Before the teeth were put into the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act or the Endangered Species Act, there was the National Environmental Policy Act, a Nixon-era policy that asserted the idea that government agencies should study the environmental effects of their major projects before beginning them. It did not stop the projects; it made the public aware of the consequences of them and often improved them.

The Bush administration is considering doing away with or restricting environmental impact studies in some cases, notably in the rewriting of national forest management plans. The proposal no doubt would achieve the stated goal of streamlining the process for completing projects, in the case of the forestry plans, by leaving the decision of whether to conduct a full NEPA review for significant cuts on public land up to forest supervisors. This would speed up the process, but could do so at the expense of the environment, in large part by limiting the public’s involvement in the process – the revisions rely less on participation from local people who would be affected and more on a top-down administrative approach that centralizes power in the federal agencies.

The White House complains that environmentalists have abused the law by filing countless nuisance lawsuits merely to slow the permitting process. This is certainly true, but it is akin to accusing industrialists of abusing the environment by creating nuisance pollution. Saying one side bends the law for its own benefit, while ignoring the fact that the other side, through political influence, does precisely the same thing, hardly advances the question. There is legal and political gridlock with environmental regulations, but just as the Clinton administration’s end-of-term conversion to tougher environmental standards properly was viewed with suspicion, so too should the current administration’s proposal to streamline for the sake of expediency.

NEPA requires agencies to say why a program that will have a major effect on the environment is needed, how the environment will be affected, whether there is an alternative to the program, and what effects the alternative would have. Practically, it is a means for the public to obtain details about a project and protest when they disagree with them. Limit NEPA and the public is limited, too.

Environmentalists, having seen this administration’s approach on issues such as climate change, energy production, arsenic in drinking water and the cleanup of coal-fired power plants, are certain that no matter what calming words the White House offers about NEPA, the result will be to weaken one of the nation’s most sweeping environmental laws. While this proposal is still open for comment, Maine residents and especially its members of Congress should urge the administration reconsider its proposal and allow the public the access to government that it has now.