House Hacks Away at Environmental Regulations
BY COLE STANGLER
This week, the House of Representatives passed three climate-related bills designed to target and weaken federal environmental regulations: Together they speed up the permitting process for cross-country natural gas pipelines and for drilling on federal lands; impose fines on those wanting to protest the government’s decisions to grant drilling permits; and undercut pending federal fracking regulations.
Each of the bills’ Republican sponsors have painted their legislative initiative as necessary fixes to the Obama administration’s regulatory overreach—a claim that’s heavily disputed by Athan Manuel, the Sierra Club’s director of lands protection.
“These bills are all meant to fix problems that don’t exist,” Manuel says. “There’s this perception that the Obama administration is holding back the oil and gas industry, when it’s not true. They get plenty of permits. … The oil industry’s making lots of money. And they don’t have a lack of access to areas to drill.”
The largest and most sweeping of the legislative efforts, the Federal Lands Jobs and Energy Security Act, which passed on Wednesday by a 228-192 margin, gives the Department of the Interior sixty days to approve applications from oil and gas companies to drill on federal land. If the DOI doesn’t issue a decision in that time, the application is automatically approved. The bill, introduced by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Col.), also imposes a $5,000 fee on anybody who files an administrative appeal to protest the federal government’s decision to issue a permit or not—a practice that citizens, consumer advocacy groups and environmental activists often take advantage of.
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