WASHINGTON (AP) — In a dramatic rollback of environmental oversight, President Donald Trump took action Thursday to clear the way and speed up development of a wide range of commercial projects by cutting back federal review of their impact on the environment.
Join our WhatsApp groupSubscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
“The United States can’t compete and prosper if a bureaucratic system holds us back from building what we need,” Trump said at the White House, surrounded by Cabinet secretaries, industry leaders and workers in hard hats.
Trump’s proposal calls for greatly narrowing the scope of the half-century-old National Environmental Policy Ac t, which was signed by President Richard Nixon in 1970.
That law changed environmental oversight in the country by requiring federal agencies to consider whether a project would harm the air, land, water or wildlife, and giving the public the right of review and input.
Trump, who has targeted environmental rules in his drive to ease the way for business, said enforcement of the law had slowed federal approval of projects. “America’s most critical infrastructure projects have been tied up and bogged down by an outrageously slow and burdensome federal approval process,” he said. “The builders are not happy. Nobody’s happy.”
Environmental groups and Democratic lawmakers said the proposed rollback would gut major environmental protections and take away the public’s right to know and comment on a project’s potential harms.
Key among the changes proposed is one that would newly limit the requirement for federal environmental review to projects that have major federal funding.
The change would mean a range of predominantly privately funded and managed projects would not fall under the law’s requirement for federal environmental study and for public review and comment.
Other changes including giving federal agencies no more than two years to evaluate any environmental impact of a project.
Mary Neumayr, head of the administration’s Council on Environmental Quality, said the changes would not explicitly bar federal consideration of a project’s impact on climate change. But environmentalists said a change instructing federal employees to disregard cumulative and longer term effects would have the same effect, however.
The proposal is to be published in the Federal Register in coming days, followed by a 60-day period for public comment.
“This proposal takes a sledgehammer to decades of legal precedence and puts our communities at risk,” said Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
The administration’s overhaul “will eviscerate the public’s right to be heard and jettison science-based decision-making,” added Collin O’Mara, head of the National Wildlife Federation.
Trump said the changes would deliver “gleaming new infrastructure” to the United States and would “completely overhaul the dysfunctional bureaucratic system that has created these massive obstructions.
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt told reporters that Trump would “deliver a home run … by cutting red tape that has paralyzed decision making” on projects.
Anne Bradbury, head of an independent oil and gas producers trade group, said among the proposed changes are ones that will speed up permitting of oil projects, including pipelines, on federal lands. The Trump administration has pushed hard for pipeline building to move ahead despite local challenges, along with calling for shortening the time and length of environmental reviews for projects.
Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act into law as public outrage over the 1969 oil spill off Santa Barbara, California, and other pollution of the country’s air, water and land spurred creation of the country’s major environmental protections. The Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act were among the other major environmental acts following.
for this reason alone we should vote for trump -all over the Catskills the local boards crush the economy & starve the local contractors by requiring crazy environmental impact reviews… for small bungalow projects in the back of camps so much red tape that its simply not worth it . the town boards make it so impossible that the only way is unfortunately to do work w/o permits which we dont want to do but feel choked
TRUMP go ahead
To the permanent shame and stain on the trumpoids and suicidal GOP, environmental regs will be cut so goniffs can make a buck. Nixon started the EPA boychicks. Do you want the Hudson to be a sewer again? Do you like black snow in the winter and contaminated water in your wells? If you like filth and heavy metals in the environment please go back to the Pale of Settlement. Be careful-The death rates there are 60x higher than in the USA.
Trump 2020. Write the White House. We need to start a war at end of the 2020 term so President Trump can be President a third term just as Roosevelt was three terms.
Really, is that what you think is the big problem that the proposed rollback would be solving?
Or do you just want to hear yourself talk?
Demorats don’t want construction. They want DEstruction. They’re the latter day barbarians in suits and pants suits.
Go trump go!! The best president ever!!
Yes that’s why we elected the mad dog . We need to rip apart the Washington establishment and norms. If studies were completed for every project in nyc we’d never have the infrastructure we have. The last great leader locally was Robert Moses who built away. He sent you a letter and trucks were ramming thru your house the next day . Imagine a city without the bqe or guinnes. Yes many Jews were kicked out by Moses including I believe the skelna Reba ztl. But a city was built.
Look at the second Ave subway. How many years did it take to build one route? How many years and billions did it cost to rebuild a few stations after sandy? Now imagine we had to build a new subway system from scratch in nyc . Would it ever get built in the modern era? We need to learn how to cut that red tape and start building or we will lose . That’s maga. Yes this is what once made us great as innovators
Trump is right on this one.
Bottom line sky thing the evil dem-o-rats support Trump and normal Americas should be against.
If you want more people with cancer and other sicknesses that are affected by the environment I guess this a good thing. I know here is an anti-science safe zone. Concern about the environment and its effect on humans will not be found here. People just too small minded.
Like many man-made laws that were started with good intentions. This morphed into one big red-tape issue. How many projects were canceled because there was some “endangered” butterfly living in a tree?
I am not in favor of this overall but they are right that environmental impact reviews need to be more expeditious. There is a lot of red tape. Having said that, I worked on Kodak, Sterling Pharmaceuticals, Town of Babylon Superfund site, etc. Environmental issues are important for public health. The New Jersey cases I worked when silver filament was dumped in New Jersey’s rivers was like a mass attack on the children of Central Jersey. Gruesome.
Trump always talks about CLEAN AIR.
All he wants is to throw off onerous environmental regs based on kook ideas.
No, he does not want filthy lakes or pollutants. He breathes the same air we do. What’s wrong with some of you?
Enough of your nonsense and snake oil ideologies.