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The Biden administration announced it will restore protections to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The announcement is in response to the Trump administration's efforts to weaken the law to speed the approval of projects like mines, pipelines, dams, and highways.
Biden's efforts to restore NEPA are timely as Congress is debating a plan to spend trillions of dollars on infrastructure improvements across the country. Brenda Mallory, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality said in a statement, “Patching these holes in the environmental review process will help reduce conflict and litigation and help clear up some of the uncertainty that the previous administration’s rule caused.”
The proposed changes to the law would include requiring the federal government to evaluate the climate change impacts of major new projects as part of the environmental review and permitting process. In practice, this means that agencies will have to consider the direct, indirect, and cumulative climate impacts of a decision, including assessing the environmental justice consequences of releasing additional pollution in neighborhoods already disproportionately burdened by bad air quality, for example.
Congressman Raúl Grijalva, Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, called the Biden administration's announcement “a necessary first step" in order to "better protect communities from polluted air and water, especially those communities that are already overburdened by the cumulative effects of multiple pollution sources.” The new rule also proposes giving federal agencies the authority to work closely with communities to develop alternative approaches to projects.
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This is an important first step in preventing the extinction of this fuzzy black-and-yellow beauty that was once a familiar sight. To survive unchecked threats of disease, habitat loss, and pesticide poisoning, American bumblebees need the full protection of the Endangered Species Act right now."
