Green Options » NEPA

US Financing Groups to Monitor Environmental Impacts of Overseas Projects They Invest In

Mridul Chadha — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:40:57 +0000

Under a settlement agreement in a lawsuit brought by Greenpeace and Friends of Earth, the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corp. have agreed to ask for environmental statements from countries seeking US financial aid to set up projects. Both the financing groups have also agreed to invest $250 million each in renewable energy and ensure that the projects they have invested in reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent.

Greenpeace and Friends of Earth, along with three cities from California and one from Colorado, filed the lawsuit against the financing groups in 2002 arguing that the projects they help fund could affect earth’s climate which, in turn, could effect the sea levels around America’s coasts. From 1995 to 2006, the Ex-Im Bank and OPIC provided more than $21 billion in financial aids to countries around the world for projects like oil & gas pipelines, electric power plants and oil refineries.

It is astonishing to know that these groups never asked for environmental statements from the companies managing the projects, even the international investments agencies like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank ask for environmental statements. The credit for the delay in this procedural change is partially shared by the Bush administration.

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Economic Stimulus Package Proposed Barrasso Amendment Would Exempt Projects from NEPA

Jennifer Lance — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 04:03:28 +0000

The economic Stimulus Package passage is needed immediately, according to President Barack Obama; however, partisan politics is interfering as usual and the environment is taking the heat. Consider the Barrasso NEPA amendment proposed by Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), who has confirmed his opposition to the package.

The Barrasso amendment would exempt any project funded by the Economic Stimulus Plan from a normal National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) review.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency:

“The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal agencies to integrate environmental values into their decision making processes by considering the environmental impacts of their proposed actions and reasonable alternatives to those actions.”

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The Worst Congressman: Wally Herger Wants to Abandon NEPA to Salvage Log Burned Areas

Jennifer Lance — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:04:52 +0000

In July, when President Bush made his “historic” visit to Northern California to view wildfires, Representative Wally Herger was on board the helicopter. Other than putting on some Nomex and shaking smoke jumpers’ hands, what has Wally Herger done for Californians during the 2008 Firestorm? Now that the fires are mostly contained, Herger has a plan to utilize emergency provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to salvage log the burned areas, much of which contain live old growth trees.

Herger’s Voting Record

Wally Herger is one of the worst representatives in Congress evident by his voting record. He is against women’s right to choose, the Endangered Species Amendment Act, alternative fuels and public transportation, alternative energy tax incentives, etc. Herger is for the war, FISA, drug war funding in Mexico and Central America, etc. Now he wants to open up the forests to logging without following the full guidelines of NEPA, which requires “federal agencies to integrate environmental values into their decision making processes by considering the environmental impacts of their proposed actions and reasonable alternatives to those actions,” including an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

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BLM Applying NEPA to Large Scale Solar Energy on Public Lands

Rod Adams — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:55:11 +0000

Solar energy promoters and marketers have been getting spun up in the blogosphere this past weekend based on a couple of stories that ran in the mainstream media on Friday, June 27, 2008. The frenzy of concern has been generated because the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), announced, via a press release issued on May 29 and updated on June 12 that it would be producing a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) to evaluate the “environmental, social, and economic impacts associated with solar energy development on BLM-managed public land in six western States: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.”

As described by the press release, the BLM would require about 22 months to produce the necessary studies to complete the PEIS. During that time, the Bureau would seek public comment, focus on the impacts that would result from the development of 125 applications it has in hand already, defer any new applications, and create a framework for approaches that would best allow the Bureau to mitigate the effects of an expected continued flow of applications after that study period.

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