This story was originally published by High Country News.

Last fall, construction on the Velvet-Wood uranium mine broke ground in the sandstone deposits of San Juan County, Utah. It’s the first mine that the federal government has permitted under a new expedited “emergency” process that allows projects to go through the environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in just 14 days, a process that previously took months or even years. Tribal governments were given just seven days to offer feedback, and the standard public comment period was eliminated owing to the project’s “emergency” status. In the past, both tribes and the public had at least 30 days to give input.

The mine is located in an area already deeply scarred by uranium mining, where the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe has long opposed the White Mesa Uranium Mill, which abuts the community. During the weeklong tribal comment period, six nations shared their concerns with the Bureau of Land Management, citing the expedited process and possible water contamination from the mine’s activities. No changes were made to the project, however.

Earlier this year, in addition to mandating expedited emergency processes for NEPA reviews, the Trump administration finalized its proposed elimination of standards — including public comment periods — for how federal agencies carry out NEPA environmental reviews for large-scale projects on public lands. The changes came without consultation with tribal nations and despite their strong opposition. 

“The announce-and-defend method of developing federal Indian policy is an inappropriate, paternalistic, unjustified, and historically inefficient method of decision-making,” the National Congress of American Indians and National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers said in a joint letter. Eliminating previous standards “ignores federal trust and treaty responsibilities, impinges on roles and sovereignty of Tribal Nations, and flouts longstanding policy and practice by failing to consult with Tribal Nations.” 

The federal government is legally required to consult with tribal nations on rules and policies that affect them, but so far the Trump administration has regularly bypassed consultation requirements or sped through them in order to accomplish its “energy dominance” agenda on tribal nations’ ancestral lands. Altogether, the changes represent a shift in the way that tribal nations — and the public — are able to have a say in how land in the Western U.S. is managed.

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From the start, agencies under Trump have changed or revoked rules and policies to prioritize extraction, citing the so-called energy “emergency.” The BLM and the Forest Service rescinded the Public Lands Rule and the Roadless Rule without tribal consultation, even though both decisions have major implications for tribes’ ability to protect natural and cultural resources on public land. Meanwhile, the administration is seeking to “streamline” Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, one of the most useful tools tribal nations have for ensuring government consultation. Changes are also proposed for Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, which allows tribes to review the impacts of extractive projects within reservation borders before a federal agency permits the project. 

“It’s all predicated on something that isn’t true: We don’t have an energy emergency,” said Gussie Lord, managing attorney of Earthjustice’s tribal partnerships programs. Chipping away at public input and tribal consultation will only exacerbate issues that tribal nations face, Lord said. “A lot of their resources, their cultural and environmental resources often are one and the same. The existing laws and regulations that we have are already insufficiently protective of tribal rights and resources.”

The administration’s changes to the NEPA review process took effect immediately last year, also without consultation. Under the Biden administration, the Council on Environmental Quality spent 3½ years updating the implementation regulations by consulting with tribal nations and the public, incorporating provisions requiring agencies to consider climate change and environmental justice impacts when reviewing projects. NEPA applies to all federal agencies, meaning that each agency has to come up with its own implementation guidelines. Tribes and experts worry that, under the new guidelines, agencies may not be compelled to work with tribes.   

“It’s all predicated on something that isn’t true: We don’t have an energy emergency.”

According to University of Arizona professor of law Justin Pidot, who previously served as general counsel for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the resulting uncertainty could have serious consequences. “One is the agencies don’t know how to work together. The second is that there’s litigation risk. The third is that project sponsors don’t know what they’re supposed to do,” Pidot said. The removal of those standards “creates lots of complexity for the public, for tribes, for states, for local governments, for nonprofits.”

Under the Interior Department’s new interim set of standards, for example, reviews for something like a mining project will take 28 days. When the “emergency” declaration is added, it could take just 14 days, as it did with the Velvet-Wood mine. Past reviews, rather than a few weeks, could take up to four years. “It substantially limits the degree of information flowing from the federal government to the public about big projects, including to tribes,” Pidot said. “What is surprising about this particular decision of theirs is that having a common set of rules makes sense for everyone.”

In comments to the Council on Environmental Quality about the elimination of the NEPA standards, many tribal nations expressed similar concerns. Tribes said they were not consulted, and that while dealing with numerous agencies and their different processes was burdensome, the removal of the regulations weakens the whole purpose of NEPA. The National Congress of American Indians and other organizations noted that some streamlining and deregulating could prove useful — but not when tribal perspectives were excluded from the process. 

Last year’s federal budget cuts and mass layoffs further complicate matters, affecting agencies’ ability to carry out their work. Meanwhile, congressional budget cuts impacted funding for, among other things, tribal historic preservation offices, which are key to carrying out government-to-government consultation. The idea seems to be to “drown people in an avalanche while providing them with no resources to meet the moment, and call that consultation and collaboration,” Pidot said.

At the same time that the federal government has moved to reduce public and tribal input, it has also been buying stakes in mining companies, including the two companies behind controversial projects opposed by some tribal nations and Indigenous communities: the Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada and the Ambler Road project in Alaska. “It’ll be interesting to see if their approval processes for mines in which the federal government has a stake is quicker than it otherwise would have been,” Lord said.

Pidot summed it up this way: “The big theme is that anything and anyone that stands in the way of the kinds of projects that this administration wants to do is an obstacle to progress that they’re going to overrun.” 

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