National Environmental Policy Act Archives

Gulf of Maine may be impacted by Trump’s offshore oil and gas drilling expansion

May 8, 2025 — As part of the Trump’s administration’s effort to expand fossil fuel production in the United States, the Department of the Interior announced recently that it would accelerate the permitting process for a range of energy sources and seek new oil and gas lease sales in offshore waters, including in the Gulf of Maine.

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said the permitting changes — which speed up review under the National Environmental Policy and Endangered Species Acts, among others — would cut what is often a multi-year review process down to several weeks.

Environmental groups and Maine lawmakers decried the moves while oil and gas industry representatives celebrated them. Days later, a group of New England Senators, including Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King, introduced legislation to ban offshore drilling in waters throughout New England.

“The waters off Maine’s coast provide a healthy ecosystem for our fisheries and are an integral part of our tourism industry, supporting thousands of jobs and generating billions of dollars in revenue each year,” said Collins in a statement. “Offshore drilling along the coast could impact Mainers of all walks of life for generations.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Federal judge denies tribal claims in suit against federal fisheries managers

March 19, 2025 — A federal district court judge has denied a claim made by two regional tribal consortiums in Western Alaska that fisheries management in the Bering Sea violated environmental law.

United States District Court Judge Sharon Gleason denied the claims made by the Association of Village Council Presidents (AVCP) and Tanana Chiefs Conference (TCC) in a judgement on March 11.

The Association of Village Council Presidents – the regional tribal consortium for the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta – and the Tanana Chiefs Conference – the regional tribal consortium for much of western Interior Alaska – had sued the National Marine Fisheries Service, which manages fisheries in the federal waters outside of Alaska. Two fisheries trade organizations with ties to the pollock industry – the At-Sea Processors Association and United Catcher Boats – joined in defense of federal fisheries managers.

The tribal organizations, along with the City of Bethel, claimed that recent groundfish harvest management in the Bering Sea wasn’t properly taking into account major changes to the ocean ecosystem, including fisheries collapses on the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, and thus violated federal law under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Read the full article at KYUK

Ninth Circuit unsure of court’s efficacy in Alaska killer whale conservation case

July 19, 2024 — The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is weighing how effective its opinion will be in a lawsuit over how Chinook salmon fishing affects Southern Resident killer whales — and judges on Thursday wondered whether the effort would be rendered moot by a pending government agency action.

The Wild Fish Conservancy sued the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2020, accusing the agency of violating the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act in its 2019 Southeast Alaska Biological Opinion and incidental take statement by bypassing public notice and opportunity to comment on the actions.

Alaska and the Alaska Trollers Association, a representative of the commercial fishing industry in the state, intervened as codefendants.

Chinook salmon are the primary food source for Southern Resident killer whales, which were placed on the endangered species list in 2005.

U.S. District Judge Richard Jones remanded the biological opinion and vacated the portions of it that authorized commercial harvest of Chinook salmon during winter and summer seasons. The ruling would have prevented Southeast Alaskan trollers from fishing for Chinook salmon, but the Ninth Circuit issued a stay, allowing commercial fisheries to continue harvest while the parties appealed.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

NMFS announces draft EIS available for deep-set buoy gear authorization, Amendment 6 to the HMS FMP

August 23, 2021 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

NOAA Fisheries announces the release of a draft environmental impact statement (EIS), in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, which includes an analysis of the potential short- and long-term impacts of the proposed action to authorize fishing with deep-set buoy gear (DSBG) in federal waters off the U.S. West Coast, on the human (biological, physical, social, and economic) environment.

Please see the public notice on the Council’s website for a link to the Draft EIS and additional details.

For further information, please contact:

NOAA Fisheries: Amber Rhodes at (562) 477-8342, Amber.Rhodes@noaa.gov
Pacific Council staff officer Dr. Kit Dahl at 503-820-2422; toll-free 1-866-806-7204.

D.C. Circuit Affirms that Offshore Wind Lease Does Not Trigger NEPA Review

June 4, 2021 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) does not need to conduct full environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when granting an offshore wind farm lease, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed. The decision followed a lawsuit by commercial fishing organizations and seaside municipalities who claimed that BOEM violated NEPA and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) when it auctioned an offshore lease to Equinor (formerly Statoil) without performing an environmental review of the anticipated windfarm project. The decision puts to rest the question of whether a mere lease sale may trigger extensive environmental review under NEPA, potentially streamlining the initial lease acquisition process, but also requiring the investment of significant funds before developers have cleared environmental review.

In Fisheries Survival Fund, et al. v. Sally Jewell, et al.,¹ plaintiffs challenged BOEM’s issuance of the lease, arguing that it violated NEPA because it failed to analyze the environmental impacts of constructing and operating a wind energy facility. Leases for offshore energy projects proceed under different processes depending on whether BOEM or the developer proposes an area for lease. Either way, BOEM must consult with state task forces, other state and local representatives, and with representatives of Indian Tribes whose interests may be affected. Before issuing a lease, BOEM follows a four-step process, issuing a Call for Information and Nominations, completing the Area Identification process, publishing a Proposed Sale Notice, and publishing a Final Sale Notice.

