The administration is likely to set a two-year deadline for completing full environmental impact reviews while less comprehensive assessments would have to be completed within one year.
The president will travel to Atlanta today to announce rule he first outlined the effort in January.
Donald Trump is today expected to announce a new federal rule to speed up the environmental review process for proposed roads, gas pipelines and other major infrastructure, a move that critics are describing as the dismantling of a 50-year-old environmental protection law.
Trump to dismantle environmental protections
Critics call the Republican president’s efforts a cynical attempt to limit the public’s ability to review, comment on and influence proposed projects under the National Environmental Policy Act, one of the country’s bedrock environmental protection laws.
«This may be the single biggest giveaway to polluters in the past 40 years,» said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Centre for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that works to save endangered species.
Trump has made slashing government regulation a hallmark of his presidency and held it out as a way to boost jobs.
«The United States can’t compete and prosper if a bureaucratic system holds us back from building what we need,» he said when first announcing the sweeping rollback of National Environmental Policy Act rules.
But environmental groups say the regulatory rollbacks threaten public health and make it harder to curb global warming. With Congress and the administration divided over how to boost infrastructure investment, the president is relying on his deregulation push to demonstrate progress.
