"How creating a 'simplified permit system' could decrease the public's input in the land of many uses"
"Already in the midst of a massive push to extract more oil and gas from the nation’s waters and wide-open spaces, the Trump administration has set its sights on a new goal: to ramp up drilling in national forests.
In September, the U.S. Forest Service proposed “updating, clarifying, and streamlining” regulations that could broadly change how the agency handles oil and gas leasing across the 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands. “The intent of these potential changes would be to decrease permitting times by removing regulatory burdens that unnecessarily encumber energy production,” the Forest Service wrote. “These potential changes would promote domestic oil and gas production by allowing industry to begin production more quickly.”
Environmental groups are outraged. “What they want to do is clear and pave the way for faster permits for the oil and gas industry,” says Kristin Davis, staff attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. That means ignoring the public and its concerns, says Davis’s colleague Sam Evans, senior attorney and leader of the group’s National Forests and Parks Program."
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