Here, BOEM published an environmental assessment at the same time it published the Proposed Sale Notice for the wind energy lease at issue. The environmental assessment found that the reasonably foreseeable impacts of the lease sale would not significantly impact the environment. Plaintiffs argued that that more extensive environmental review was required, not just of the lease itself but of the full impacts of the anticipated wind farm, alleging that BOEM violated NEPA by failing to perform this more extensive review. BOEM maintained throughout the litigation that additional analysis and environmental review under NEPA was not required until Equinor conducted a site assessment and proposed a construction and operations plan for the wind energy facility.

Read the full story at The National Law Review

Nation’s Fishery Councils Recommend Ways to Support American Seafood, Improve Coordination with NMFS

September 30, 2020 — An executive order, changes to National Environmental Policy Act measures, guidance related to overfishing and a National Seafood Council were among several issues fishery leaders from around the country discussed last week. The biannual meeting of the Council Coordination Committee was held virtually, but hosted by Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council.

Leaders from all eight regional councils had the opportunity to talk with National Marine Fisheries Service managers during the open public meeting.

Read the full story at Seafood News

ANDY SABIN: The conservative case against developing Alaska’s Pebble Mine

August 28, 2020 — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this week warned that the proposed Pebble project — a vast gold and copper mine near the headwaters of Alaska’s Bristol Bay — was impossible to build without causing significant damage to the region’s pristine waters and salmon fishery.

The Corps stopped short of halting the mine but found the developer, the Pebble Limited Partnership, was unlikely to meet the level of mitigation that would be required under the Clean Water Act to offset the impact on wetlands.

The Trump administration has now done what the previous administration would not — it gave the proposed Pebble project full consideration under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). While the previous administration pre-judged the project with an unprecedented preemptive veto, the Trump U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and all cooperating agencies have given it a full review.

It is time for President Donald Trump to be the decider. Given an already strong conservation record, President Trump should instruct his agencies to declare the Pebble project unworkable.

I am a miner and a fisherman. I am also a dedicated conservationist who believes that we have a duty as conservatives to leave this great land better than we found it. I am also a staunch supporter of the president and his policies.

Read the full story at The Hill

Cape May Fishermen, Processor Sues NOAA’s At-Sea Monitoring Rule

February 21, 2020 — Cause of Action Institute, on behalf of six trawlers and a processor based in Cape May, NJ, filed a lawsuit yesterday against Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and NOAA Fisheries to block a new rule forcing them to pay for third-party “at-sea monitors.”

The plaintiffs claim that NOAA Fisheries and the Department of Commerce violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) when designing and implementing the final rule.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Push to scale back US environmental law draws ire at hearing

February 13, 2020 — The Trump administration on Tuesday hosted the first of two hearings on its proposal to speed energy and other projects by rolling back a landmark environmental law. Opponents from Western states argued the long-term benefits of keeping the environmental reviews.

Among other changes, President Donald Trump wants to limit public reviews of projects — a process that’s enshrined in the National Environmental Policy Act signed in 1970 by President Richard Nixon. The administration also wants to allow project sponsors to participate at an early stage of drafting federal environmental impact statements.

Dozens of environmental and tribal activists testified at the Denver hearing of the president’s Council on Environmental Quality.

The act “is not just a tool to reduce impacts to the environment,” said Gwen Lachelt. a commissioner in Colorado’s La Plata County. “It’s a basic tool of democracy.”

Representatives of oil and gas groups countered that multiyear environmental reviews of pipelines, coal mines and renewable energy projects kill jobs. increase costs and often outlast a project’s economic feasibility.

That proposed changes chagrined Jeannie Crumly, a rancher from Nebraska who has fought construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline for more than a decade. President Barack Obama canceled the project, only to have it resurrected by Trump.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

NEPA climate overhaul could unleash energy projects

January 8, 2020 — The White House is poised to exclude climate considerations from its controversial rewrite of rules surrounding the nation’s core environmental law.

The Council on Environmental Quality’s proposed changes to National Environmental Policy Act guidelines will likely emerge this week.

NEPA, signed into law by President Nixon, gives communities input and allows them to challenge federal decisions on projects like pipelines, highways and bridges. And it requires federal regulators to analyze a host of impacts.

The Trump plan is expected to “simplify the definition of environmental ‘effects’ and clarify that effects must be reasonably foreseeable and require a reasonably close causal relationship to the proposed action,” according to a draft White House memo obtained by E&E News.

In other words, the government could only study the impacts tied directly to a project — not how a project would add to a larger problem, something environmentalists have been clamoring for.

“No one pipeline causes climate change, so that wouldn’t be considered a reasonably close causal relationship,” explained Christy Goldfuss, a senior vice president at the left-leaning Center for American Progress (CAP). “I suspect that’s the intent.”

Read the full story at E&E News