The Fertilizer Institute (TFI) on April 22 issued a statement criticizing the Council on Environmental Quality’s (CEQ) final rulemaking reversing 2020 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) updates, saying the new rule will make the “already costly and time-consuming process of obtaining required permitting even more burdensome.”
Under then President Donald Trump, CEQ in July 2020 made wholesale revisions to the NEPA regulations for the first time in more than 40 years. In response to President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 13990 on Jan. 20, 2021, however, CEQ said it would engage in a “comprehensive review” of the 2020 rule and launch a phased approach to amending the NEPA regulations.
CEQ issued an Interim Final Rule on June 29, 2021, which extended the deadline by two years, to Sept. 14, 2023, for Federal agencies to develop or update their NEPA implementing procedures to conform to the CEQ regulations. CEQ issued the Phase 1 Final Rule on April 20, 2022, which the agency said finalizes a “narrow set of changes” to generally restore regulatory provisions that were in effect for decades before the 2020 rule.
CEQ said the final rule changes “better align the NEPA regulations with CEQ and agency expertise, as well as NEPA’s statutory goals and purpose of promoting sound decisions informed by science.” In response, however, TFI said a more efficient permitting process is needed to ensure that critical mining projects in the U.S. have a clear path to compliance and approval.
“Positive steps were made with changes to NEPA in 2020, but those updates have been removed and the permitting process has regressed to the badly ineffective 1978 review process,” TFI said. “This is not progress, this is regression. It’s more red tape, duplicative regulations, and delays that will cost consumers in the end. We are moving in the wrong direction.”
“We have a member company who has already spent over a decade and more than $20 million dollars for a mining project that still has not been approved,” said TFI President and CEO Corey Rosenbusch. “The current fertilizer market has policymakers asking for solutions that will help farmers have an affordable and abundant supply of fertilizer, yet here is a regulation that will do just the opposite. What the administration has done here not only doesn’t help the current market environment, it hurts it.”
TFI said it supports broader permitting reforms as outlined in the Building U.S. Infrastructure through Limited Delays and Efficient Reviews (BUILDER) Act (H.R. 2515), which it said would make environmental reviews more efficient, reduce duplicative regulatory burdens, and provide clear paths to approvals. TFI also noted bipartisan support in Congress for permitting reform, as evidenced in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed in 2021.
“Our country has resources, and we should access them responsibly,” Rosenbusch said. “With this move by CEQ, accessibility and the feasibility of utilizing these minerals is thrown into question and the ones who will pay the price for this shortsighted move are individuals and families already struggling with the rising costs of everyday goods.”