Over the past year, we have seen the Trump Administration and members of Congress try to bring “zombie” projects back to life. These are projects that previous administrations rejected due to legitimate concerns about adverse environmental impacts.
For example, two months into his presidency, President Trump approved the Keystone XL pipeline after it was rejected by President Obama due to its projected climate change impacts. Even though the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rejected the Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas export project in 2016, the CEO of the company behind the project met with the Trump Administration and now the company has re-applied to FERC for project approval. And just a few weeks ago, we wrote about the Department of Interior reversing course on allowing mining in the Minnesota Boundary Waters watershed.
At the same time, members of Congress are introducing measures with similar intentions. A Senate appropriations bill contains a provision that would ram forward a project referred to as “Yazoo Pumps.” The Yazoo Pumps project is a decades-old plan first proposed in 1941 to drain wetlands in the Mississippi Delta for the purported reason of preventing flooding in the region, though it will, for the most part, only benefit a handful of farms built in the flood zone. The Yazoo Pumps project also would destroy up to 200,000 acres of ecologically important wetlands that include invaluable waterfowl habitat and biological diversity. In 2008, during the Bush Administration, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decided that the Yazoo Pumps would lead to “unacceptable adverse effects on fishery areas and wildlife,” and prohibited the project from going forward.
Now, eight years later, some members of Congress are trying to override the EPA’s decade-old decision and sneak a rider on Yazoo Pumps into the federal budget. This provision would force the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to proceed with this expensive, destructive, and antiquated plan. This week, we are asking you to call your Senators and let them know that you oppose this budget rider and all efforts to revitalize “zombie” projects that were halted because of their significant adverse environmental impacts.
Here is an outline of what you can say:
“My name is [YOUR NAME] and I am a resident of ZIP code [ZIP CODE] in [STATE]. I am calling because I am concerned about a rider in the Senate’s appropriations bill for the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, and related agencies. The Yazoo Pumps project rider, in Section 433, would ram forward an antiquated and expensive project that would devastate up to 200,000 acres of ecologically invaluable wetlands. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency prohibited the U.S. Army Corps from advancing the project in 2008 because it would result in unacceptable impacts to fishery areas and wildlife. Now, through this rider, Congress would override this decision made by an expert technical agency and force the U.S. Army of Engineers to complete this needless and destructive project. I am asking you to oppose this rider, as well as any other legislative provisions that would bring environmentally destructive projects back to life.”
Feature image by Michael A. Kelly