Roseau Republican Dan Fabian, the minority lead on the House Environment and Natural Resource Finance Division, crowed in a legislative update emailed on Thursday. Fabian wrote:
I was invited recently to join a conversation with White House officials in Washington DC about modernizing the National Environmental Policy Act [NEPA] and improving regulations regarding environmental projects to ensure that they work for all involved. I look forward to continuing work on regulatory reform so that our environmental regulations meet their purpose of protecting the environment without imposing undue hardship on people or businesses.
Given that Fabian is retiring after this term, he'll have to work fast in this week's special session.
Headlines this week about the changes to the NEPA don't seem quite as celebratory as Fabian. The New York Times reported in Trump Weakens Major Conservation Law to Speed Construction Permits:
President Trump on Wednesday unilaterally weakened one of the nation’s bedrock conservation laws, the National Environmental Policy Act, limiting public review of federal infrastructure projects to speed up the permitting of freeways, power plants and pipelines.
In doing so, the Trump administration claimed it would save hundreds of millions of dollars over almost a decade by significantly reducing the amount of time allowed for completing reviews of major infrastructure projects.
The president announced the final changes to the rule at the U.P.S. Hapeville Airport Hub in Atlanta, making the case that “mountains and mountains of red tape” and lengthy permit processes had held up major infrastructure projects across the country, including a lane expansion to the perpetually clogged Interstate 75 in Georgia.
“All of that ends today,” he said. “We’re doing something very dramatic.”
Revising the 50-year-old law through regulatory reinterpretation is one of the biggest — and most audacious — deregulatory actions of the Trump administration, which to date has moved to roll back 100 rules protecting clean air and water, and others that aim to reduce the threat of human-caused climate change.
Because the action is coming so late in Mr. Trump’s term, it also elevates the stakes in the November elections. Under federal regulatory law, a Democratic president and Congress could eradicate the NEPA rollback with simple majority votes on Capitol Hill and the president’s signature.
. . .in one of the most bitterly contested provisions, the rule would free federal agencies from having to consider the impacts of infrastructure projects on climate change. It does so by eliminating the need for agencies to analyze a project’s indirect or “cumulative” effects on the environment and specifying that they are required to only analyze “reasonably foreseeable” impacts.
“This may be the single biggest giveaway to polluters in the past 40 years,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group. He accused the Trump administration of “turning back the clock to when rivers caught fire, our air was unbreathable and our most beloved wildlife was spiraling toward extinction.”
With the economy still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, the president has repeatedly said the government must loosen environmental rules to get the country back on its feet. In June he signed an executive order allowing energy and infrastructure projects to bypass parts of certain laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, with the justification that it will “strengthen the economy and return Americans to work.” . . .
Common Dream's Julie Cohen reported in ‘We will sue,’ vow green groups after Trump guts nation’s key environmental law:
A number of environmental protection groups on Wednesday announced their intention to bring the Trump administration to court directly after President Donald Trump announced his finalized plan to roll back the National Environmental Policy Act.
By weakening the 50-year-old law known as NEPA, the president will end the system of thorough environmental impact reviews, which are meant to keep infrastructure projects from damaging biodiversity, polluting waterways and residential areas, and threatening the climate.
Trump announced the sweeping changes to the law at a campaign stop in Atlanta Wednesday afternoon, touting the plan as one that will “modernize” and “streamline” infrastructure projects as environmental reviews will need to be completed within two years.
The Western Environmental Law Center rejected the administration’s euphemisms for what it called Trump’s attempt to “eviscerate…the single most important safeguard for environmental justice, public health, and environmental protection in the U.S.”
“This does not represent ‘streamlining,’ a ‘revision,’ a ‘modernization,’ or any such minimization of the very real effects this will have for Americans and the clean air and water we require to exercise our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” said Brian Sweeney, communications director for the group. “This overreach will also deliberately and massively curtail public input on major federal decision-making. Dramatic? Yes. This is a rewrite of a law written by Congress, without Congressional action. We will sue over this.” . . .
Who else was there from the Minnesota Legislature? The photo at the top of this post was embedded in Fabian's email, the final one he can send before the November general election. Left to right: Fabian; Senator Mary Kiffmeyer (R-Blg Lake); Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka (R-East Gull Lake); Senator John Jasinski (R-Faribault); Senator Carrie Rudd (R-Breezy Point); and Senator Andrew Mathews (R-Princeton).
Stay home in Minnesota for negotiations to conclude the special session and bring about a bonding bill, police reform, and aid for Minnesotans struggling in a pandemic? Nah. Whine about the tyrant Walz, then jet off to DC to celebrate Trump's executive action.
Just peachy.
Watch Trump's remarks here.
Photo: the group of Republican Minnesota legislators at the White House on Thursday.
At least some of them must’ve carpooled with Gazelka.
Posted by: Charles Quimby | Jul 18, 2020 at 08:55 AM