Environmental Policy Act, the nation’s bedrock environmental law.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said NEPA for decades “has been twisted into a weapon” to block energy, infrastructure and conservation projects.
“Under the leadership of President Trump, this administration is fixing that,” Burgum said in a statement. “We are cutting unnecessary bureaucracy, speeding up approvals, and putting Americans back to work, while enforcing NEPA as Congress originally intended.”
The final rule largely adopts a draft the agency released last summer, which was criticized for curbing public input and analysis of energy projects. The draft cut close to one-sixth of the agency’s regulations implementing NEPA, instead switching most of the remaining rules to less-stringent guidelines.
The final rule rescinds more than 80 percent of Interior’s prior NEPA regulations, “with the majority of those regulations moved into a streamlined Departmental NEPA Handbook of Implementing Procedures,” according to the Interior Department.
The regulation arrives on the heels of the White House last year pulling back nearly 50 years’ worth of rules that the Council on Environmental Quality had issued to implement the law since 1977, when President Jimmy Carter signed an order directing the agency to issue rules under NEPA.
Associate Deputy Secretary Karen Budd-Falen said that “Interior is restoring NEPA to what Congress intended — a procedural law that informs decisions, not a regulatory maze that delays them for years.”
Interior included new sections in the final rule to designate lead agencies and codify procedures for federal, state, local and tribal officials with special expertise to continue being involved in development of NEPA reviews.
It would also limit opportunities for public comment on government reviews of projects, said Chris Winter, executive director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment at the University of Colorado Law School.
Among other things, the rule says public comment is required when a federal agency begins an environmental impact statement on a project. Also, agencies do not have to file a public notice in the Federal Register when they begin a less-intensive environmental assessment.
“The American public strongly supports the protection of public lands for clean water, wildlife habitat, outdoor recreation and other public values,” Winter said. “The changes announced by the Trump administration threaten to limit the public’s role in management of public lands and will be watched closely.”
The rule was also criticized by environmental groups already fighting the language in court.
Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the final iteration of the rule will block critical public input. The center and the Sierra Club sued Interior last year in a California district court and argued that the rule violated federal law.
“This will make it nearly impossible for people to know what’s happening on our public lands. That means everything from oil drilling to clear-cut logging,” said Park. “Trump is trying to destroy one of our country’s bedrock environmental laws to let corporations wreak havoc on public lands and make more money.”
Interior did not immediately respond when asked about changes in the final rule and how it addresses public input.
