Trump is bypassing community input to fast-track energy projects that risk pollution
This story is part of a Grist package examining how President Trump's first 100 days in office have reshaped climate and environmental policy in the U.S., and is made possible through a partnership with Grist and Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan.
When President Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency on his first day in office, he directed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to use emergency permitting for projects to boost energy supplies, including oil, natural gas, uranium, coal, biofuels, geothermal heat, hydropower, and critical minerals.
Doing so effectively created a new class of emergency permit to fast track energy projects across the country. But environmental advocates worry this will harm the ability of the public to weigh in on projects that will contribute to climate change and harm sensitive ecosystems.
Speeding up permitting for high-profile proposals will likely gain attention and trigger lawsuits, said David Bookbinder, director of law and policy at the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project. But he worries that under the order, there will be less scrutiny paid to less well-known projects.
'The one thing that is clear is they're cutting back,' he said. 'They're shortening the amount of time for public comment.'
Three laws grant the Army Corps authority to permit projects that impact wetlands and waters, including assessing their environmental effects: the Clean Water Act, the Rivers and Harbors Act, and the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act.
The agency typically uses emergency permitting for projects that prevent risk to human life, property, or of unexpected and significant economic hardship, such as rebuilding infrastructure after a hurricane. Creating emergency procedures to address energy supplies is new. And according to Bookbinder, it's illegal.
The corps has allowed the president to amend its regulation without going through the required process, he said, 'And the president can't do that.'
Emergency procedures will be determined by each Army Corps district, a process Bookbinder called 'rather opaque.' For instance, he said, it's not clear whether or how the corps will go through the environmental analysis required by the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. The landmark 1970 law requires the federal government to account for environmental impacts before permitting a project, and is sometimes the only opportunity for people to weigh in on projects that will affect them.
This is part of a much larger effort to increase energy production, including through drilling and mining; last week the Interior Department announced it would fast-track such projects on public lands. The Trump administration has also moved to unravel and decentralize how NEPA is implemented.
Doug Garman, a spokesperson with the agency headquarters, said in an email the Army Corps is still required to comply with 'all applicable laws and regulations,' including NEPA, and that 'coordination of these reviews will be subject to the emergency declared under [the executive order.]'
Garman said current regulations do allow the agency to respond to the declared emergency in this manner.
Concrete changes are already taking place. Two Clean Water Act permits for Texas projects — that the corps designated as emergencies — now have shortened comment periods lasting less than two weeks: the Texas Connector pipeline supplying Port Arthur liquefied natural gas and the Rio Grande liquefied natural gas ship channel.
The Army Corps also announced it will speed up its review of a contentious tunnel under the Great Lakes that would house a section of the Line 5 pipeline, which carries oil and natural gas liquids from Wisconsin to Ontario. The 72-year-old pipeline currently runs about four miles underwater in the straits between lakes Michigan and Huron.
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Shane McCoy, a regulatory branch chief with the corps' Detroit District, told reporters the emergency procedures 'truncated' its timeline but that they weren't 'eliminating any of the steps' in the process. The corps said the project qualifies as an emergency and that a faster review will allow it 'to address an energy supply situation' which would risk life, property, and unexpected and significant economic hardship.
The pipeline's owner, Canada-based Enbridge, first applied for a federal permit to build the tunnel in 2020. It says doing so would make the pipeline safer by reducing the risk of an oil spill and calls it 'critical energy infrastructure.'
But the permitting process had been deeply flawed even before it had been fast tracked, according to seven tribal nations in Michigan that withdrew from federal talks on the tunnel.
'The Straits of Mackinac is spiritually, culturally, and economically vital to Tribal Nations,' tribal leaders wrote in a letter to the corps, saying that the agency's environmental review process 'disregards this deep place-based connection and instead seems designed to ensure that oil — and its associated threats — will continue to exist throughout the treaty ceded territory, including in the Great Lakes and the Straits.'
The decision to speed up that review was the 'final straw,' according to Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community.
'We will continue to defend the rights of the Great Lakes. See you in court,' she said in an emailed statement after the change was announced.
There's also the matter of the energy emergency itself. The executive order holds that the country's 'insufficient energy production, transportation, refining, and generation constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to our Nation's economy, national security, and foreign policy.' But many energy experts have said that isn't accurate, adding to numerous legal questions surrounding the order.
Under former President Joe Biden, the United States produced record amounts of oil and gas, and remained the world's largest liquid natural gas exporter, though that administration cut back on leasing federal lands for drilling and slowed some gas exports.
The White House did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
'Overall, our production levels for fossil fuels were quite high,' said David Spence, a professor of energy law at the University of Texas at Austin. 'So on the oil and gas side of things, to the extent that the Trump administration wants to increase production, it's going to be incremental at best because the market will only take as much as the market wants, and we were doing a pretty good job of satisfying that demand beforehand.'
Faster permitting will likely benefit individual projects, Spence said, along with oil companies and exporters of products like liquefied natural gas.
While Trump's executive order doesn't directly mention wind or solar, it implied that such energy made the grid unreliable. It also includes critical minerals in its push for domestic extraction — minerals used in renewable technologies. Spence said the supply of critical minerals is less secure because the U.S. relies on foreign imports. 'If that's what the emergency is aimed at, then you can sort of make that case with more of a straight face.'
Still, he said in an email, 'I generally think that 'energy independence' is a silly idea. Trade happens because it benefits both parties. Getting in the way of that takes away those benefits.'
Enbridge is among IPR's financial sponsors. Financial sponsors have no influence on IPR's news coverage.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump is bypassing community input to fast-track energy projects that risk pollution on Apr 29, 2025.
