The Biden administration moved on Tuesday to restore some of the environmental reviews for infrastructure projects that were eased by the Trump administration, The Hill reported.
President Joe Biden targeted some of the changes made under the previous adminstration in the implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), with White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Chair Brenda Mallory saying that "restoring these basic community safeguards will provide regulatory certainty, reduce conflict, and help ensure that projects get built right the first time."
Her statement added that "patching these holes in the environmental review process will help projects get built faster, be more resilient, and provide greater benefits — to people who live nearby."
When former President Donald Trump eased NEPA requirements in 2020, his administration said it would speed up the permitting process for projects such as highways or pipelines, pointing out that industries have complained that environmental reviews can take years and slow projects down.
NEPA, legislation that dates back to the Nixon era, has for decades been particularly used by low-income and minority communities to wage legal battles against potential polluters, according to The Independent.
Trump's changes eliminated requirements to consider an action’s "indirect" impacts — those that are reasonably foreseeable, but happen sometime in the future, as well as consideration of "cumulative" impacts — referring to how a project’s pollution may interact with other conditions in the area, according to The Hill.
The Biden administration’s moves reaffirmed the need to consider the "direct," "indirect," and "cumulative" impacts, the CEQ stated, emphasizing that it would establish that the NEPA regulations are "a floor, rather than a ceiling" regarding standards for environmental reviews.
Biden's changes do not restore all the cutbacks made by the Trump administration, The Hill reported. For example, the White House council did not seek to alter the previous administration's decision to set a two-year time limit for the most stringent type of environmental review, when such reviews usually take more than four years.
However, the CEQ said in a statement that it will propose "Phase 2" changes that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of environmental reviews "over the coming months."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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