The Trump Administration has made quick work dismantling aspects of the federal government it calls wasteful or inefficient. Caught up in those cuts is the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the federal government to take environmental impacts into consideration.

Robert Chaney, reporter for the Mountain Journal and Montana Free Press, sat down with All Things Considered Host Elinor Smith to break down the changes made to NEPA and what they could mean for Montana.

Elinor Smith: Robert, thank you so much for being here today,

Robert Chaney: Elinor, thank you.

Elinor Smith: Of course. So to start us off, the National Environmental Policy Act, which is commonly referred to as NEPA, is the nation’s foundational environmental policy for environmental protections. I know environmental policy can be complicated though. Can you walk us through what NEPA is and how it works?

Robert Chaney: So, NEPA is the very short rule that tries to link all of the federal agencies that have impact on our human environment onto the same page of rules. The problem is all of these agencies — the Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Department of Transportation, law enforcement agencies, anybody who has to touch the human environment by digging it up, logging it, managing wildlife on it, doing a, a law enforcement investigation in the middle of it — needs to know what could happen to other things that people like or value on that landscape. And NEPA tells these agencies to come up with ways to show what they’re gonna do, what the impacts of that action would be, and give the public a chance to weigh in and say, um, ‘did you think about this? Or is it going to affect that?’

But there’s a second level. It’s kind of like Russian nesting dolls. NEPA tells these agencies to come up with all these things, but it doesn’t give them really specific rules for how to do it. So, it created another thing inside it called the Council on Environmental Quality, and it has the job of helping the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management and the FBI and everybody else figure out how to make their rules, and also figure out how to make their rules talk to other agencies’ rules.

Last month, the Trump Administration proposed a interim final rule, which is an expedited process that essentially takes away the Council of Environmental Quality’s authority to create those connections between agencies.

Elinor Smith: So the Council of Environmental Quality essentially bands these agencies together and makes sure that their rules are consistent across the board. What could some impacts be of throwing these regulations back to the agency?

Robert Chaney: So, if you don’t have somebody in the middle, kind of air traffic controlling all this, then each of these agencies comes up with their own rules that may or may not pay attention to what a sister agency also thinks is important.

So, for example, if you’ve got a place where Forest Service land and BLM land are side by side — for example, in the Blackfoot River drainage just north of Missoula — and you’ve got Forest service rules here and BLM rules there, and you can’t really see the, you know, there’s no dotted line on the dirt, uh, when you’re walking through it. Then what are the rules for upgrading the road into Gold Creek?

The CEQ and NEPA were designed to make sure the Forest Service and the BLM thought about these things when one or the other of them was proposing something that might ripple into the other guy’s territory.

Elinor Smith: So these changes to NEPA are proposed changes. Can you run us through a timeline of when these changes might be enacted and how Montanans can voice their opinion?

Robert Chaney: So, these are proposed under what’s called an interim final rule, which is an expedited process. They were proposed in February. They will be done with a comment period on March 27th and will essentially go into effect on April 11th. There isn’t any real strong way for an outside litigant or agency to say, ‘stop this train.’

Elinor Smith: Well, Robert, thank you so much for being here today. I hope you’ll come back as this situation evolves and keep listeners updated on what they need to know regarding NEPA.

Robert Chaney: This is gonna be an ongoing thing. Your chance to comment on it, like I said, ends on March 27th. Look up the Federal Register, NEPA Council on Environmental Quality, and you should go right to the website.

Elinor Smith: Amazing. Robert, thank you so much for being here today.

Robert Chaney: My pleasure. Thank you.