The U.S. House struck down a Bureau of Land Management rule drafted under the Obama administration that was meant to give the public more say in decision-making around public lands.
“BLM officials developed the rule saying it would increase public involvement and incorporate the most current data and technology to decide whether and where drilling, mining and logging will happen on public land,” says The Denver Post.
Called the BLM’s “Planning 2.0” rule, it was a blueprint for how the federal government should manage its 250 million public lands, most of which are located in the West.
The Post said that House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop, a Utah Republican, argued that the BLM’s planning rule “dilutes local and state voices and centralizes power here in Washington D.C. … This puts special interest groups above local elected officials, which is not the way it was ever intended.”
Conservationists took a different view: “This is the modern way we do land-use planning. It provides for more of a public voice that we do not have now,” said Phil Hanceford, the Denver-based assistant director of the Wilderness Society’s BLM Action Center, according to the Post.
In order to cancel the rule, representatives used the Congressional Review Act, which lets Congress nix an executive order within 60 days if it is deemed too costly, an example of agency overreach, or redundant.
Last week, Congress employed the review act to nullify a federal methane rule, which would have restricted air pollution from methane by oil and gas companies on public lands, and to reverse the Stream Protection Rule, which would have placed greater controls on water pollution.