Last month, the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced it would circumvent key environmental review and public participation processes to allow energy resource development and critical mineral mining on U.S. public lands. Interior argues this unprecedented decision, which overrides longstanding safeguards designed to protect public health and the environment, is necessary to respond to the President’s unjustified declaration of an “energy emergency.”
But rolling back environmental review processes under the false pretense of an “emergency” will not only sacrifice our long-term public health and environmental protections; it will also increase confusion and litigation risk for project developers and allow resources posing the greatest harms to receive the least scrutiny. Here are four issues with the…
