Last week the House Resources Committee formed a task force to investigate the implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Critics say the Bush Administration has been inconsistent in its enforcement of the nation's oldest environmental law, streamlining the NEPA process to assist industrial development while strictly enforcing the law when, for example, landless Native American tribes seek to obtain land trusts.
Designed to protect the nation's natural resources and support public participation in government, NEPA requires federal officials to make a careful assessment of potential environmental damage for a proposed project, and offer alternatives when necessary.
But an attorney specializing in federal Indian law, speaking to BushGreenwatch under the condition of anonymity, says that "Because the Bush Administration is hostile to the idea of Native Americans gaining more land, they have been hiding behind the NEPA process."
Landless tribes must pay for their own Environmental Assessments (EA), which contributes to a process the attorney called, "slow-rolling." This occurs when the EA is not paid for by the government-- thus decreasing the urgency of the project, and lengthening the review process.
After a year or more a tribe is often told it must go back and conduct an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), a costly, time-consuming process that it was not instructed to perform at the outset of its application. These barriers have made efforts to attain land trusts very difficult for landless tribes.
John Dossett, general counsel of the National Congress of American Indians, told BushGreenwatch that an EIS can cost upwards of $800,000, and require an extensive assessment of alternatives to the establishment of a reservation. "Completing an EIS can be very difficult for a tribe. It increases the cost, and demands a list of alternatives that just aren't feasible," Dossett said. "Basically the EIS asks tribes to consider an alternative to living on a reservation-- and NEPA is not meant to do that."
While the federal government has used NEPA to hinder Native American efforts to obtain land, the law has been used the opposite way to benefit industry.
Environmental lawyer Douglas Kendall, executive director of the Community Rights Counsel and author of the book, "Redefining Federalism," says the gas industry has been particularly skillful in using NEPA to its advantage.
"In the context of developing coal bed methane, industry has been very aggressive in using old, irrelevant NEPA studies to get around the full NEPA process of natural gas extraction," said Kendall. "It is very disturbing that the Interior Department appears to be selectively using NEPA to frustrate landless tribes and at the same time accommodate efforts to extract resources."
During its first two years the Bush Administration was involved in 172 NEPA cases. In 94 of them, the Administration presented arguments aimed at weakening the application of NEPA. [1]
Meanwhile, Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) chair of the house committee studying NEPA, has repeatedly criticized NEPA as an overly burdensome process for industry.
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SOURCES:
[1] "Weakening the National Environmental Policy Act," Defenders of Wildlife & Vermont Law School.
