We need your help and hope your organization will sign on to this letter! Apologies for cross-posting, but as many of you have seen, the Trump administration issued an Interim Final Rule revoking the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Those regulations apply to over 80 agencies in the federal government and our organizations, our communities, rely on them to ensure we have a say in how decisions are made about how infrastructure is built, how taxpayer dollars are spent, and how public lands and resources are managed.
The implications of this action are sweeping and severe – it will now be up to individual agencies to determine how to comply with NEPA, what impacts to disclose, and what level of public input is required. Worse yet, in guidance issued with the revocation of the regulations, the Trump administration urged agencies to use the controversial 2020 regulations issued during the first Trump administration. Over 325 organizations submitted detailed comments strenuously opposing those regulations (see “Final Draft Comment Letter 3 10 25” in the Federal Register here), as well as over 60 environmental justice and allied organizations, and they were rightly subject to multiple lawsuits. The guidance the White House issued goes even further in rolling back the review of environmental and health impacts by the federal government by explicitly stating that reviews “should not include an environmental justice analysis.”
Stephen Schima, Senior Legislative Counsel
Earthjustice
OCA Board signed on today!
Olympic Climate Action 