CEQ Guts NEPA by Rescinding Regulations

Washington, DC—Today the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) took the most drastic action since its creation in 1970 by rescinding 50 years’ worth of regulations that implement the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). This decision, which was issued in an interim final rule published earlier this year, went into effect this morning. The impacts of this action are sweeping and severe. This decision will cause NEPA processes to be more unpredictable, reducing the public’s ability to fully raise concerns about the destruction of wildlife habitat and loss of biodiversity, declines in air and water quality, and harm to public health.

NEPA was passed by Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed into law by President Nixon in 1970. This statute is our country’s basic charter for the protection of the environment, and one of the most important environmental laws in the United States. The three basic principles of NEPA are informed decision-making, transparency, and public input. The law requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impacts of projects—such as new power plants, highways, oil and gas development, and logging—and to explore less environmentally harmful alternative approaches to achieving their objectives. It also provides opportunities for communities across the country to voice their concerns about how these proposals may threaten public health and ecosystems.

AWI routinely relies on this law to contest plans to kill certain wildlife populations in national parks and wildlife refuges, to challenge lethal control activities conducted by the US Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services program, and to protest wild horse and burro roundups. We strongly opposed this action in comments to CEQ.

Since 1978, NEPA has been implemented through regulations issued by CEQ, a component of the Executive Office of the President, which have provided direction to over 80 federal agencies, tribes, project sponsors, courts, impacted communities, and the broader public. It will now be up to individual federal agencies to determine how to comply with NEPA, what environmental impacts to disclose, and what level of public input is required.

Concerningly, in guidance issued earlier this year, the Trump administration urged agencies to use the controversial 2020 regulations issued during the first Trump term, which were largely reversed by the Biden administration. These regulations were inconsistent with both the letter and spirit of the law; they undermined informed agency decision-making, reduced transparency, and limited critical public involvement, thus denying the public the democratic process at the heart of NEPA. Decisions on certain projects were allowed to move forward without full consideration of their environmental impacts and without a requirement that a broad range of safer, more ecologically sound alternatives be considered.

“The complete revocation of these longstanding regulations, coupled with the requirement that individual federal agencies develop their own implementing regulations, introduces profound uncertainty into NEPA’s environmental review process for proposed development projects,” said Johanna Hamburger, director and senior attorney of the Animal Welfare Institute’s Terrestrial Wildlife Program. “This action could have a devastating impact on wildlife, habitat, and frontline communities. Rather than achieving CEQ’s stated goal of improving project delivery times and increasing efficiency, this move will result in more litigation, greater delays for project approvals, and increased costs.”