White House Seeks to Weaken National Environmental Protection Act

September 27, 2002

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San Francisco Chronicle Coverage, White House seeks review shortcuts Environmentalists fear loss of safeguard

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Environmentalists Fear Loss of Safeguard

The Bush administration is seeking sweeping changes in the National Environmental Protection Act that critics say could exempt federal agencies from exhaustively studying the ecological impact of airport expansions, timber sales and other major projects.

The White House says it is trying to cut red tape and speed decisions on important projects. Administration officials say environmental reviews often take too long, slowing efforts to reduce congestion by building roads or cut the risk of wildfires by thinning forests. But environmentalists see an effort to increase logging, oil drilling and other development by weakening the act, a landmark law that requires detailed environmental impact reports and extensive public comment on all major government decisions. They say the attempt to water down the law is part of a broad attack by the Bush administration on environmental protection.

In the past few months, the administration has:

• Asked Congress to suspend environmental review and limit court challenges to logging projects in high-risk fire areas.
• Issued an executive order requiring expedited environmental analysis on high-priority transportation projects.
• Argued in federal court that the National Environmental Policy Act should not apply to a 200-mile area outside of the U.S. territorial waters, called the "Exclusive Economic Zone."
• Created a White House task force charged with modernizing the 32-year- old National Environmental Protection Act and accelerating environmental review.

Environmentalists say that exempting more projects from environmental analysis and speeding up the reviews of other decisions will only weaken the law's protections, and believe that the entire effort is designed to shut the public out of the process."

The law has sparked controversy since it was passed by Congress in 1969 and signed by President Richard Nixon in 1970. The law requires agencies from the Fish and Wildlife Service to the Environmental Protection Agency to study the effect of government decisions and suggest alternatives that could lessen the ecological costs. On major projects, the law mandates that the government must seek input from the public before proceeding.

Information from San Francisco Chronicle Article