The Atchafalaya Basin, the largest wetland and swamp in the United States, on August 21, 2019 in Charenton, Louisiana.Drew Angerer/Getty
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Environmentalists were outraged on Wednesday after the Trump administration moved to fast-track fossil fuel projects through the permitting process, with activists describing it as an attempt to sidestep environmental laws that could harm waterways and wetlands.
In recent days, the US Army Corps of Engineers created a new designation of “emergency” permits for infrastructure projects, citing a Day One executive order signed by Donald Trump which claims the US is facing an “energy emergency” and must “unleash” already booming energy production.
“Agencies are directed to use, to the fullest extent possible and consistent with applicable law, the emergency Army Corps permitting provisions to facilitate the nation’s energy supply,” the order said.
“We don’t understand why a housing development… would qualify as an emergency.”
The move from the Army Corps could allow officials to rubber-stamp 688 pending applications for permits—including more than 100 for pipeline projects and gas-fired power plants—which are necessary for any entity aiming to build infrastructure in navigable US waters or wetlands, or discharge pollutants into them. Environmental reviews could be circumvented, and public comment periods could be skipped over.
“The Trump’s administration’s push for an emergency review of wetland destruction permits is a blatant attempt to sidestep environmental laws and fast-track fossil fuel projects at the expense of our wetland and our communities,” Matt Rota, senior policy director for the Louisiana-based environmental group Healthy Gulf, said on a Wednesday press call. “This emergency proposal will increase climate change, destroy wetlands and leave people even more vulnerable in its wake.”
Reached for comment, Doug Garman, a spokesperson for the US Army Corps of Engineers, said the agency “is in the process of reviewing active permit applications relative to the executive order.”
Despite Trump’s claims that the nation is facing an “energy emergency”—part of a campaign promise to boost planet-heating fossil fuel production—the US is currently extracting more oil and gas than any other country in world history, and levels are still increasing.
“The Trump administration appears to be gearing up to use false claims of an ‘energy emergency’ to fast-track and rubber-stamp federal approvals for projects across the country that will be destructive to America’s wetlands, waterways and communities,” said David Bookbinder, law and policy director at the green non-profit Environmental Integrity Project.
The Army Corps permitting process is meant to examine opportunities to minimize threats infrastructure projects pose to wetlands. Fast-tracking permits through that process could have disastrous impacts for the climate, activists say. Fossil fuels are responsible for the vast majority of global heating, and the wetlands being threatened also play a critical role as an absorber of greenhouse gases.
Because they can slow down waves and absorb rain, wetlands can also protect communities from storms, Rota said. “These wetlands are vital to the survival of coastal Louisiana, as each acre of wetland can absorb a million gallons of water and act as a buffer between communities and the storm surge caused by hurricanes that continue to increase in intensity due to climate change,” he said.
Among the projects that now receiving priority treatment from the Army Corps are oil and gas pipelines set to be built in the wetlands of Louisiana and Texas. Others are related to the controversial Enbridge Line 5 pipeline which crosses Wisconsin and Michigan, and for which developers want to construct a tunnel to bury the pipeline below two of the Great Lakes.
“If approved, this project will risk our fresh water and the millions of people who rely on it for drinking, jobs and tourism in exchange for a foreign oil company’s profits,” said Sean McBrearty, Michigan director of the environmental non-profit Clean Water Action, about the Line 5 proposal on Wednesday’s call.
And though the Army Corps cites Trump’s “energy emergency” order as the impetus for the move, not all of the projects on the “emergency” list relate to energy. One is a gold mine proposed in an Idaho national forest, and another is a plan proposed by the energy giant Chevron to build a housing subdivision on a former oil field.
“We don’t understand why a housing development qualifies either as an energy project, or certainly why it would qualify as an emergency,” said Bookbinder.
The move will likely be subject to court challenges. The Army Corps is permitted to curtail the National Environmental Policy Act—which requires federal agencies to analyze the environmental effects of major projects—in true emergency situations wherein officials have identified an “unacceptable hazard to life, a significant loss of property, or an immediate, unforeseen, and significant economic hardship.”
“We will find out the extent to which that is legal at some point, I’m sure in the not too distant future,” said Bookbinder.
