** Trump slashes enforcement of bedrock conservation law
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Thursday, July 16, 2020
Twin Creek Mine in Nevada | Bureau of Land Management ([link removed])

Yesterday, President Trump signed sweeping guidance ([link removed]) aimed at dramatically weakening the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), often called the "Magna Carta" of American environmental laws. Originally signed by president Richard Nixon in 1970, NEPA requires government agencies to consider the environmental impact of major energy and infrastructure projects and, perhaps most critically, provides a venue for local communities to have input on projects that impact them.

While President Trump's guidance does not change the law itself, it directs agencies to significaantly weaken how they implement NEPA. The directive allows agencies ([link removed]) to ignore climate change when approving projects, opens the door for extractive industries to have more input when reviewing their own projects, and makes it more difficult and complex for local communities and citizens to comment on projects impacting them.

Dramatically reinterpreting a half century-old law and overturning decades of legal precedent will likely subject new projects to increased legal scrutiny. "It's going to backfire and blow up in their face," said ([link removed]) Western Environmental Law Center staff attorney Susan Jane Brown. "The stated purpose and need of this regulatory overhaul was to streamline and increase efficiency and regulatory certainty, and none of those things are going to come from this rule."
Quick hits


** Coronavirus outbreaks threaten tourist season at major national parks
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New York Times ([link removed])


** Federal judge halts Trump administration rollback of BLM methane waste rule
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Reuters ([link removed]) | Courthouse News Service ([link removed])


** Closing Western coal plants will save billions of gallons of precious water
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Colorado Sun ([link removed])


** Trump weakens major conservation law to speed drilling, mining, highway, and pipeline projects
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New York Times ([link removed]) | NPR ([link removed]) | The Hill ([link removed]) | CNBC ([link removed]) | E&E News ([link removed])


** How a town, a Romney, and the Utah legislature paved the way for a land grab
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Salt Lake Tribune ([link removed])


** Long accustomed to booms and busts, oil industry is rocked by pandemic
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Wyoming Public Media ([link removed])


** New Mexico oil and gas market could take years to recover
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Carlsbad Current-Argus ([link removed])


** Opinion: Bipartisan support for the Land and Water Conservation Fund deserves applause
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The Hill ([link removed])
Quote of the day
BLM’s backwards approach to rulemaking is not acceptable. It cannot propose a rule based on a factual conclusion, provide no evidence for the same, and then, when confronted with the glaring inadequacy, attempt to backfill the record without public comment.”
—U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ([link removed]) , striking down the Trump administration's BLM methane waste rule rollback
Picture this


** @Interior ([link removed])
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A short drive from Las Vegas, Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area highlights the solitude & beauty of the Mohave Desert. Pic by Johan Joubert ([link removed] ([link removed]) ) #Nevada ([link removed])

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