Washington • President Donald Trump on Thursday announced his administration would streamline environmental reviews to speed up approval for projects from highways to pipelines to oil leases, a move that green groups quickly denounced as a continuation of the president’s willingness to pave and build rather than conserve and protect.
Trump said Thursday that a 50-year-old law called the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, would only apply to certain projects and environmental reviews would be run simultaneously to ensure a fast-tracked process that slices through red tape he says is holding back important construction for years and even decades.