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Here are five takeaways from Tuesday's primaries: Sherrill won as many Democratic voters were weighing which candidate would be most electable and as each Democratic candidate pitched a different path forward for the party. Sherrill's victory suggests some Democratic voters want to dust off the party's successful playbook from the 2018 midterm elections, when she flipped a longtime Republican-held House seat. In that campaign and in her primary run this year, Sherrill stressed her background as a Navy helicopter pilot and a former federal prosecutor and pitched 'ruthless competence' as a counter to Trump. 'It just seems so obvious to me what the path forward is. It's effectively govern,' Sherrill recently told NBC News. 'And this is what I've been doing since 2018 when I first ran, right? ... I say to people, 'What's keeping you up at night?'' 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By late Tuesday evening, Ciattarelli was carrying all of the state's 21 counties. Ciattarelli's vote share was at 67% by late Tuesday evening, compared with just 22% for Spadea. State Sen. Jon Bramnick, who had been critical of Trump, had won just 6%, followed by two other candidates who had each won less than 3% of the vote. Ciattarelli thanked Trump in his victory speech for his 'endorsement and strong support,' making a joke about his being a 'part-time New Jersey resident.' (Trump owns a home and a golf course in Bedminster.) But Ciattarelli spent most of his speech focused on a general election argument, not on shoring up his base — indicative of the line he'll have to walk in a state Trump lost three times, even after the improvement he showed last year. Both parties are grappling with antiestablishment sentiment, wondering how to handle it, channel it or just avoid getting run over by it. But Tuesday's results were also a reminder that political institutions still have some staying power. New Jersey's traditional political machines were dealt a blow last year following a lawsuit from Democrat Andy Kim during his Senate run, when a court ordered that county parties could no longer give advantageous ballot positions to their preferred candidates. That diminished the sway those parties had Tuesday, but they still demonstrated some power. Ciattarelli was the only Republican who competed for county party endorsements. Fulop didn't compete for Democratic county party endorsements, and Gottheimer sat some out, as well. Some county parties split between the candidates, with Sherrill earning the most endorsements from 10 of the 21 counties. While Sherrill was carrying 15 of the state's 21 counties late Tuesday, Gottheimer was winning his home county, Bergen, which endorsed him. Sweeney, the only candidate from South Jersey, fared far better in the six counties that backed him. He was winning 40% of the vote in Gloucester County while garnering 7% of the statewide vote. The county party endorsements were no guarantee of victory: The Essex County Democrats, for example, endorsed Sherrill. But as of late Tuesday evening, she was trailing Baraka in Essex County, where he is mayor of Newark, the state's largest city. Even in that instance, though, the party endorsement may have helped Sherrill cut Baraka's margins in his home base. Tuesday night's victory speeches were also important table-setters, indicative of how each party is looking to frame the general election. And New Jersey's general election this year may foreshadow much of what we see on the campaign trail around the country in the 2026 midterms. Outside of a quick thanks to Trump, Ciattarelli kept his focus tightly on Sherrill and New Jersey Democrats in his victory speech. He criticized her as 'Phil Murphy 2.0,' arguing that she has 'enabled every extremist and costly idea Phil Murphy has put forth,' and he even revived a key criticism of Murphy from his 2021 campaign. He also criticized Sherrill's focus on Trump as a deflection. 'Mark my words: While we focus on these key New Jersey issues, my Democratic opponent will do everything in her power. Trust me ... if you took a shot every time Mikie Sherrill says 'Trump,' you'd be drunk off your ass every day between now and Nov. 4,' he said. 'But every time you hear her say 'Trump,' I want you to know what it really means: What it really means is Mikie doesn't have a plan to fix New Jersey,' he continued. During her victory speech, Sherrill leaned heavily on her biography but also emphasized a dual mandate — a fight against New Jersey Republicans and also against Trump, a recipe that Democrats have successfully leaned on in past midterm elections. Calling Ciattarelli a 'Trump lackey' who shouldn't lead the state, Sherrill criticized 'Trump and MAGA Republicans in D.C. [who] want to raise your taxes and take away your health care and education dollars.' 'This country is too beautiful to be beholden to the cruelty and self-interest that Jack and Trump are trying to hoist on her,' she said. 'The future is built on hard work and hope, and here in New Jersey, we're known for our grit, our tenacity — maybe a little bit for how loud we are — but it's going to take a strong voice to cut through the noise from Washington and deliver for the people,' she said. 'So I stand here tonight doing just that. And as a mom of four teenagers, you guys know I'm not going to put up with the incompetent, whiny nonsense coming from aggrieved MAGA Republicans.' Tuesday's results showed how money matters in campaigns — and how it has its limits. On the Democratic side, Sherrill won despite having been outspent by some of her opponents whose outside groups dropped millions of dollars on the race. The largest outside spender was Working New Jersey, a super PAC funded by the state's teachers union, which Spiller leads. The group had spent a whopping $35 million on the race as of May 27, according to the latest campaign finance reports, while Spiller's campaign had spent $342,000. As of late Tuesday, Spiller had about 10% of the primary vote. Gottheimer and Fulop were also boosted by outside groups that spent millions of dollars on the airwaves. (Gottheimer drained his congressional account to fund the outside group supporting him.) Sherrill got support on the airwaves from One Giant Leap PAC, which spent less than either Gottheimer's or Fulop's groups but spent most of its funds in the final weeks of the race. Ciattarelli and an aligned outside group, Kitchen Table Conservatives, outspent the other Republicans. And Ciattarelli touted his strong fundraising as proof that he would be a formidable general election candidate. This article was originally published on
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