Activists Slam Trump's Plan To Cut Public Out Of Environmental Review Process
The Trump administration has painted its proposed sweeping overhaul of one of America’s most important environmental laws as little more than a long-overdue effort to “streamline” a lengthy and burdensome federal permitting process so that the U.S. can swiftly build needed infrastructure.
But representatives of dozens of environmental justice, climate and conservation groups who traveled to Washington to testify against the rollback see it as something far more nefarious: an attempt to cut the public out of the democratic process.
They say the short public comment period on the regulatory change, which runs just 60 days and included only two public hearings, is evidence that the shift is meant to favor industry. Members of the public had to enter a ticket lottery in order to attend and testify at the hearings, which were held on Feb. 11 in Denver and Tuesday in the nation’s capital.
“It’s ironic,” said Angelo Logan, campaign director of the Moving Forward Network, an alliance of dozens of grassroots environmental organizations from across the country. “The process of this rulemaking is the epitome of what they’re trying to do ― eliminate public input and engagement in something that’s going to have major implications.”
The proposed rule, which the White House Council on Environmental Quality unveiled in January, would drastically change how the federal government implements the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a 50-year-old law that protects air, water and land by requiring federal agencies to conduct detailed environmental assessments of major infrastructure projects. The draft rule would expedite fossil fuel pipelines, highways, power plants and other development by limiting the number of projects that require in-depth environmental assessments and setting strict review deadlines for those that do. And it would allow agencies to ignore not only a project’s vulnerability to climate change impacts but also its...
