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President Trump continues to focus on streamlining government reviews for large scale infrastructure projects.  On January 24, he signed an Executive Order (EO) focused on expediting the permitting process for such projects.  In the EO, President Trump stated that “[t]oo often, infrastructure projects in the United States have been routinely and excessively delayed by agency processes and procedures.”

During the campaign, President Trump promised to remove two regulations for every new one enacted. On Monday, January 30, 2017, he made good on that promise by signing an Executive Order (EO)  requiring agencies to identify at least two existing regulations to be repealed for every one newly promulgated regulation. The EO also requires the total incremental costs of all new regulations finalized in Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 to be offset by eliminating costs associated with repealed regulations.

Recent statements from Myron Ebell, the leader of President Trump’s U.S. EPA transition team, continue the drumbeat from the new Administration on reducing environmental regulation.  Ebell recently stated that the administration’s goal will be to reduce EPA’s 15,000-person staff to about 5,000 employees.  These statements follow on statements from President Trump in mid-November in which he would like to see two old regulations eliminated for every new regulation enacted.  Additionally, there is rampant speculation that EPA programs focused on climate change and environmental justice will be eliminated, and that the EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance will be significantly overhauled.

In a Wall Street op-ed piece yesterday, House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy announced that the House intends to pass resolutions next week under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to kill two prominent Obama Administration environmental initiatives, the Interior Department’s Stream Protection Rule (which applies to coal mining) and EPA’s methane performance standards for oil and gas facilities.  Under the CRA, Congress can void agency regulations upon a bare majority vote of each chamber.  Sixty votes are therefore not needed in the Senate to kill a regulation.  Once a CRA resolution is signed by the President, the agency is prevented from adopting a substantially similar regulation.

On January 24, President Donald J. Trump signed presidential memoranda jumpstarting the stalled Keystone XL (“Keystone”) and Dakota Access (“Dakota”) pipelines.  President Obama previously rejected TransCanda Corp’s application for a permit to cross the United States-Canadian border, finding at the time that the 1,700-mile pipeline was not in the national interest.  The United States Army Corps of Engineers (“USACE”) similarly decided  last month that it would not issue an easement allowing the Dakota pipeline to cross federal land in North Dakota, opting instead to consider alternative routes to reduce environmental and cultural impacts to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

Consistent with past changes in presidential administrations, on President Trump’s Inauguration Day, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus issued a “claw back” memo describing the process of reconsidering previously finalized regulations. Similar to memos issued by President Obama and President Bush, President Trump’s claw back memo speaks to three specific groups of rules:

Troutman Sanders is pleased to announce that more than 115 of its lawyers have been selected for inclusion in the Best Lawyers in America© 2017 edition. Among this list are 11 of our Environmental and Natural Resources lawyers, including Gregory W. Blount, Randy E. Brogdon, Margaret Claiborne Campbell, William M. Droze, Douglas A. Henderson, Hollister “Holly” A. Hill, John H. Johnson, Jr., Carroll “Mack” W. McGuffey III, and Andrea L. Rimer in our Atlanta, Georgia office.; Peter S. Glaser in Washington, D.C.; and Brooks M. Smith in Richmond, VA.