NEW YORK, NY - The following statement can be attributed to Tom Wright, President and CEO of Regional Plan Association:

The disastrous move by the Trump Administration to rollback the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) aims to deal a fatal blow to a bedrock law that has helped to clean our air and water, protect critical habitats and improve the quality of life for residents in our communities.

RPA has long advanced proactive ideas to improve NEPA. The environmental review process needs a careful and thoughtful overhaul to allow for more efficient construction of public infrastructure projects. And we’ve always advocated building on the strengths of the environmental review process, not weakening or eliminating core tenets that ensure the greatest public benefit.

The Trump Administration’s rule change represents a giant step backward to a time when projects were built with little or no regard to the environment or the communities they impacted, and were advanced by a powerful elite.

The impact of such a rule change will serve as a muzzle, stifling the voice of the people in consideration of projects that will impact them, and a blindfold, limiting the government oversight and empowering project developers to plan and implement projects without consideration for our environment while failing to account for the worsening climate impacts.

At a time when low-income communities and communities of color are reeling from a disproportionate vulnerability to the COVID pandemic, the decision to limit the voices of our most vulnerable from projects that historically impact them the greatest is particularly cruel.

RPA vigorously supports those organizations challenging the legality of this rule change. We must save NEPA in order to improve it.