Revoke Nationwide Permit 12 and bring an end to the era of fossil fuels
A few years ago, fossil fuel profiteers hijacked the government process that is supposed to regulate the permitting and construction of new pipelines and related infrastructure. The plan was called Nationwide Permit 12 (NWP12), an innocuous name, but it's basically a loophole in the Clean Water Act that makes it faster and cheaper for oil or gas pipeline activities to get permits.
NWP12 has been used to ram through the illegal Dakota Access Pipeline. They tried to use it to ram through the Keystone XL pipeline too, before the Biden administration stopped them. And now, President Biden has issued Executive Order 13990 and ordered all federal agencies to take a fresh look at environmental rules issued under previous administrations - including NWP12.
It took years of work and lawsuits to get to this point. But we know new fossil fuel pipelines and projects are indefensible in face of a worsening climate emergency. President Biden and his US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) must take this opportunity to repeal NWP12 for good.
