Dear John,

When Trump Administration Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, himself a former oil and gas industry lobbyist, celebrates a proposed regulation as “really, really big…affect[ing] virtually every single decision by the federal government that affects the environment,” anyone who cares about clean air and clean water had better brace for some bad news.

The proposed rule he was referring to drastically changes the way federal agencies implement the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and is very bad indeed.

NEPA was created on the common-sense notion of “look before you leap,” -- that we should know the impacts that federal actions such as constructing highways, pipelines, dams, power plants, transmission lines and other projects will have on the nation’s land, air and water before we build them.

The proposed regulation would:

End requirements to consider the cumulative impacts of multiple projects
Invite private sector project proponents to prepare their own environmental reviews (Fox, welcome to the chicken coop!)
Allow federal agencies to completely ignore climate change(!) when evaluating projects
Severely curtail public participation, tearing out the very heart of the Act

Help us fight back -- tell the Council on Environmental Quality this proposal will ruin our rivers and clean drinking water.

Thank you for everything you do for rivers,