In his Jan. 6 op-ed, (“Obscure law ruining morning commute may get overdue overhaul”) Jim Carter offers three cheers for the Trump administration’s attack on the National Environmental Policy Act. He’s wildly off base. Florida can’t afford the devastating consequences for neighborhoods and ecosystems that the Trump administration’s plan would wreak.
Signed into law by President Nixon, the National Environmental Policy Act is the United States’ environmental charter.
Contrary to Carter’s fact-free assertions linking traffic jams to NEPA, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of infrastructure projects are already exempted from environmental review under NEPA, and the few projects receiving review can still move forward when an agency determines that the societal benefits outweigh the environmental impacts.
Make no mistake about this: opponents of the safeguards this environmental law provides use red herrings like this to confuse the public about what is really at stake.
The bottom line: no, that timesaving, headache-easing highway-widening project you’re hoping for isn’t delayed because of a federal environmental review. Why, then, do NEPA’s opponents regularly try to link its evisceration to popular ideas like lowering traffic congestion and repairing bridges? Simply put, they’re hoping to mask a darker agenda of eliminating basic environmental safeguards and public participation for the sake of a few big polluting corporations’ profits.
NEPA saves taxpayers’ money. Imagine if we’d had it in place when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started channelizing the Kissimmee River six decades ago. Before NEPA, the Corps didn’t have to conduct environmental impact studies before transforming a 100-mile-long river into a 30-foot deep canal. The project’s environmental damage later forced Congress to authorize a restoration project costing taxpayers more than $1 billion. Under NEPA, the Corps would have been required to consider possible cost-saving alternatives, producing better decisions and potentially saving us hundreds of millions of dollars.
NEPA can help to protect our coastlines. In 1978, Congress created a shortcut for oil drilling companies seeking to skirt NEPA’s environmental safeguards in the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. The shortcut “expressly singled out the Gulf of Mexico for less rigorous oversight under NEPA,” according to a report of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
We know what happened next. It’s not a leap to suggest that the Trump administration’s dismantling of NEPA’s protections will lead to more preventable disasters. We certainly can’t afford the risk.
Most importantly, NEPA serves as a critical line of defense for vulnerable communities who lack the means to fight back against dangerous, polluting projects. It requires agencies to notify the public and consider public input before making decisions. Without these mandatory comment periods, communities would be left in the dark, unable to weigh in on critical decisions affecting their livelihoods.
The construction of another highway — I-4 in Orlando — illustrates what lacking these protections means for real people. Lacking the ability to use NEPA’s public comment period to speak out, the predominantly black and brown citizens of Orlando’s Parramore neighborhood watched as highway construction severed their connection to the city’s wealthier business district. Air quality worsened to the point where it became hard to breathe. Today, communities like Parramore across the country are using NEPA’s protections to ensure that their neighborhoods have a healthy future.
NEPA isn’t slowing down projects. It’s saving us money, protecting our natural resources, and ensuring that we all have a say in the decisions affecting our air and water. Now is the time to protect this bedrock environmental law.
Tania Galloni of Miami is the Managing Attorney for Earthjustice’s Florida regional office.
