Protect the CEQ’s NEPA Regulations to Protect What You Love
Protecting the places we love does not happen by accident.
Americans are empowered by federal laws to protect the lakes, rivers, forests, prairies, and communities we love, but the current administration wants to take this power from us.
Don’t take away Americans’ power to protect what we love most 👉 Tell the Administration you reject the proposed removal of the Council on Environmental Quality’s (CEQ) National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations!
For the past 47 years, CEQ’s rules implementing NEPA across the federal government have meant that the United States has had clearly stated safety measures that enable people to protect what they love, encouraging public comment and scientific discourse and helping safeguard human health and the health of our landscapes and the environment. The CEQ regulations also meant that new infrastructure and development followed rules that helped to save money by assuring the government “looked before it leaped,” stopping reckless spending on harmful projects, and reducing public suspicion of misunderstood projects.
Without CEQ’s regulations interpreting NEPA, regular Americans start to lose their voice in what happens in their communities, and federal agencies lose the “rules of the road” on how to do environmental review and collaborate with stakeholders, communities, other agencies, and Tribal Nations. And when people don’t think they’re being heard because an agency suddenly fails to listen as they had before, they lose trust in the system. This breeds suspicion and lawsuits, making it much harder to build the infrastructure we need. Even worse, removing the safeguards and transparency that NEPA provides makes it that much easier for polluting industries run by billionaires to build what they want wherever they want.
The CEQ NEPA regulations are good democratic values: transparency, give-and-take, and following the science to achieve better outcomes. Removing these standards makes our country weaker and makes it much easier for poorly-planned and wasteful projects to get approved without community input.
ACT NOW
Save Americans’ Power to Protect What We Love
Comment Deadline Closes 👉 March 27th
👉 Make it Personal >> Please introduce yourself, saying who you are and where you are from, and add a note about why this issue matters to you!
I’ve never heard of NEPA or “CEQ’s NEPA Implementing Regulations.” Why should I try to save them?
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), enacted by Congress in 1970, functions as a critical climate action and environmental justice tool, requiring agencies to consider the environmental and public health impacts of proposed federal actions.
For nearly forty-seven years, CEQ’s NEPA Implementing Regulations have been instrumental in guiding dozens of federal agencies through the process of “looking before they leap” and assessing environmental, social, economic, and public health downsides to projects before approving them. In 1997, CEQ’s 25-year assessment of effectiveness found:
Overall, what we found is that NEPA is a success — it has made agencies take a hard look at the potential environmental consequences of their actions, and it has brought the public into the agency decision-making process like no other statute. In a piece of legislation barely three pages long, NEPA gave both a voice to the new national consensus to protect and improve the environment and substance to the determination articulated by many to work together to achieve that goal.
While critics of NEPA often criticize it for its “red tape,” what it actually does is require the different federal agencies that have authorization over a big project to work together to make sure they’re looking at a project in sync to understand the different impacts it will have. This type of coordination saves taxpayers millions of dollars every year by preventing bad projects from getting approved before better alternatives are considered.
- It helps the Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Forest Service, and other land management agencies to coordinate project planning and review impacts on protected species and legal rights, so as not to negatively impact community interests or resources.
- It counsels the Post Office against building eyesore buildings that are contrary to community needs and historical architecture in the area.
- It helps our border communities to understand how Customs and Border Protection uses technology, including drones, to monitor our international borders.
- It has helped the states of Minnesota and North Dakota through a contentious federally-led project diverting the Red River’s flooding in order to protect homes and businesses.
- It allows environmental review for large projects like new mines to undergo a meaningful process where all expert agencies and Tribes are able to speak to their expertise and raise their concerns.
- It shed light on the possibility of mercury being used in satellites as a cheap alternative propulsion technology, leading to an international agreement to not allow a technology that would perpetually rain toxic metals upon the planet.
- It stops unnecessary highway interchanges that cost the public in both taxes and pollution when more rational transportation investments would do a better job for cheaper.
These are unquestionably good things for society, for government transparency, for identifying and eliminating waste, and for preserving the environment that we all depend upon for our health and economic well-being. Without this level of transparency and coordination, federal agency approval of large projects will likely be clouded in community suspicion and much more likely to attract NEPA litigation under the NEPA statute.
More Ways to Make A Public Comment
We’ve provided some sample text you can use to make your comment, but personalization always helps. The agency is required to read and respond to your comment, so tell them who you are and why you care. You can submit a public comment in the following ways (unfortunately, there is not an option for emailing your comment):
- Federal Register: Go to https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/CEQ-2025-0002-0001 and enter your comment into the appropriate box. You can also upload additional documents or files if needed. Be sure to click the “Submit Comment” button at the bottom of the form.
- By Mail (or Fax!): If you prefer to send a comment by mail, be sure to include the agency name, “Council on Environmental Quality,” and docket number, CEQ-2025-0002, to ensure your comment is properly considered. Comments must be postmarked by the submission deadline.
- Mail to: Council on Environmental Quality, 730 Jackson Place NW, Washington, DC 20503
- Fax: 202-456-6546