Trump administration faces overwhelming public opposition to weakening bedrock environmental law
Analysis finds 94% of public comments oppose attempt to roll back enforcement of the National Environmental Policy Act
On January 1, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed into law the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), one of the nation’s first and most important environmental protection laws. The law requires federal agencies to identify and consider the environmental impacts of major projects, from highways to new mining and drilling. Unfortunately, the Trump administration is attempting to dramatically weaken how NEPA is enforced by limiting public input and tipping the scales towards new development. A new analysis by the Center for Western Priorities (CWP) shows the public is overwhelmingly opposed to this misguided attempt to weaken America’s bedrock environmental law.
In January, the Trump administration announced a proposed rule making to “modernize” NEPA, stating that the regulations governing its implementation impede the development of necessary infrastructure projects. As part of the administration’s efforts to weaken the law, it is proposing to nix the requirement to consider cumulative environmental impacts (necessary for assessing the climate change impacts of a project), as well as imposing a time limit and page limit on environmental reviews. In addition, the administration is evaluating the threshold for what actions trigger NEPA consideration, and requiring that “reasonable alternatives” must be economically and technically feasible. Collectively, these actions would sideline local communities, cut out the public from land management decisions, and allow the Interior Department to green light more drilling and mining.
The 60-day comment period for the administration’s proposed changes closed on March 10. The Center for Western Priorities conducted an analysis to discern the general public sentiment toward the Trump administration’s proposed changes to weaken NEPA enforcement. The analysis finds overwhelming opposition to the proposed rule — 94% of commenters oppose the Trump administration’s proposed changes to NEPA.
CWP assessed public sentiment of comments posted in the proposed rule docket on Regulations.gov by downloading the full text of all available comments, and selecting a random sample of comments (n=500) from the total of 172,661 comments submitted. Each comment was then individually coded as “for,” “against,” or “neutral” based on the sentiment expressed towards the proposed rule. Comments that were unrelated to the rule making were removed from the sample. The analysis has a margin of error of ± 2.15% at the 95% confidence level. Detailed results of the public comment sentiment analysis can be viewed here.
The creation of the National Environmental Policy Act marked a paradigm shift from an outdated and destructive mindset that most federal decisions could be enacted without considering a range of proposals, and without the input of entities outside the federal government. In contrast, NEPA is intended to democratize the decision making process to solicit the input of additional stakeholders, including tribal nations, state and local governments, private landowners, and even other federal agencies with an overlapping interest. By involving more stakeholders in the decision making process, the goal of NEPA is to ultimately make decisions that are more equitable, informed, and durable, and to produce better outcomes for the environment and communities that are impacted by federal actions.
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a former oil and gas lobbyist, has long sought to weaken NEPA, and voiced his support for the proposed changes shortly after the rule making was announced. Because of NEPA, the public has provided feedback to the Interior Department on dozens of proposed rule changes during the Trump administration. CWP also conducted analyses of 10 major policy changes proposed over the last three years, and found the Interior Department ignored overwhelming public opposition to enact 8 of them, almost all favored by extractive industries.
In addition to a pattern of ignoring public input over the last three years, the Trump Interior Department is currently moving forward with numerous public comment periods and major policy changes amid the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Americans need to focus on taking care of their families and loved ones, not fighting back more attempts to weaken protections for public lands and wildlife.
One doesn’t have to look very hard to find examples of NEPA success stories since the law was enacted, nor does it take much to imagine the consequences if the law weren’t in place. A key element of NEPA is the requirement that federal agencies must respond to all substantive comments, and either make adjustments to their environmental analysis, or explain why comments are irrelevant. Environmental and citizen advocacy groups will be watching very closely to see how the administration responds to the overwhelming opposition to its proposal to dramatically weaken this bedrock environmental law.
For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox, or subscribe to Go West, Young Podcast.
