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Legal scholars and tribal advocates urge caution: preserve public participation and agency capacity in any NEPA rewrite
Summary
Legal and academic witnesses told the House Natural Resources Committee that NEPA’s public‑participation role improves projects and that staffing cuts, hasty administrative shortcuts and reduced tribal consultation risk undermining both environmental protection and public trust.
Several legal and academic witnesses urged the committee to avoid hasty statutory rollbacks that would curtail public participation or tribal consultation.
Andrew Mergen, faculty director at Harvard Law School’s Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic and a former U.S. Department of Justice NEPA litigator, described NEPA as a ‘‘look before you leap’’ statute that many state and international systems emulate. "Looking before you leap makes a lot of sense," Mergen said, and he cautioned that NEPA is often blamed for delays caused by other substantive statutes such as the Clean Water Act or the Endangered Species Act.
Mergen told lawmakers that recent developments —…
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