Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Anna V. Smith):
April 13, 2026
Last fall, construction on the Velvet-Wood uranium mine broke ground in the sandstone deposits of San Juan County, Utah. It’s the first mine that the federal government has permitted under a new expedited “emergency” process that allows projects to go through the environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in just 14 days, a process that previously took months or even years. Tribal governments were given just seven days to offer feedback, and the standard public comment period was eliminated owing to the project’s “emergency” status. In the past, both tribes and the public had at least 30 days give input.
The mine is located in an area already deeply scarred by uranium mining, where the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe has long opposed the White Mesa Uranium Mill, which abuts the community. During the weeklong tribal comment period, six nations shared their concerns with the Bureau of Land Management, citing the expedited process and possible water contamination from the mine’s activities. No changes were made to the project, however.
Earlier this year, in addition to mandating expedited “emergency” processes for NEPA reviews, the Trump administration finalized its proposed elimination of standards — including public comment periods — for how federal agencies carry out NEPA environmental reviews for large-scale projects on public lands. The changes came without consultation with tribal nations and despite their strong opposition.
“The announce-and-defend method of developing federal Indian policy is an inappropriate, paternalistic, unjustified, and historically inefficient method of decision-making,” the National Congress of American Indians and National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers said in a joint letter. Eliminating previous standards “ignores federal trust and treaty responsibilities, impinges on roles and sovereignty of Tribal Nations, and flouts longstanding policy and practice by failing to consult with Tribal Nations.”
The federal government is legally required to consult with tribal nations on rules and policies that affect them, but so far the Trump administration has regularly bypassed consultation requirements or sped through them in order to accomplish its “energy dominance” agenda on tribal nations’ ancestral lands. Altogether, the changes represent a shift in the way that tribal nations — and the public — are able to have a say in how land in the Western U.S. is managed.
FROM THE START, agencies under Trump have changed or revoked rules and policies to prioritize extraction, citing the so-called energy “emergency.” The BLM and the Forest Service rescinded the Public Lands Rule and the Roadless Rule without tribal consultation, even though both decisions have major implications for tribes’ ability to protect natural and cultural resources on public land. Meanwhile, the administration is seeking to “streamline” Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, one of the most useful tools tribal nations have for ensuring government consultation. Changes are also proposed for Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, which enables tribes to review the impacts of extractive projects within reservation borders before a federal agency permits the project.
“It’s all predicated on something that isn’t true: We don’t have an energy emergency,” said Gussie Lord, managing attorney at Earthjustice’s Tribal Partnerships Programs. Chipping away at public input and tribal consultation will only exacerbate issues that tribal nations face, Lord said. “A lot of their resources, their cultural and environmental resources often are one and the same. The existing laws and regulations that we have are already insufficiently protective of tribal rights and resources.”
The administration’s changes to the NEPA review process took effect immediately last year, also without consultation. Under the Biden administration, the Council on Environmental Quality spent three and a half years updating the implementation regulations by consulting with tribal nations and the public, incorporating provisions requiring agencies to consider climate change and environmental justice impacts when reviewing projects. NEPA applies to all federal agencies, meaning that each agency has to come up with its own implementation guidelines. Tribes and experts worry that, under the new guidelines, agencies may not be compelled to work with tribes.
According to University of Arizona professor of law Justin Pidot, who previously served as general counsel for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the resulting uncertainty could have serious consequences. “One is the agencies don’t know how to work together. The second is that there’s litigation risk. The third is that project sponsors don’t know what they’re supposed to do,” Pidot said. The removal of those standards “creates lots of complexity for the public, for tribes, for states, for local governments, for nonprofits.”
Under the Interior Department’s new interim set of standards, for example, reviews for something like a mining project will take 28 days. When the “emergency” declaration is added, it could take just 14 days, as it did with the Velvet-Wood mine. Past reviews could take up to four years. “It substantially limits the degree of information flowing from the federal government to the public about big projects, including to tribes,” Pidot said. “What is surprising about this particular decision of theirs is that having a common set of rules makes sense for everyone.”
In comments to the Council on Environmental Quality about the elimination of the NEPA standards, many tribal nations expressed similar concerns. (See sidebar.) Tribes said they were not consulted, and that while dealing with numerous agencies and their different processes was burdensome, the removal of the regulations weakens the whole purpose of NEPA. The National Congress of American Indians and other organizations noted that some streamlining and deregulating could prove useful — but not when tribal perspectives were excluded from the process.
Last year’s federal budget cuts and mass layoffs further complicate matters, affecting agencies’ ability to carry out their work. Meanwhile, congressional budget cuts impacted funding for, among other things, tribal historic preservation officers, which are key to carrying out government-to-government consultation. The idea seems to be to “drown people in an avalanche while providing them with no resources to meet the moment, and call that consultation and collaboration,” Pidot said.
At the same time that the federal government has moved to reduce public and tribal input, it has also been buying stakes in mining companies, including the two companies behind controversial projects opposed by some tribal nations and Indigenous communities: the Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada and the Ambler Road project in Alaska. “It’ll be interesting to see if their approval processes for mines in which the federal government has a stake is quicker than it otherwise would have been,” Lord said.
Pidot summed it up this way: “The big theme is that anything and anyone that stands in the way of the kinds of projects that this administration wants to do is an obstacle to progress that they’re going to overrun.”
We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
This article appeared in the April 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline “NEPA changes could sideline tribes.”
Tribes’ perspectives on changes to nepa implementation
Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, ID
“On the Fort Hall Reservation are environmentally hazardous sites created prior to modern-day NEPA protections. … By stripping away NEPA’s provisions for public participation and environmental review, the federal government would further entrench long-standing historic inequities that have disadvantaged Tribal communities.”Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, MT
“CEQ (Council on Environmental Quality) states that it does not need to consult with Tribes. … This is a tortured and disingenuous reading of EO 13175, in part because it focuses almost exclusively on a federal view of economic impacts on Tribal governments rather than the universe of environmental impacts.”Susanville Indian Rancheria, CA
“The proposed removal of these regulations represents a significant step backward in our nation’s commitment to environmental protection and tribal sovereignty.”Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, SD
“CEQ is ignoring its established policy of including indigenous traditional ecological knowledge in environmental reviews under NEPA. These issues that have been part and parcel of the implementation of NEPA for decades, such as the consideration of impacts to environmental justice communities, the cumulative effects of projects, and climate change, are being arbitrarily cast aside in contravention of explicit statutory language.”Bishop Paiute Tribe, CA
“Our traditional and ancestral lands extend far beyond the exterior boundaries of our reservation, and the natural resources on these lands are not merely commodities to be exploited. They are vital to the cultural, spiritual, and economic fabric of all Tribal communities, sustaining traditions that have endured for generations.”Tulalip Tribes, WA
“The lack of consultation exacerbates the already existing power imbalances, further diminishing the ability of tribes to exercise meaningful sovereignty and protect their interests.”Nez Perce Tribe, ID
“The Tribe strongly objects to CEQ’s Proposed Rule, which eviscerates the framework that has been relied upon since CEQ first issued NEPA regulations in 1978.”Big Pine Paiute Tribe, CA
“The interim final rule sidesteps NEPA … as it endorses Donald Trump’s personal agenda. The USA is a country of laws, not a place where one’s personal agenda may supersede the law.”
