Update of Procedures for Implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)

The Center for Biological Diversity (the "Center") submits the attached comments in response to the Environmental Protection Agency's ("EPA") proposed rule amending the agency's procedures for implementing the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 ("NEPA"). The Center is a national, non-profit conservation organization with more than 1.8 million members and online activists committed to protecting human health, the natural environment, and imperiled species from the worsening climate emergency, the extinction crisis, and environmental degradation. Safeguarding both natural resources and public participation in the federal environmental policymaking process are integral to that mission. There are many ways to improve environmental reviews and permitting efficiency while preserving NEPA's core safeguards of informed decision-making, scientific integrity, and public accountability. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, this proposed rule fails spectacularly to do any of them. EPA further fails to explain why dismantling these longstanding safeguards is necessary to improve environmental review or permitting efficiency. The proposed rule repeatedly invokes the need to streamline agency decision-making, yet fails to demonstrate that reducing scientific rigor, narrowing environmental review, or limiting public participation will produce better or more efficient outcomes. Rather than ensuring agencies have sufficient staff and resources to conduct thorough and timely reviews, the proposed rule would dismantle longstanding NEPA safeguards by narrowing the scope of environmental reviews, expanding the use of categorical exclusions, restricting meaningful public participation and limiting transparency. Taken together, the proposed rule erodes the core environmental protections that have defined NEPA for more than 50 years and will ultimately tip the scales toward a process increasingly driven by administrative expediency and the interests of polluting industries. For these reasons, outlined in more detail in the attached document, we urge the EPA to immediately rescind the proposed rule.