The EPA and Interior Department under President-elect Joe Biden will have a range of tools at their disposal to start undoing President Donald Trump’s deregulatory agenda on the environment, according to former agency officials, lawyers, and environmentalists.
Many of the administration’s more ambitious environmental goals, such as reviving regulations on climate pollutants from power plants and automobiles, will take longer to change or put into place. But most observers expect Biden’s team to get working immediately after inauguration on smaller measures, such as the “secret science” rule that would block the EPA from using scientific research that is not or cannot be made public.
“They’ll be starting right out of the gate,” predicted Jody Freeman, director of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School.
But some who support Trump’s rollbacks warn that Biden will pay for being too ambitious in efforts to reverse them.
“The election was a clear mandate for moderation,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas industry trade group. “We’ll no doubt see some changes in the first 100 days, but there is just no room for radical socialist ideas.”
"Stroke of a Pen"
One of the fastest and easiest actions the environmental agencies can take is to strike down Trump-era guidance that the Biden team disagrees with, said Sam Sankar, senior vice president for programs at Earthjustice.
“That can be done with the stroke of a pen,” Sankar said.
Dozens of such guidance documents are now on the books. Among the candidates for immediate rescission is an October memo from the Environmental Protection Agency, arguing that the Clean Air Act gives states flexibility to administer air pollution requirements and saying some exemptions are appropriate, Sankar said.
Another likely kill is an April 2018 memo on metrics known as significant impact levels, which set thresholds for how much air pollution facilities can produce when expanding or upgrading without degrading air quality, according to Sankar.
The Biden administration also plans to rejoin the Paris climate accord almost immediately without congressional approval. The US officially left the agreement on 4 November.
Monuments, Environmental Justice
Biden is also expected to immediately restore the boundaries of the much-contested Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, which former Trump reduced in size, said Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation at Earthjustice. Conservation groups and Native American tribes are also challenging the moves in court.
“Biden could come in and redesignate the entirety of Bears Ears as a national monument,” Caputo said. “That would basically fix the problem.”
The White House or agencies could also swiftly issue their own guidance or executive orders to start putting their agenda on paper. One example is a new guidance document that directs agencies to consider environmental justice in their decision-making, said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center.
That would be consistent with the direction Biden has signaled on the campaign trail and a bill that Vice President-elect Kamala Harris introduced in July as a senator from California that would require permitting agencies to consider cumulative effects to frontline communities under the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act.
Bureau of Land Management decisions and land plans made under deputy director William Perry Pendley could also be set aside nationwide, said John Leshy, a real property law professor at the University of California, Hastings, and former Interior Department solicitor in the Clinton administration.
A Montana court in September deemed Pendley’s tenure as acting land bureau director illegal because it violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.
Biden could also ask his new agency solicitors to issue rapid legal opinions, such as claiming that actions taken during the time Pendley served at Interior were unlawful, said Mark Squillace, a natural resources law professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Such a ruling would have the practical effect of invalidating a Trump regulatory rollback until a court overturns the solicitor’s ruling or a new rule replaces it.
“Someone might challenge that opinion, but my guess is that a carefully written opinion would be tough to overturn,” Squillace said.