Julia Brownley Raises Concerns That Oil Industry Could 'Exploit' New Trump Directive

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During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing, Rep. Julia Brownley (D-CA) questioned witnesses about the impact of new permitting regulations and their impacts on tribal lands.

Transcript

00:00Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from California, Ms. Brownlee, for five minutes.

00:04Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Morgan, thanks for being here. You explained earlier the Interior

00:11Department's new alternative arrangements under NEBA and the impact on tribal lands.

00:18I wanted you to expound on that and talk about other impacts like oil and gas and other impacts.

00:25Yes, thank you. You know, when I worked for the Bureau of Land Management in Wyoming,

00:33it was an interesting experience to work for a BLM field office where everyone knew the members of

00:39the community, right? They were in touch with those folks. And the NEPA process gave the neighbors an

00:45opportunity to weigh in on activities that were going to occur to them, whether those were oil and

00:51gas activities, whether those were mineral exploration, whether those were activities

00:55that would affect grazing allotments that they had. And that is absolutely critical that we build in

01:02this opportunity for public comment. And it is profoundly concerning that the Interior Department

01:09is taking those opportunities away, not just as a matter of fairness to communities and stakeholders

01:15and interested parties, but also as a matter of permitting efficiency. Because DOI is inserting and injecting

01:27a lot of litigation risk in the way that it is dealing communities out of the process.

01:32Do you think the oil and gas industry will exploit this new directive?

01:38A hundred percent. I think that there are communities whose activities necessarily impact health and the

01:46environment, who will welcome this opportunity to shortchange process. I think that there are others who are

01:54genuinely concerned about the lack of stability that Interior, the instability that Interior is creating in its process,

02:02who want to hear, as the gentleman here with me today, want to hear from communities and are finding

02:09that the playing field is incredibly unstable as a result of actions by DOI.

02:16Thank you. I wanted to talk a minute about the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition versus

02:23Eagle County, which limits the scope of environmental reviews and makes it harder for communities

02:28to seek judicial review. Mr. Murray, in your view, how does that decision undermine the core benefits of NEPA?

02:35I think we have to, we're going to have to wait and see how Seven Counties affects NEPA overall.

02:44And I think that there are parts of the decision that are somewhat ambiguous. I mean, Justice Kavanaugh says in his

02:52writing for the court says, you know, we understand that there are downstream effects like water pollution

03:02that may occur remote in time and place. And those things need to be taken account of, right? And that is important

03:10and it is categorically true. What we have to be careful is that the decisions focus on the project itself

03:18and its limiting of foreseeability doesn't overly constrain the work and the NEPA analysis such that we

03:27lose important information about, for instance, cumulative effects. When the Forest Service is

03:34looking at a project that could affect a riparian area, right? It looks not just at that project,

03:40but it scopes out its future projects. So it has a good sense of what's coming. And that makes sense. And I

03:46think Justice Kavanaugh would agree that that makes sense. But we need to make sure that the agencies

03:51understand that that sort of look is appropriate. Thank you for that. And last question

03:58is, if this committee were truly interested in serious good faith conversation about improving the permitting

04:06process, what reforms would you recommend? Yeah, first of all, I'm not saying and I want to be clear on this,

04:12that we need a million more bureaucrats. What we need is a trained and professional civil service with

04:19expertise. And that goes for the Forest Service, no less than our warfighters, the Marine Corps,

04:25or our public health professionals. And we are losing those people. And that is a big problem. We need to

04:32leverage technology. We all agree on that. Permitting can be speeded up. There are ways to do e-permitting.

04:39There are ways to use geographical information systems, geospatial tools to make good decisions

04:45with fewer people, if you have the people with the expertise who know how to interpret that. And so far

04:53as communities are concerned, we know that there are good tools for engaging communities early and often. And

04:59responsible project proponents do that work. And they utilize those tools. Some of those tools used to be

05:06available on government websites and are no longer there. And if we want to expedite permitting,

05:13we need to make information available to communities. Sorry, I went along. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

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