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Trump and GOP Aim To Gut Environmental Rules Related to New Highways, Pipelines
The Trump Administration just released their plan to roll back NEPA, an important law to keep communities safe and companies in check when planning projects.
There's so much going on it's hard to keep up. That’s why Trump’s latest environmental attack is so dangerous. Hiding behind complicated policy, it’s a change that will affect all of our lives.
Since 1970, NEPA, or the National Environmental Policy Act, has required the government to consider how projects like highways, pipelines and oil & gas operations would affect our health, homes and lives.
If a pipeline would pollute a waterway or a highway would cut through a neighborhood, NEPA provided a way for communities to raise these issues during the planning process. In short, NEPA protected people by making sure those who were affected by these projects had a voice.
Now, the Trump administration is trying to change this rule so that oil and gas or mining companies don't have to consider environmental impacts in a meaningful way, or share project plans with those who live there. This is incredibly dangerous.
Republicans are once again putting the interests of oil and gas companies ahead of the future of our planet and the health of local communities.
Trump on Thursday [January 9, 2020] proposed fundamental changes to 50-year-old regulations in an effort to speed up new mines, pipelines and hundreds of other projects around the country, including some that could harm the environment and accelerate climate change. The move also could prevent communities from having much say about what gets built in their backyards.
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said the president was making the most significant regulatory rollback of his term. “Let me tell you, this is a really, really big proposal,” Bernhardt said, turning to Trump. “The proposal affects virtually every significant decision by the federal government that affects the environment.”
This is an attack on the health of local communities. This is an attack on the environment, and the climate we all depend on.
Environmental groups, tribal activists and others have used the law to delay or block a slew of infrastructure, mining, logging and drilling projects since it was signed by Nixon in 1970. The White House proposal will almost certainly face legal challenges.
“The whole idea of the law is to give better information in advance to decision-makers and the public. It appears that these changes are an effort to undermine both of those purposes of the statute. It would basically make the federal government become an ostrich, sticking its head in the ground rather than thinking about the environmental impact of its actions.”