Nov 19, 2020, 03:14 am
Down to its final weeks, the Trump administration is working to push through dozens of environmental rollbacks that could weaken century-old protections for migratory birds, expand Arctic drilling and hamstring future regulation of public health threats.
The pending changes, which benefit oil and gas and other industries, deepen the challenges for President-elect Joe Biden, who made restoring and advancing protections for the environment, climate and public health a core piece of his campaign.
The proposed changes cap four years of unprecedented environmental deregulation by President Donald Trump, whose administration has worked to fundamentally change how federal agencies apply and enforce the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and other protections.
Most of the changes are expected to sail through the approval process, which includes the White House releasing the final version and publication in the Federal Register.
Some decisions, if they go into effect, will be easy for Biden to simply reverse. He already has pledged to return the United States to the Paris climate accord as a first step in his own $2 trillion climate plan. But he faces years of work in court and within agencies to repair major Trump cuts to the nation’s framework of environmental protections.
One change that Trump wants to push through would restrict criminal prosecution for industries responsible for the deaths of the nation’s migratory birds. Hawks and other birds that migrate through the central US to nesting grounds on the Great Plains navigate deadly threats — from electrocution on power lines, to wind turbines that knock them from the air and oil field waste pits where landing birds perish in toxic water.
Right now, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 is a vital tool for protecting more than 1,000 species of birds including hawks and other birds of prey. Federal prosecutors use the act to recover damages, including $100 million from BP for its 2010 oil-rig spill into the Gulf of Mexico, which killed more than 100,000 seabirds.
But the Trump administration wants to make sure companies face no criminal liability for such preventable, unintentional deaths.
Federal officials advanced the bird treaty changes to the White House, one of the final steps before adoption, two days after news organizations declared Biden the winner of the presidential race.
Earlier moves by the Trump administration, which are now facing court challenges, remove protections for millions of miles of waterways and wetlands, narrow protections for wildlife species facing extinction, and open more of the hundreds of millions of acres of public land to oil and gas drilling.
But environmentalists and some former federal officials said the actions being taken in Trump’s final days reflect a pro-industry agenda taken to the extreme, in disregard for imperiled wildlife, climate change and damage to human health from air pollution.
Many of the final rollbacks still pending under the Trump administration have significant implications for oil and gas companies. That includes the administration’s steps this week toward a sale of energy leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Monday’s announcement of upcoming sale drew rebukes from environmentalists and Democrats in Congress.
Another proposal that arrived at the White House last week would set emissions standards for small but dangerous particles of pollution emitted by refineries and other industrial sources. Other changes would allow more drilling and mining on thousands of square miles of public lands around New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon National Historical Park and deep in the Alaska wilderness.
Trump critics are looking to two pending Senate contests in Georgia for insight into how easily any of his administration’s last-minute changes can be undone.
If Democrats win both, they’ll control the Senate and the House and will be in position to invoke the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to strike down newly approved regulations. Otherwise, outside parties could sue or the Biden administration would have to undertake the often lengthy process of reversing changes that are fully enacted before Trump leaves office.
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-don...096322da24
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Related News:
Reported November 18.
Forest Service finalizes rule weakening environmental review of its projects
The US Forest Service (USFS) on Wednesday finalized its decision to weaken environmental analysis of many of its plans, excluding a number of actions from scientific review or community input.
The new rule allows the service to use a number of exemptions to sidestep requirements of the bedrock National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), something critics say will speed approval of logging, roads, and pipelines on Forest Service land.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said the changes “will ensure we do the appropriate level of environmental analysis to fit the work, locations and conditions,” arguing the streamlining could better help the Forest Service aid areas hurt by wildfires, and quickly repair roads, trails and campgrounds.
But environmentalists say the service is sidestepping analysis it needs to make informed decisions about how to respond to fire damage or ensure runoff from roads won't hurt its forests.
Evans sees the rule as part of a broader campaign by the Trump administration to weaken environmental rules in general and NEPA in particular.
The White House Council on Environmental Quality also finalized a rule this summer gutting NEPA and setting the stage for additional rollbacks at various agencies.
The Forest Service rule has been scaled back since it was first proposed last year, cutting the scale of projects that are eligible for the so-called categorical exclusions that allow them to proceed with little review.
But Evans sees that as an issue, incentivizing, for example, a pipeline company looking for an easement, to look for the narrowest portion of Forest Service land to cross, rather than finding the most environmentally-friendly way to do the project.
Several groups in addition to SELC have pledged to sue.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro...iew-of-its
The pending changes, which benefit oil and gas and other industries, deepen the challenges for President-elect Joe Biden, who made restoring and advancing protections for the environment, climate and public health a core piece of his campaign.
Quote:“We’re going to see a real scorched-earth effort here at the tail end of the administration,” said Brian Rutledge, a vice president at the National Audubon Society.
The proposed changes cap four years of unprecedented environmental deregulation by President Donald Trump, whose administration has worked to fundamentally change how federal agencies apply and enforce the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and other protections.
Most of the changes are expected to sail through the approval process, which includes the White House releasing the final version and publication in the Federal Register.
