Trump is slated to announce the implementation of the new regulations in Georgia at the UPS Hapeville Airport Hub, which is set to benefit from the expedited review of a highway expansion project that will allow the hub’s operations to be more efficient, according to a White House official.
The regulatory changes, according to the official, “will modernize, simplify and accelerate the environmental review process necessary to build a wide range of projects in the United States, including roads, bridges, and highways. The rule will also provide needed certainty for project sponsors and will facilitate the rebuilding of American.”
The administration claims the change will speed up the process for getting environmental reviews approved that are required for major infrastructure projects.
“You spend three, four, five years on the environmental review before you ever break ground. That’s a problem,” Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler said in an interview with Gray TV.
Environmental advocacy groups view the policy change as another example of the Trump administration dismantling important conservation safety guards that protect the environment and public health from pollution.
The rule “drastically curtails environmental reviews for thousands of federal agency projects nationwide, a move that will weaken safeguards for air, water, wildlife and public lands,” the Center for Biological Diversity, an advocacy group, said in a statement responding to the decision.
NEPA, signed into law in 1970 by President Richard Nixon, is considered one of the foundational environmental laws formed at the beginning of the modern environmental movement. Rolling back this policy “may be the single biggest giveaway to polluters in the past 40 years,” according to Brett Hartl, Center for Biological Diversity government affairs director.
“The Trump administration is turning back the clock to when rivers caught fire, our air was unbreathable, and our most beloved wildlife was spiraling toward extinction. The foundational law of the modern environmental movement has been turned into a rubber stamp to enrich for-profit corporations, and we doubt the courts will stand for that,” Hartl said in a statement.
Environmental advocacy groups such as the National Resource Defense Council Inc. and the Sierra Club believe that the change will harm minority communities more than others.
“NEPA gives a voice to communities whose health and safety would be threatened by destructive projects, and it is despicable that the Trump administration is seeking to silence them,” Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune said in a statement. “As the country faces a global pandemic and grapples with persistent racial injustice, the last thing communities need is an attack on this bedrock environmental and civil rights law.”
But Mike Sommers, the President and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, which represents America’s oil and natural gas industry, said in a statement that the regulatory changes are “essential to US energy leadership and environmental progress, providing more certainty to jumpstart not only the modernized pipeline infrastructure we need to deliver cleaner fuels but highways, bridges and renewable energy.”
He claimed that the changes “will help accelerate the nation’s economic recovery and advance energy infrastructure while continuing necessary environmental reviews.”
CNN’s Betsy Klein contributed to this report.