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The White House has announced that the public lands infrastructure projects being fast-tracked as part of its pandemic response will not be made public. The infrastructure projects are those identified in the wake of President Trump's June executive order that calls on agencies to weaken required environmental reviews of projects to be built during the current pandemic.
The order cuts a hole in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which the Trump administration has separately attempted to undermine—an attack opposed by 94 percent of public comments. Efforts to avoid the requirements of the law are likely to leave projects on shaky legal ground. Such legal weakness was highlighted this week when three major pipeline projects went down as a result of legal challenges and an uncertain regulatory environment.
"I think not making the list public suggests that they may actually recognize the huge legal risks they are assuming in ignoring long-standing environmental review requirements without adequate justification, and that they are apparently just hoping that the public won’t notice," said Elizabeth Klein, deputy director of the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center at the New York University School of Law.
The effort to keep fast-tracked projects secret is only the latest in a string of Trump administration actions aimed at reducing transparency and ignoring public input. The Interior Department has undertaken an unprecedented attack on the Freedom of Information Act in an attempt to undermine government transparency, meddled with Resource Advisory Councils intended to provide public input on land management, and ignored public input on 8 of 10 major rules proposed by the Trump administration, even when 99 percent of public comments opposed the rules.
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We should not be wasting taxpayer dollars on an industry that’s in a tailspin of its own making, especially when it seems intent on bringing the whole planet down with it.”
