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Environmental Safeguard Law Under Threat?
Bush Speeding Energy Projects at NEPA's Expense, Critics Say
 Listen to Allison Aubrey's report
Oct. 14, 2002 --
To environmentalists, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is sacred. The statute has given them the power to halt or amend hundreds of federal projects. Now, as NPR's Allison Aubrey reports, they're arguing that the Bush administration is undermining NEPA.
Last January, the state director of Utah's Bureau of Land Management issued a bulletin to field officers that outlined a new plan for speeding-up oil and gas drilling permits -- citing the acceleration as a top priority of the Bush team.
Soon after, the Bureau of Land Management began expediting projects. Environmental lawyer Sharon Buccino, of the Natural Resources Defense Council, tells Aubrey the bureau accomplished its goal by illegally short-cutting NEPA. The act functions as a full-disclosure law that requires federal agencies to evaluate the environmental impacts of their projects, and insures public input into the decision-making process.
"This administration's problem is that it really sees NEPA as an obstacle rather than a tool," says Buccino. "These NEPA rollbacks are consistent with this administration's basic approach to governing -- which is to shut the public out."
She points to the Yellow Cat seismic exploration project, which aims to open the public lands of Utah's red-rock country to drilling. Two dozen environmental groups submitted an alternative plan to the Bureau of Land Management, one that in their view wouldn't be as damaging to the environment or the local tourism-based economy.
Steve Bloch, an attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, tells Aubrey the bureau simply ignored the NEPA process and gave the green light for seismic exploration.
But Chris Horner, of the free-market think-tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, says the environmentalists' interpretation is off base.
"The complaint here isn't that their voice wasn't heard. It's just that they didn't get their way," Horner says.
The Yellow Cat project is in sharp contrast to the NEPA process during the eight years of the Clinton administration, which favored protecting private lands, Aubrey says. Under Clinton, federal projects had to clear layer after layer of hurdles. Horner argues the statute was too liberally applied.
The White House Council on Environmental Quality rejects claims that the Bush administration is gutting the law. Administration officials say they’re trying to streamline the law, not wreck it. The administration has assigned a task force to this goal.
Environmentalists plan to fight the administration in court, case by case. In the end, it will be up to the nation’s judges to decide if NEPA is being violated.
In Depth
NPR's John Nielsen reports on how the White House and advocacy groups put their very different spins on the administration's environmental policy.
NPR's Allison Aubrey reports on the Army Corps of Engineers and the pressure it's under to reform.
Browse the NPR archives for coverage of Bush's environmental policy.
Resources
• The National Environmental Policy Act
• White House Council on Environmental Quality on the NEPA Task Force
• Department of Energy's NEPA Policy and Compliance Web site
• Public comments received on the NEPA task force
• Natural Resources Defense Council statement on NEPA
• Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance statement on oil and gas exploration in Utah
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