Among other things the FAST act "eases litigation pressure on environmental reviews in several ways. It ... limits the pool of litigants to people who submitted detailed comments on the issue they...
Among other things the FAST act "eases litigation pressure on environmental reviews in several ways. It ... limits the pool of litigants to people who submitted detailed comments on the issue they are suing over when the EIS was in its draft period..."
I'm not certain how I feel about this. I don't know much about FAST or NEPA, and this whole article was just a curiosity to me. But, my takeaway from the quoted line was that there is a law which removes my standing to sue the government if I feel that their environmental impact report was lacking, UNLESS I was both aware of the report as it was being written and took the time to write a detailed comment of my own about the state of the report. Should I come across the completed report at a later time, and only then determine that the government failed in its duty to assess its own environmental impact, my natural recourse to sue has been denied to me.
I'm certain this has zero direct, tangible impact on me, personally, but I find it interesting because I can't think of a similar situation where I can only sue over an action if I was both aware of it and actively participating in it.
The main criticism of NEPA is that it results in multi-year delays of important projects. Maybe that's fine for projects you don't care about, but, for example, how do you feel about power lines?...
The main criticism of NEPA is that it results in multi-year delays of important projects.
Maybe that's fine for projects you don't care about, but, for example, how do you feel about power lines? If you think tackling climate change is urgent then we probably need more of them. Solar and wind projects are limited by delays in getting grid connections.
Allowing any organization to sue means anyone with enough money can delay a project they don't like. This is sometimes done strategically by people who don't actually care about environmental issues but want to oppose a project for other reasons.
Environmental review isn't a bad thing in principle, but the system the US ended up with happened accidentally. It seems like there should be better ways to do it?
No firm conclusions, but apparently the FAST Act of 2015 might have helped.
Among other things the FAST act "eases litigation pressure on environmental reviews in several ways. It ... limits the pool of litigants to people who submitted detailed comments on the issue they are suing over when the EIS was in its draft period..."
I'm not certain how I feel about this. I don't know much about FAST or NEPA, and this whole article was just a curiosity to me. But, my takeaway from the quoted line was that there is a law which removes my standing to sue the government if I feel that their environmental impact report was lacking, UNLESS I was both aware of the report as it was being written and took the time to write a detailed comment of my own about the state of the report. Should I come across the completed report at a later time, and only then determine that the government failed in its duty to assess its own environmental impact, my natural recourse to sue has been denied to me.
I'm certain this has zero direct, tangible impact on me, personally, but I find it interesting because I can't think of a similar situation where I can only sue over an action if I was both aware of it and actively participating in it.
The main criticism of NEPA is that it results in multi-year delays of important projects.
Maybe that's fine for projects you don't care about, but, for example, how do you feel about power lines? If you think tackling climate change is urgent then we probably need more of them. Solar and wind projects are limited by delays in getting grid connections.
Allowing any organization to sue means anyone with enough money can delay a project they don't like. This is sometimes done strategically by people who don't actually care about environmental issues but want to oppose a project for other reasons.
Environmental review isn't a bad thing in principle, but the system the US ended up with happened accidentally. It seems like there should be better ways to do it?
For a deep dive, I recommend this article: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-nepa-works