Federal agencies including the Energy, Interior and Agriculture departments are starting to issue new permitting rules that trim back or eliminate procedures that have been in place for decades.

The new rules align with the Trump administration’s pledge to supercharge more construction in the US. But environmentalists say they fear the changes will lead to sloppy mistakes that slower, more thorough reviews would address.

The procedures are being issued through interim final rules, meaning they will kick in immediately, without any opportunity for public comment.

Federal agencies were directed in May to repeal their implementing rules under the National Environmental Policy Act. A federal appeals court found in November that the Council on Environmental Quality’s authorizing statute didn’t empower it to act as a regulatory agency.

The Department of Energy’s new procedures—which come largely in the form of guidance, outside of the Code of Federal Regulations—carve out a permitting exemption for any authorizations to import natural gas from any country, or to export it to countries with which the US has a free-trade agreement.

They also set a two-year deadline for environmental impact statements and call for a reliance “only on verified scientific studies that already exist and not contemplating wildly unfathomable scenarios”—a possible swipe at the Biden administration’s bid to consider the effects a project could have in another state and even well into the future.

The new rules also spurn “radical climate change analysis associated with activities outside agency jurisdiction,” directing the agency to ignore the environmental effects of separate projects.

DOE’s rules were announced on Monday but aren’t final yet. The agency is expected to print the final rule in the Federal Register imminently.

“President Trump promised to break the permitting logjam, and he is delivering,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement. “America can and will build big things again, but we must cut the red tape that has brought American energy innovation to a standstill and end this era of permitting paralysis.”

Separately, the Interior Department issued an interim NEPA final rule that is effective immediately. The revision will help expedite fossil fuels development and other projects on federal land.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in a statement called the US permitting system broken and frequently abused to prevent energy development.

Interior’s rule removes nearly all of the department’s previous NEPA regulations and relies instead mostly on guidance. However, the rule retains a provision that allows the department’s agencies to forgo environmental reviews to approve urgent projects needed to prevent harm to life, property, and certain natural resources.

The rule also retains and revises some provisions focused on categorical exclusions, including one that allows the Interior Department to rely on a categorical exclusion made by another agency.

Interior’s rule is open for public comment for 30 days after it’s posted in the Federal Register, even though it has already taken effect. The department said it may revise the rule based on public comments.

The US Department of Agriculture said Monday it would publish an interim final rule that would eliminate public comment on numerous projects, including proposed logging operations.

The rule is needed to support loggers, ranchers and rural communities who’ve been harmed by cumbersome NEPA reviews, the agency said in a news release. The USDA is publishing the rule as it prioritizes logging in national forests to comply with President Donald Trump’s March 1 executive order expanding domestic timber harvesting.

Under the new rules, draft environmental impact statements would no longer be published, and the agency wouldn’t have to publish a notice of intent to prepare an environmental assessment. Publication of a notice of intent would be “the exception rather than the norm,” and only for the most complex projects, according to the proposal.

“We have been hamstrung by overly burdensome regulations for decades,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement. “USDA is updating and modernizing NEPA so projects critical to the health of our forests and prosperity of rural America are not stymied and delayed for years.”

The USDA didn’t respond to a request for comment Monday.

The Center for Biological Diversity, which advocates for endangered species in national forests, said the rule will silence the public’s voice as timber companies target federal forests.

“These changes effectively eliminate the people’s role in decision-making about the people’s forests,” said Ted Zukoski, senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission also voted Monday to revise how it implements NEPA regulations through a new staff manual.

“We will continue to ensure our environmental reviews are legally durable so projects stand up in court and get built,” said FERC Chair Mark Christie.

The Air Force announced an interim final rule that erases its current NEPA rules and lays out a set of non-codified procedures.

Avoiding codifying the rules will let the Air Force “rapidly update these procedures in response to future court decisions,” as well as presidential directives and “the needs of the services,” the department said.

CEQ issued guidance in April broadly telling agencies to soften their permitting rules, including exempting certain kinds of projects and setting a higher bar for the kinds of projects to which the rules apply, according to a copy of the document reviewed by Bloomberg Law.

“At a time when the Trump administration is weakening environmental standards across the board, a lack of clear guidance for implementing NEPA will only result in more poorly-planned projects that will harm communities and the environment while also increasing the likelihood of litigation,” Geoffrey Nolan, a spokesman for Earthjustice, said in a statement.