Interior Department Pledges to Reduce Environmental Reviews for Large Projects to ‘Weeks’
Stakeholders respond to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s proposal to put a 28-day timer on environmental reviews
By Amanda Eggert, Montana Free Press
The U.S. Department of the Interior, which manages more than 480 million acres of federal land across the country, has pledged to “implement emergency permitting procedures” to facilitate fossil fuel and critical mineral development.
The department described its revised energy development directive as an effort to expedite permitting timelines so reviews that typically take several months or years can be reduced “to just weeks,” according to a press release the department issued April 23.
Interior Secretary Dough Burgum, who formerly served as North Dakota’s governor, said the country “cannot afford to wait” to continue with multi-year project reviews to develop oil, natural gas, coal, uranium, biofuels, geothermal energy and critical mineral deposits.
Coal deposits, oil and gas reservoirs and minerals such as copper and rare earth elements in Montana could be impacted by the order, should the companies interested in developing them opt into the expedited review framework.
“President Trump has made it clear that our energy security is national security, and these emergency procedures reflect our unwavering commitment to protecting both,” Burgum said in the release. “We’re cutting through unnecessary delays to fast-track the development of American energy and critical minerals — resources that are essential to our economy, our military readiness, and our global competitiveness. By reducing a multi-year permitting process down to just 28 days, the Department will lead with urgency, resolve, and a clear focus on strengthening the nation’s energy independence.”
Environmental groups criticized the department’s intention and the directive’s utility, describing it as “absurd” political posturing at best and an unlawful violation of the separation of powers at worst.
Industry groups praised the order’s goal but expressed reservations about the directive’s practical application.
In addition to laying out the abbreviated timelines for federal agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to evaluate environmental reviews, the Interior has produced a draft request companies can submit to use the new expedited process, which includes an agreement to abide by applicable laws at the federal, state and local level, including the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. Also incorporated in the Interior’s new directive are frameworks for expedited Endangered Species Act and National Historic Preservation Act consultations.
Federal agencies have long been required to take a “hard look” at environmental impacts associated with large federal land projects and use the “best available science” in that endeavor. In the course of considering an environmental impact statement, federal agencies might evaluate changes to endangered species habitat, quantify anticipated shifts to water quantity and quality, catalogue potentially affected cultural and historical sites, and estimate a project’s employment footprint.
The environmental impact statements required by the National Environmental Policy Act that Congress passed in 1969 regularly top 100 pages and often elicit thousands of comments from stakeholders.
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Future expansions of the Rosebud Mine, which supplies the Colstrip power plant with coal, would likely be eligible for the expedited process, should owner Westmoreland Mining request one.
Jon Heroux, corporate counsel for Westmoreland’s external affairs, said in a recent interview that his company is still reviewing the Interior Department’s directive and talking through how Westmoreland might adjust its operations in response.
“We applaud the Trump administration for trying to speed the process up, [which] has grown into years and years of work at exorbitant cost,” Heroux said. “But we want to make sure that anything we do on the EIS side is fundamentally sound and abides by the law. That’s what we’re going to do, and what we’re going to encourage anybody else to do. Speeding it up is obviously something we want, as long as we can get done what is required of us by the courts and the law.”
Kathleen Sgamma, the longtime president of Western Energy Alliance who earlier this month withdrew her nomination to lead the Bureau of Land Management, said NEPA has been “used by the bureaucracy for years to slow projects.”
“We’re glad the Interior Secretary has recognized the weaponization of NEPA and is committed to clearing it out,” she wrote in an email to Montana Free Press. “The best way to do so for oil and natural gas projects would be for BLM to simply stop requiring extra NEPA layers and make use of the categorical exclusions (CX) mandated by Congress 20 years ago almost to the day in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. BLM routinely doesn’t use the CXs even when a wellsite meets all the congressionally mandated criteria.”
Categorical exclusions are standardized environmental reviews for projects that aren’t anticipated to have significant impacts.
Sgamma did not respond to MTFP’s follow-up question regarding whether Western Energy Alliance’s members are anticipated to request expedited project reviews.
In an interview with MTFP, Earthjustice attorney Shiloh Hernandez said the Interior Department is “trying to placate industry by cutting out public involvement” with the new directive.
“I think it’s classic Trumpian decisionmaking here,” Hernandez said. “They’re acting beyond their authority, contrary to the separation of powers, contrary to the checks and balances, and it’s all premised on this fundamental lie — this supposed need for development of fossil fuels.”
“It’s so Orwellian that the emergency is the need for more fossil fuels. If you look at the science, it’s the exact opposite,” he said, underscoring that renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are not incorporated in the directive. “If there is an emergency, it’s the climate crisis and the reduction in use of fossil fuels.”
Montana Environmental Information Center Deputy Director Derf Johnson described the process Burgum outlined in the order as “patently absurd” and unlikely to draw much interest from project developers.
“I just don’t see them doing it because I don’t see any company wanting to have a shoddily done EIS released that makes [the company] legally vulnerable and throws their whole project into some sort of risk category,” Johnson said. “I don’t think it would have passed the laugh test, I like to call it, if you were to introduce something like that in Congress.”
The Interior’s new guidance was facilitated by an executive order Trump issued on the first day of his second term in office directing federal agencies to “identify and use all relevant lawful emergency and other authorities available to them to facilitate the supply, refining, and transportation of energy in and through the West Coast of the United States, Northeast of the United States, and Alaska.”
Sure, let's rush and make sure there isn't time to adequately protect our air, water and land.