15-05-2025
Environmental reviews in name only?
The Trump administration is moving forward with a plan to fast-track environmental reviews of fossil fuel and mining projects — a move experts say is almost guaranteed to cause environmental harm and legal headaches.
The new 28-day review period, analysts told Ian M. Stevenson, makes it next to impossible to comply with federal requirements under the decades-old National Environmental Policy Act.
'It takes longer to get a mortgage,' said Jamie Pleune, a law professor at the University of Utah.
The landmark environmental law requires agencies to assess a project's environmental effects before greenlighting development. That can take more than a year, a timeline that doesn't conform with President Donald Trump's plan to expand fossil fuels and critical mineral mining. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has touted the shift as a way to cut 'unnecessary delays.'
The industries eligible for the fast-tracked process include coal, oil, natural gas, critical minerals, hydropower, geothermal and uranium. Wind and solar projects are excluded.
Federal workers and other experts say the move will likely result in environmental analyses that contain little or no recognition of environmental factors on the ground.
Take, for example, the reality of seasons. If a project is proposed in the dead of winter, an environmental review would not be able to count bird species that live in the area or what plants grow along nearby streams.
'The idea that you could compress a multiyear time frame for analyzing a complex mining operation into less than a month and still protect water quality and public health is absurd,' said John Robison with the Idaho Conservation League. 'This is a recipe for either public health disasters or litigation.'
On the litigation front, a sub-par environmental analysis could ultimately hurt project developers in court. If, for example, there are naturally occurring heavy metals at a project site, but they are not included in a rushed environmental review, the company could get dinged later if those minerals leach.
Still, developers have long complained about lengthy and sometimes unpredictable NEPA reviews — and may want to take advantage of Trump's policies favoring industry.
The streamlining has already begun. This week, the Trump administration announced it would take a mere two weeks to process the federal permits to reopen a uranium mine in Utah.
It's Thursday — thank you for tuning in to POLITICO's Power Switch. I'm your host, Arianna Skibell. Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. Send your tips, comments, questions to askibell@
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That's it for today, folks! Thanks for reading.
