WASHINGTON— The Trump administration today revoked regulations governing environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act. The decision will affect logging, mining, drilling and fracking for oil and gas, highway construction and many other projects that can threaten ecosystems and human health.

“The decision to gut the National Environmental Policy Act and cut out the public is a disaster for our national forests, environment, wildlife and people,” said Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Local communities know better than government bureaucrats how industrial facilities built in their own backyards will damage forests, rivers and streams, wildlife, air and neighborhoods. The Trump administration’s move is a despicable attack on public participation that will enable bad projects to breeze through critical environmental reviews.”

Today’s rules and regulatory changes apply to numerous federal agencies — including the Department of Agriculture, Department of the Interior, Department of Energy, Department of Transportation and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — and effectively cut the public out of the process of considering critical environmental issues, such as climate change and environmental justice, during project permitting.

The National Environmental Policy Act was designed to require the federal government to consider environmental harms before permitting industrial projects.

The 1970 law has been under threat since President Donald Trump’s return to office. Today’s decisions, which are being hailed by the oil industry, follow an executive order from President Trump and a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court limiting the scope of environmental reviews.