Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.
The Trump administration has finalized a plan to roll back regulations outlined by one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws.
Signed into law in 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal agencies to assess how proposed major projects—such as the purchase of parklands, the establishment of military complexes, or the construction of buildings and highways—will impact the environment.
NEPA opponents, which include both Republicans and Democrats, claim the processes outlined in the legislation unnecessarily delay approvals for infrastructure and energy projects. Last February, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) published an interim final rule removing NEPA regulations. The new action adopts the rule as final.
“In this Administration, NEPA’s regulatory reign of terror has ended,” said CEQ Chairman Katherine Scarlett in a statement. “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, CEQ acted early to slash needless layering of bureaucratic burden and restore common sense to the environmental review and permitting process.”
In response to the interim final rule, the CEQ received more than 108,000 public comments, according to a document outlining the rule published today on the Federal Register. One such comment came from a coalition of environmental groups, expressing strong opposition to the rule last March.
NEPA “promotes sound and environmentally-informed decisionmaking by federal agencies, and it provides the primary way for the public to learn about and provide input regarding the impacts of federal actions on their lives,” the letter read. “The only certainty provided by the Interim Final Rule is less government transparency, more project delay, more litigation, less resilient infrastructure, and poor environmental and health outcomes for communities.”
—Emily Gardner (@emfurd.bsky.social), Associate Editor