ABOVE THE WATER LINE

With disclosure and public engagement, the NEPA review process can lead, and has led, to better outcomes – saving lives, money, time and natural and cultural resources. Good examples in Georgia include the Atlantic Station project in Atlanta and the Savannah Harbor deepening. In other cases, the NEPA process can slow and even stop projects that are harmful to taxpayers and the environment. Along with local citizens, my environmental colleagues and I fought a proposed dam and reservoir on a tributary to the Chattahoochee River upstream of Lake Lanier for more than fifteen years.

By Sally Bethea Sally Bethea is the retired executive director of Chattahoochee Riverkeeper and current board president of Chattahoochee Parks Conservancy whose mission is to build a community of support for the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area.

In what has been called the “single biggest giveaway to polluters in forty years,” President Trump – aided and abetted by corporate lobbyists and lawyers – has proposed to eviscerate NEPA: the common-sense, mainstream law that empowers citizens and demands government accountability. In many cases, NEPA gives citizens their

Described by its proponents as a water supply reservoir, the real purpose of this project was plainly to serve as an amenity for a massive new development on thousands of acres of timberland in Hall County; early boosters claimed the development would be comparable to Peachtree City. With support from high state officials, this real estate project posing as public infrastructure would have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and significantly impacted the Chattahoochee River watershed.

The environmental impact statement required by NEPA revealed many things about this reservoir project, including the critical fact that there was no need for additional water supply in the area in the near future; population projections had been wildly exaggerated. Even assuming a need for more water supply, a far less expensive and less environmentally-harmful alternative exists just downstream: increasing the storage capacity in Lake Lanier. Thanks to NEPA – Richard Nixon’s common-sense law – the facts about this boondoggle were disclosed, so better decisions could be made to safeguard people, their communities and the environment. The reservoir is no longer being actively promoted.

Can the environmental reviews required by NEPA take a long time, as the Trump Administration claims?

Yes, they can, in large part because the federal review agencies have been so defunded – primarily by Republican lawmakers – that they do not have enough staff to rapidly process the oftencomplex proposals. Delays also occur when the advocates of power plants, highways and other major projects fail to submit complete, factual applications, lengthening the process; I have personally seen this happen many times.

One of the most consequential outcomes of the Trump Administration’s proposed revisions to NEPA would be the elimination of requirements to consider the cumulative impacts that a proposed project would have on climate change: the long-term health of our planet. And, in an effort to silence concerned citizens, all comments that are not specific and technical in nature would be rejected under the proposal.

I hope, and believe, that this attack on public health, safety and welfare will be reversed in court, thanks to groups like Southern Environmental Law Center, which plans to sue the Trump Administration on behalf of a dozen and a half organizations that work to protect our water, air, forests, coastal resources, wildlife and historic resources. Of course, if the current Administration is defeated in November, a new president could overturn the NEPA rollbacks, along with other environmental rollbacks approved in recent years.

The most appalling aspect of this environmental assault on every American is that Trump and his Big Corporations have actually tried this maneuver, and so many others, in the first place. Their boldness has no limits.