Trump Administration Making Stunningly Misguided Decision on NEPA

The Trump Administration is making stunningly misguided decisions to gut core environmental protections. In the past two weeks, President Trump’s EPA rolled back safe clean water protection standards of community brooks and streams, and Trump’s Council for Environmental Quality severely weakened the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

NEPA provides the cornerstone set of environmental procedural safeguards to ensure that federal and state agencies fully and fairly consider all alternatives to proposed highways, dams, pipelines, transmission lines and other big projects involving federal funds and permit reviews. 

NEPA enables decisionmakers to have all of the evidence before them to help ensure full consideration of environmental impacts and to engage robust public participation.  The goal is a better result with robust alternatives on the table before a decision is made and more protective environmental conditions.

This Trump Administration’s proposed rollback would undermine NEPA and exempt many big pipeline and other projects from environmental review. The proposed rule states that even when NEPA does apply, federal agencies funding or permitting these projects would not need to consider the cumulative impacts of multiple projects on water and air quality, and on wildlife habitat, or how the project will impact climate change. This rollback is a giveaway to developers and the fossil-fuel industry by limiting consideration of the long-term impacts of projects to our climate and public health.

The Trump EPA wants to fast track this rollback with no input from anyone in the Midwest. Our sister organization, the Environmental Law & Policy Center has organized nearly 60 organizations calling on the Trump Administration to have a public hearing in the Midwest and to call out this travesty.

NEPA provides vital tools to protect our Midwest environmental values.  For example, ELPC’s successful NEPA advocacy has been successful in holding off ill-advised projects such as the boondoggle proposed Illiana Tollway which would cut through the very special Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie (the nation’s first!) and stopping clear-cutting of forests along scenic ridgetops that would have damaged the Bell Smith Springs National Natural Landmark in Southern Illinois.

Let’s work together to stop Trump’s misguided NEPA rollback.