Trump attack on U.S. environment law

Comments of Beyond Nuclear on the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s February 24, 2025, Interim Final Rule  “Removal of National Environmental Policy Act Implementing Regulations”
[Docket CEQ-2025-0002]
March 27, 2025

To whom it may concern at the White House Council on Environmental Quality,

Beyond Nuclear provides its comments on the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) interim final rule, as docketed CEQ-2025-0002.

Beyond Nuclear strongly opposes the Trump Administration’s CEQ’s removal of the National Environmental Policy Act’s (NEPA) existing implementing regulations as directed by the White House Executive Order 14154 “Unleashing American Energy.”

In response, Beyond Nuclear wholly supports the national environmental and safe energy communities’ call, “Do not dismantle NEPA!”

1) Executive Order 14154 and CEQ-2025-0002 instruct all federal agencies “to identify those agency actions that impose an undue burden on the identification, development, or use of domestic energy resources—with particular attention to oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, biofuels, critical mineral, and nuclear energy resources.”

The White House CEQ claims that the deregulation of NEPA will make it more “efficient” and beneficial to environmental protection by cutting through what the CEQ wrongly depicts as overly burdensome bureaucratic red tape.

To the contrary, Beyond Nuclear argues that the CEQ action removes binding NEPA regulations and replaces it with nonbinding guidance that is intended to streamline the environmental protection permitting process with a significant bias toward unfettered commercial energy expansion and the associated pollution of land, air and water. The CEQ action further ignores how unfettered energy expansion exacerbates an accelerating global climate crisis.

The rule change has been rightfully described as imposing “scientific censorship” and an “information blackout” on potentially affected communities and stifles the broader public awareness. Censorship and the denial of access to the environmental knowledge base will inevitably lead to the exclusion of critical data and analysis in a democratic decision-making-process. Where current NEPA regulations presently compel federal agencies to disclose such scientific information and knowledge, the CEQ changes will impede affected communities and the public from learning about potential environmental and climate impacts of proposed accelerated federal actions, including project funding and license permitting. Environmental justice-impacted communities will be disproportionately and adversely impacted by the denial of access to this information and informed public participation in the decision-making process.

2) “Sec. 5. Unleashing Energy Dominance through Efficient Permitting. (a) Executive Order 11991 of May 24, 1977 (Relating to protection and enhancement of environmental quality) is hereby revoked.”

Beyond Nuclear contends that the CEQ rule change effectively eliminates a transparent process by federal agencies to thoroughly prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on all major federal activity including federal funding and permit licensing.
CEQ-2025-0002 further forecloses on the affected community’s due process to engage in an informed public hearing process on the environment and climate change impacts as the venue for “taking a hard look” at both the environmental impacts of the proposed federal activity and the less harmful alternatives.

3) “Sec. 5. b) To expedite and simplify the permitting process, within 30 days of the date of this order, the Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) shall provide guidance on implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq., and propose rescinding CEQ’s NEPA regulations found at 40 CFR 1500 et seq.”

Eliminating CEQ’s regulations and relying on the interpretation of each individual federal agency involved in NEPA implementation will cause chaos and further prolong project environmental reviews. The CEQ changes do not merely “cut red tape,” the changes will make it more difficult to insert important scientific evidence and provide for the informed community’s input into future decisions necessary to protect the natural environment and affected communities from adverse health and safety consequences and uneconomical impacts.

NEPA currently ensures that the affected communities and the broader public have the right to access scientific environmental information and other related knowledge as well as give voice and informed participation in a process that includes public hearings. Without consistent NEPA regulations, that right is significantly threatened. By dismantling NEPA’s implementing regulations, the CEQ rule unduly undercuts public access to environmental information and informed public participation in the democratic decision-making process.

Rescinding NEPA regulations and irrationally erasing decades of NEPA case law since 1977 will likely give way to more prolonged litigation but with fewer legal guidelines for the court judicial review and rulings.

4) “Sec. 5. c) Following the provision of the guidance, the Chairman of CEQ shall convene a working group to coordinate the revision of agency-level implementing regulations for consistency. The guidance in subsection (b) and any resulting implementing regulations must expedite permitting approvals and meet deadlines established in the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 (Public Law 118-5). Consistent with applicable law, all agencies must prioritize efficiency and certainty over any other objectives, including those of activist groups, that do not align with the policy goals set forth in section 2 of this order or that could otherwise add delays and ambiguity to the permitting process.”

The Executive Order and CEQ-2025-0002 expression that the CEQ working group will only recognize the “guidance in subsection (b) and any resulting policy goals must expedite permitting approvals” is undemocratic. It not only intends to single out and exclude the inclusion of “activist groups” but also academics, scientists, local government, community groups etc.  As such, CEQ-2025-0002 is arbitrary and capricious because it lacks a rational basis and makes sweeping changes without due consideration, logic, reason and fairness to the potentially affected communities and states.

The Executive Order and the CEQ are essentially looking to rewrite NEPA by deleting the requisite “hard look” at the environmental impacts of all major federal action and potentially less harmful alternatives.