{"id":5650,"date":"2020-03-10T21:48:54","date_gmt":"2020-03-10T21:48:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/?p=5650"},"modified":"2020-12-01T18:10:04","modified_gmt":"2020-12-01T18:10:04","slug":"clinic-submits-comments-on-proposed-amendments-to-national-environmental-policy-act-regulations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/2020\/03\/10\/clinic-submits-comments-on-proposed-amendments-to-national-environmental-policy-act-regulations\/","title":{"rendered":"Clinic Submits Comments On Proposed Amendments To National Environmental Policy Act Regulations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>March 10, 2020 \u2013 Today, the Clinic submitted comments on behalf of itself and 15 other environmental law clinics on the Council on Environmental Quality\u2019s (CEQ) proposed update to its Regulations Implementing the Procedural Provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).\u00a0 The comments request that CEQ withdraw the proposal because it unlawfully narrows the scope of environmental review, public participation, and judicial review, is inconsistent with decades of precedent and practice, and is beyond the scope of CEQ\u2019s authority under NEPA.<\/p>\n<p>The comments explain how the following aspects of the Proposal are arbitrary and unlawful:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Implying that the consideration of cumulative impacts and indirect impacts is optional or narrowed in scope;<\/li>\n<li>Restricting the consideration of alternatives;<\/li>\n<li>Introducing per-se limitations on what counts as \u201cmajor Federal action;\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Expanding the concept of \u201cfunctional equivalence;\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Limiting the availability of judicial review of NEPA decisions;<\/li>\n<li>Making the regulation a \u201cceiling\u201d that limits other agencies\u2019 NEPA compliance; and<\/li>\n<li>Stating that agencies do not need to perform new scientific and technical research for NEPA reviews.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Clinical students Maria Dambriunas (JD \u201920), Jeremy Dang (JD \u201921), and Sarah Douglas (JD \u201921) worked on the comments under the supervision of Deputy Director Shaun Goho and Senior Staff Attorney Aladdine Joroff.<\/p>\n<p>Click below to view the comments:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/files\/2020\/03\/EELPC-CEQ-NEPA-Comments-FINAL.pdf\">Comments on Proposed Rule: Update to the Regulations Implementing the Procedural Provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act, 85 Fed. Reg. 1,684 (Jan. 10, 2020) (Docket ID No. CEQ-2019-0003)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>March 10, 2020 \u2013 Today, the Clinic submitted comments on behalf of itself and 15 other environmental law clinics on&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clinic-publications","category-news","post-archive"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}