NEPA Reforms Applauded By Western Business Leaders

Newly finalized reforms of a key environmental law will ensure that "wild claims about climate change catastrophe" cannot easily used by environmental extremist groups to stop individual projects on public lands, according to the Western Business Roundtable.

The reforms of the National Environmental Policies Act (NEPA), codified this week in a new federal regulation by the U.S. Department of Interior, were developed after years of extensive work and stakeholder input by dozens of federal agencies in a process led by the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The Western Business Roundtable, a coalition of many different business leaders across the Western U.S., has pushed for such reforms for years.

"These reforms will return some common sense back to the NEPA review process and allow real science to have a fighting chance to trump political science," said Britt Weygandt, Executive Director of the Western Business Roundtable.

Weygandt explained that extremist groups were "increasingly looking to block virtually all economic activity on public lands by claiming that specific projects are responsible for catastrophic climate change impacts and, therefore, should not be allowed."

"We know that a lot of pressure was brought to bear on the Interior Department to force global climate change claims into a whole range of NEPA environmental analyses, including a mandated inclusion in land management Resource Management Plans (RMPs) and any project dealing with fossil fuels development," she said. "To date, too many assertions of impacts have been founded on scenarios modeling and mere theories about what could be. Hard science needs to trump political science. We applaud the Department for its decision to stand firm."

"After all, greenhouse gases are emitted globally, with the great majority of those emissions not coming from the United States," Weygandt said. "Assigning responsibility for the climate-related impacts of those global emissions - at a project level - is a thorny proposition to say the least."

The Department rule states: "...The extent to which agencies address the effects of climate change on the aspects of the environment affected by the proposed action depends on the specific effects of the proposed action, their nexus with climate change effects on the same aspects of the environment, and their implications for adaptation to the effects of climate change. Whether and to what extent greenhouse gas emissions and/or climate change effects warrant analysis is the type of determination that Responsible Officials make when determining the appropriate scope of the NEPA analysis." (*73 FedReg 61293)*

"Clearly, this is an area that cries out for development of solid, peer-reviewed scientific criteria and analyses that measure real impacts on a case-by-case basis," she added.

Weygandt added that NEPA "has been warped by environmental lawyers into a legal sledgehammer to kill jobs and make America less energy independent. These reforms will make it harder for these extremists to abuse this well-intentioned law."

The Western Business Roundtable is comprised of CEOs and senior executives of corporations and organizations representing a broad cross-section of Western business interests - including those engaged in construction, manufacturing, mining, electric power generation and oil and gas exploration and development.

Contact Information:

Website: http://www.westernroundtable.com/

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