Some decisions, if they go into effect, will be easy for Biden to simply reverse. He already has pledged to return the United States to the Paris climate accord as a first step in his own $2 trillion climate plan. But he faces years of work in court and within agencies to repair major Trump cuts to the nation’s framework of environmental protections.
One change that Trump wants to push through would restrict criminal prosecution for industries responsible for the deaths of the nation’s migratory birds. Hawks and other birds that migrate through the central US to nesting grounds on the Great Plains navigate deadly threats — from electrocution on power lines, to wind turbines that knock them from the air and oil field waste pits where landing birds perish in toxic water.
Right now, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 is a vital tool for protecting more than 1,000 species of birds including hawks and other birds of prey. Federal prosecutors use the act to recover damages, including $100 million from BP for its 2010 oil-rig spill into the Gulf of Mexico, which killed more than 100,000 seabirds.
But the Trump administration wants to make sure companies face no criminal liability for such preventable, unintentional deaths.
Federal officials advanced the bird treaty changes to the White House, one of the final steps before adoption, two days after news organizations declared Biden the winner of the presidential race.
Earlier moves by the Trump administration, which are now facing court challenges, remove protections for millions of miles of waterways and wetlands, narrow protections for wildlife species facing extinction, and open more of the hundreds of millions of acres of public land to oil and gas drilling.
But environmentalists and some former federal officials said the actions being taken in Trump’s final days reflect a pro-industry agenda taken to the extreme, in disregard for imperiled wildlife, climate change and damage to human health from air pollution.
Quote:“What we’re seeing at the end is what we’ve seen all along, which is a fealty to private interests over public interests,” said David Hayes, former deputy secretary of the Interior Department under Obama and now adjunct professor at the New York University School of Law. “They seem intent on finalizing these as a kind of ideological point.”
Many of the final rollbacks still pending under the Trump administration have significant implications for oil and gas companies. That includes the administration’s steps this week toward a sale of energy leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Monday’s announcement of upcoming sale drew rebukes from environmentalists and Democrats in Congress.
Quote:Brett Hartl with the Center for Biological Diversity said backers of drilling are playing the long game and know that another Republican administration favorable to drilling will come along eventually.
“Any time you’ve officially got an area under lease … it makes it harder to keep the land protected in the long run,” Hartl said.
Another proposal that arrived at the White House last week would set emissions standards for small but dangerous particles of pollution emitted by refineries and other industrial sources. Other changes would allow more drilling and mining on thousands of square miles of public lands around New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon National Historical Park and deep in the Alaska wilderness.
Trump critics are looking to two pending Senate contests in Georgia for insight into how easily any of his administration’s last-minute changes can be undone.
If Democrats win both, they’ll control the Senate and the House and will be in position to invoke the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to strike down newly approved regulations. Otherwise, outside parties could sue or the Biden administration would have to undertake the often lengthy process of reversing changes that are fully enacted before Trump leaves office.
Quote:“Regulations are not like diamonds,” said Coglianese, the Penn law professor. “They don’t last forever.”
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-don...096322da24
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related News:
Reported November 18.
Forest Service finalizes rule weakening environmental review of its projects
The US Forest Service (USFS) on Wednesday finalized its decision to weaken environmental analysis of many of its plans, excluding a number of actions from scientific review or community input.
The new rule allows the service to use a number of exemptions to sidestep requirements of the bedrock National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), something critics say will speed approval of logging, roads, and pipelines on Forest Service land.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said the changes “will ensure we do the appropriate level of environmental analysis to fit the work, locations and conditions,” arguing the streamlining could better help the Forest Service aid areas hurt by wildfires, and quickly repair roads, trails and campgrounds.
But environmentalists say the service is sidestepping analysis it needs to make informed decisions about how to respond to fire damage or ensure runoff from roads won't hurt its forests.
Quote:“Those are really laudable goals, but the problem is it matters where you do things. Forest Service has no idea what areas need treatment or what kind of treatment they need until you do a scientific analysis," said Sam Evans, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC). "So cutting the scientific analysis and the public input of that decision is really wrong-headed."
Evans sees the rule as part of a broader campaign by the Trump administration to weaken environmental rules in general and NEPA in particular.
The White House Council on Environmental Quality also finalized a rule this summer gutting NEPA and setting the stage for additional rollbacks at various agencies.
The Forest Service rule has been scaled back since it was first proposed last year, cutting the scale of projects that are eligible for the so-called categorical exclusions that allow them to proceed with little review.
But Evans sees that as an issue, incentivizing, for example, a pipeline company looking for an easement, to look for the narrowest portion of Forest Service land to cross, rather than finding the most environmentally-friendly way to do the project.
Several groups in addition to SELC have pledged to sue.
Quote:"The Forest Service just granted itself a free pass to increase commercial logging and roadbuilding across our national forests under the guise of restoration,” Randi Spivak, public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a release.
“The Trump administration is streamlining destruction of our public lands when what we need to be doing is protecting them," Spivak added. "We’ll do everything we can to ensure that the public has a voice on public lands, including taking the federal government to court.”
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro...iew-of-its