The Trump administration is moving to weaken national environmental laws that might govern how the National Park Service, for instance, repairs damage to the Blue Ridge Parkway done by Hurricane Helene/NPS file

President Donald Trump's administration is moving to defang the National Environmental Policy Act that long has been viewed as the "Magna Carta" of the United State's environmental laws.

On Wednesday the president's Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) announced its intention to remove its regulations long used to implement NEPA, which long has been used to guide federal decision-making on projects that might have an environmental impact.

At a minimum this decision, to take effect in April, would leave federal agencies to rely on their own regulations guiding NEPA policy, if they have any. At worse, say environmental organizations, it could remove requirements for public involvement and consideration of climate change in decision-making.

"Unless an agency has developed its own specific NEPA regs, there are no regulations that apply government-wide," Jason Rylander, legal director for the Center For Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute, said during a phone call Thursday.

NEPA dates to the administration of President Richard Nixon, who signed it into law in January 1, 1970. In short, it directs federal agencies to "to assess the environmental effects of proposed major federal actions prior to making decisions."

Over the decades it has been amended by presidents. President Jimmy Carter, for instance, issued an executive order requiring "[environmental] impact statements to be concise, clear, and to the point, and supported by evidence that agencies have made the necessary environmental analyses.” President Joe Biden issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to take climate change and environmental justice into consideration when considering federal actions.

President Trump now is moving not to simply revise the rules to remove Biden's additions, but simply to "eliminate them all," said Rylander. As a result, he said, one impact will be the loss of required public participation.

"[It] is an open question, how the agencies are going to address public participation. That's a serious, a serious issue because part of the intent behind behind NEPA, as we've understood it, is to include the public so that you get the best possible information about the impacts of projects and you're proceeding with everything you need to make a sound decision," Rylander said.

While the lawyer interpreted the proposed changes to still require environmental assessments and environmental impact statements to be presented for public comment, requirements the Biden administration specified for what agencies need to consider were being removed.

Biden's additions "had a lot more detail about how to ensure full and fair public engagement, how to consider climate change and environmental justice impacts," said Rylander. "You know, all this was mandated in the regulations. What we're back to now is essentially just a broad statement that you must do public comment. They can publish a notice in the Federal Register and take public comment, but not have to actually consider any of these impacts, or do meetings in the communities, or do any other kind of outreach or or specific."

Rylander was not sure whether any land-management agency, such as the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management, had adopted their own regulations matching those CEQ has relied on.

However, the Interior Department has adopted its own NEPA regulations (43 CFR Part 46) that would continue to govern the Park Service if CEQ's proposal takes hold. Of course, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum could strike those.

On its web pages, the Park Service notes that "the NEPA process is an essential tool for ensuring informed decisions that conserve park resources and values."

The agency has its own 104-page handbook for understanding and implementing NEPA in Park Service decision-making. Within that handbook the Park Service underscores that the National Park Service Organic Act of 1916 and its 2006 Management Policies "prohibit the NPS from taking any action that would result in impairment of park resources or values (NPS Management Policies 2006, 1.4.4). Furthermore, while the NPS has discretion to allow adverse impacts, NPS managers must always seek ways to avoid, or to minimize to the greatest extent practicable, adverse impacts on park resources and values."

Furthermore, in 2011 then-National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis issued Director's Order 12, part of which stressed that NEPA-driven evaluations of management decisions must include provisions for:

• Meaningful participation by the public and other stakeholders;
• Development and critical evaluation of alternative courses of action;
• Rigorous application of scientific and technical information in the planning, evaluation and decision-making processes;
• Use of NPS knowledge and expertise through interdisciplinary teams and processes; and
• Aggressive incorporation of mitigation measures, pollution prevention techniques, and other principles of sustainable park management in all actions.

How the Park Service will interpret the CEQ move to rescind regulations for implementing NEPA remains to be seen, as the agency is operating under an acting director. 

“Trump is trying to destroy 50 years of bipartisan agreement on how to implement the National Environmental Policy Act because his only goal is to tear everything down as quickly he can, damn the consequences," Rylander said earlier Thursday in a release. "Trump’s drastic procedural shortcut clearly violates the law. Trump’s disdain for our environment is matched only by his contempt for the law, but if he wants to eliminate regulations created by previous administrations, including in his own, he has to go through the normal process. I think that’s exactly what the courts will make him do."

At the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Legal Director Stephen Block said that, "the Trump administration has made crystal clear that it hopes to make federal environmental decisions behind closed doors, without public input, and without considering their impacts — these are decisions that will favor polluting industries and big business, rather than Utahns or the health of the federal public lands in our state. Utahns and Utah’s environment will be worse off because of these efforts. The Trump Administration has complained that 'local voices' are not being heard when federal agencies make public land management decisions – but with today’s action, they’re eliminating the very way in which locals and all Americans are able to provide input.”