WASHINGTON— More than 100 groups urged Congress today to oppose the Senate permitting bill, which contains sweeping provisions gutting protections for hundreds of millions of acres of public lands across America, including the Arctic, Boundary Waters wilderness, Bears Ears National Monument and countless other treasured wildlands.
“Handing our public lands over to corporate polluters and tech billionaires is a staggering betrayal of all Americans. It will put irreplaceable public lands at the mercy of industries bent on exploiting them,” said Ashley C. Nunes, public lands policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This disastrous bill would permanently scar our natural heritage and sacrifice clean water, wildlife and the health of our communities just to make the wealthiest people on Earth even richer.”
The bill, introduced by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), would rubberstamp destructive projects including mining, logging, oil and gas drilling, and fracked gas pipelines intended to power data centers. Polluting projects would be fast tracked regardless of their harm to public lands and the water, wildlife, cultural resources and recreation these lands support.
The bill’s so-called “project certainty” provisions would lock in near-permanent fossil fuel dominance and hand extractive industries control of public lands into the future.
“Here in Utah where 73% of voters oppose fast-tracking oil, gas and mining projects on public land, we say America’s worst ideas come from the desk of Sen. Mike Lee,” said Olivia Juarez, GreenLatinos public land program director. “This bill exemplifies what we mean. Its only guarantee is blocked public land access, dangerous air quality, and reckless exclusion of public input on how we treat the places we should pass on to future generations in a better condition than we received them. It’s a handout to the fossil fuel and AI industries, and a rubber stamp on wildlife extinction and climate disaster.”
The legislation also gives mining companies, including foreign-owned mining conglomerates, unprecedented rights to permanently seize public lands for roads, pipelines, waste dumps and other sprawling infrastructure. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, hard rock mining is the top source of toxic pollution in the country.
“This bill is nothing short of a coup for corporate polluters and extractive industry executives who have been clamoring for a way to gut our nation’s most important bedrock environmental laws,” said Josh Osher, public policy director at Western Watersheds Project. “Instead of ushering in a green energy transition, this bill will deliver a massive blow to biodiversity, cultural resources, and public lands while silencing the voices of Tribes, the public, and the advocates who fight for their protection.”
The permitting bill severely undermines the National Historic Preservation Act and Tribal sovereignty by making the federal government’s responsibility to meaningfully consult with Tribal Nations optional, even if a project threatens their ancestral lands, sacred sites or cultural resources.
