BLM weighs cutting environmental review when crafting public lands plans

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/481477-blm-weighs-cutting-environmental-review-when-crafting-public-lands

By Rebecca Beitsch - 02/04/20 05:10 PM EST

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is mulling a plan that would exempt the agency from considering environmental impacts when weighing how to use large swaths of public lands.

According to a PowerPoint slide obtained by The Hill, the plan would "remove [National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)] requirements from the planning regulations." The document was first reported by Bloomberg.

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the Trump administration has proposed dramatically scaling back NEPA, including portions of the law that require consideration of climate change.

Under the changes proposed by the Trump administration, officials would need to consider effects of a project that are “reasonably foreseeable” and show “a reasonably close causal relationship.”

Environmentalists say those changes would allow the government to look the other way when projects contribute considerable amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.