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Sunday, August 30, 2020

Washington leads lawsuit against Trump Administration for illegally sabotaging bedrock environmental law


Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a federal lawsuit today against the Trump Administration for illegally gutting the nation’s bedrock environmental law. 

The changes to the rules key to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) will eliminate or reduce environmental scrutiny for a wide range of major federal decisions and will harm Washington’s most susceptible communities.

NEPA is a federal statute that governs all federal agencies and applies to most of the activities they approve or carry out. NEPA mandates detailed environmental review for all major federal actions — like power plants, roads, pipelines and large logging projects — that the federal government plans to undertake.

Former Washington Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson introduced NEPA in the Senate in 1968 when he chaired the Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. It passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress and President Richard Nixon signed it into law on Jan. 1, 1970. NEPA has been called “the Magna Carta of the nation’s environmental laws.”

NEPA requires that the federal government analyze and consider the environmental consequences of significant federal actions. It requires the federal government to “look before it leaps” by requiring decisions be informed by facts and science.

More information here



1 comment:

  1. I find this hypocritical! Just ask the people of Newport in Eastern WA, and how they are fighting against Jay Inslee for allowing a Canadian company to build the PacWest Silicon Smelter on a pristine river which would seriously impact the environment and the communities in 2 counties, by polluting the air and dumping wastewater into the river and ecosystem along with other impacts to the land! 2 such areas affected would be the Little Spokane River Aquifer Basin, and the Pend Oreille River. PLEASE, do not take my word in this. Read about it yourselves in the link below, and see how the citizens are fighting against it. Or just Google " Stop the Newport Smelter ".
    https://canss.org/2020/04/03/about-canss/

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