President Joe Biden ’s White House moved Wednesday to reverse the Trump administration’s shortsighted , industry-friendly overhaul of the National Environmental Policy Act, one of America’s bedrock environmental laws. NEPA is a 50-year-old law that protects air, water and land by requiring federal agencies to conduct detailed environmental assessments of major infrastructure projects. In 2020, the Trump administration changed how the federal government implements the law in order to fast-track energy projects and other development, limiting public input on such projects and allowing federal agencies to ignore climate change when reviewing them. The White House Council on Environmental Quality on Wednesday announced steps to restore provisions that had been in place for decades prior to the Trump-era overhaul, including requiring agencies to consider all environmental impacts of a proposed project and providing the flexibility to work with communities to consider alternatives that would minimize harm. “The basic community safeguards we are proposing to restore would help ensure that American infrastructure gets built right the first time, and delivers real benefits ― not harms ― to people who live nearby,” CEQ Chair Brenda Mallory said in a statement. “Patching these holes in the environmental review process will help reduce conflict […]
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