The Trump administration is taking action to speed and narrow permitting reviews for infrastructure projects, proposing the first major update to the nation’s bedrock environmental law in more than 40 years.
President Trump, a real estate developer in his private life, has taken a hands-on approach with the administration’s new proposed rules to quicken federal approval of highways, bridges, pipelines, oil and gas leases, transmission lines, renewable energy projects, and other infrastructure.
He is announcing the changes at the White House Thursday.
His administration’s proposed updates to regulations governing the National Environmental Policy Act seek to limit reviews to two years, compared to an average of four-and-a-half now, while making it more difficult for environmentalists and others to challenge projects in court.
“It’s important we have a predictable and timely process for considering permits and regulatory approvals and funding for major new infrastructure, for activities on federal lands, and for projects to benefit the environment,” said Mary Neumayr, the chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, providing an exclusive preview of the new proposed rules to the Washington Examiner.
The administration is also proposing to allow agencies to consider fewer alternatives for the proposed path of a project so that options considered are “technically and economically feasible.” The changes would exempt projects from NEPA reviews that require little federal funding or involvement and permit companies or contractors to assume a greater role in preparing their own environmental reviews, rather than relying on the government.
Supporters of these actions say reviews have lengthened over recent years as developers face threats of lawsuits from environmental groups that have stymied high-profile projects such as the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a priority for Trump that is still under litigation.
“Right now, the process can result in significant costs and delays,” Neumayr said. “It can slow and sometimes derail infrastructure projects that are important to communities around the country. It doesn’t benefit our environment — it doesn’t benefit our economy — to have an endless process for decision making.”
Environmentalists and Democratic opponents say one of the Trump administration’s intents in narrowing reviews is to limit agencies’ consideration of climate change by not requiring them to measure the “cumulative” environmental impacts. The proposal is expected to be challenged in court when it is finalized after a 60-day public comment period.
“The very nature of climate change is it is about greenhouse gases coming from all over the place, with all different types of pollution added up to make a huge problem,” said Christy Goldfuss, who led the Council on Environmental Quality under the Obama administration. “When they put language in to say you don’t have to look at cumulative or indirect effects that is more than dog whistle language to say you don’t have to look at climate change.”
The Trump administration wants to narrow the definition of environmental effects, so agencies focus less on long-term impacts such as climate change and more on immediate, tangible factors that closely relate to a proposed project.
“By crafting the language the way they have, they are saying one pipeline by itself would not be causing climate change by itself,” Goldfuss said.
Neumayr contends the Trump administration proposal “does not exclude greenhouse gas emissions” from being considered in reviews.
An agency could conduct a climate evaluation if it wanted to and is not barred from doing so under the proposed changes. But the Obama administration had specifically encouraged agencies to account for greenhouse gas emissions under NEPA.
Changing the metrics could reverse a recent trend of courts citing climate change in blocking projects.
Goldfuss authored a research paper last year for the Center for American Progress, where she works now, documenting a dozen court losses by the Trump administration that faulted it for insufficient environment reviews under NEPA, including for failing to account for climate change.
