As he signed legislation to repeal it, President Trump called an Interior Department land-management rule a federal power grab and, hinting at action planned for today on power plant emissions, said he would “eliminate every unnecessary, harmful, and job-killing regulation that we can find.” The Interior Department rule covered 245 million acres of land under control of the Bureau of Land Management.
Known as Planning 2.0, the BLM regulation was the third Obama-era environmental rule overturned by congressional vote and signature by Trump since taking office. The other regulations governed restoration of streams near mines and financial disclosures by energy companies.
The president was to issue an “energy independence” executive order today that would initiate a review of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon emissions from power plants. Among several steps, the order would direct federal departments to search out rules that are impediments to energy production. “Energy independence is the goal,” said an administration official.
The Interior Department said Planning 2.0 “aims to increase public involvement” in land management, “including measures to provide earlier, easier and more meaningful participation.” Trump said it “took control of land-use decisions away from states and local decision-makers and gave it to Washington, and that’s not good. That’s never good.” The Republican majority in Congress passed the repeal, a resolution of disapproval, over the protests of Democrats.
Trump signed three other repeal measures along with the Planning 2.0 repeal during a ceremony in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. “I will keep working with Congress, with every agency, and most importantly with the American people until we eliminate every unnecessary, harmful, and job-killing regulation that we can find,” he said. “We have a lot more coming.”
Ethan Lane, executive director of the Public Lands Council, a rancher group, said Planning 2.0 cut back on multiple use of public lands and “with the elimination of stakeholder and local input, the rule was unworkable for Western communities.” He urged the administration “to bring together a streamlined planning process that works for livestock ranchers and the western communities that depend on the use of BLM lands.”
Without Planning 2.0, the BLM “has to revert to the prior planning rule,” written in 1983, said the Natural Resources Defense Council following the party-line Senate passage of the repeal. “Unfortunately, Congress is getting its marching orders from the fossil fuel industry, which prefers a rigged system and abhors the transparency afforded by the planning rule.”