Nixon signed this key environmental law. Trump plans to change it to speed up pipelines, highway projects and more.

President Trump plans this week to overhaul a federal law that poor and minority communities around the country have used for generations to delay or stop projects that threaten to pollute their neighborhoods — a law he says needlessly blocks good jobs, industry and public works.

The president’s plan to streamline the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a bedrock environmental law signed with much fanfare by President Richard M. Nixon in 1970, would make it easier to build highways, pipelines, chemical plants and other projects that pose environmental risks.

If the final version mirrors a proposal from January, it would force agencies to complete even the most exhaustive environmental reviews within two years and restrict the extent to which they could consider a project’s full impact on the climate. Continue reading.