How Your Right to Know about Polluting Projects is Under Attack

Federal law has guaranteed Americans the right to know about projects planned for their communities for more than 50 years.

That bedrock right has given people the power to consider how pollution from a corporate or government project would impact their health and quality of life — and voice concerns to decision-makers. This has let Americans shape projects and sometimes stop harmful ones entirely.

Now that right is under attack by the federal government.

Earthjustice is fighting back in courts, in Congress, and before regulatory bodies to defend your right to know and speak up. We need your support. Tell the federal government to protect our right to know.

Here are three areas where these attacks are happening:

1. Weaking the National Historic Preservation Act

Before the federal government funds, permits, or approves projects, the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) requires it to consult with Tribes and states and gather public input on the potential impacts to cultural and historic resources. This law helps protect burial grounds, sacred sites, and historic places.

Two years ago, this requirement stopped real harm when a federal judge temporarily froze a lithium drilling project that endangered Ha’Kamwe,’ a sacred, medicinal spring to the Hualapai tribe of Arizona. The Bureau of Land Management violated the NHPA by repeatedly ignoring the Tribe’s request that impacts to the spring be considered as part of the potentially affected area.

Ha’Kamwe’ is a spring sacred to the Hualapai Tribe in Northern Arizona. (Ash Ponders for Earthjustice)

Now, the federal government plans to gut these protections.

Under a proposed rulemaking, rivers, mountains, and other traditional landscapes that are core to the history and identity of many Indigenous people would be exempt from NHPA protections entirely. Instead, only small, historic sites with human-built structures (like buildings or walls) would be protected. The draft regulations would make public participation largely optional and give agencies sweeping discretion to approve projects despite their impacts on historic places by claiming that costs or other factors outweigh the value of preserving those sites.

The public’s voice matters when protecting sacred places, battlefields, burial grounds, parks, and cultural landscapes — not just famous landmarks.

Earthjustice and our partners are opposing the draft regulations that would weaken the NHPA. The proposed changes require a 30-day public comment period before the rule becomes final. 

2. Gutting the National Environmental Policy Act

When the government wants to build a toxic waste incinerator in your neighborhood or run a dangerous pipeline past your child’s school, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)  gives you the right to know about it, voice your concerns, and fight back.

NEPA is one of the nation’s oldest environmental laws. Since 1970, it has required businesses and the government to share information and hear from the public before planning a project in a community. It’s also empowered communities to stop harmful environmental projects when the federal government fails to account for their impact. For example, a federal judge recently terminated nine oil and gas drilling permits on land belonging to the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and its members. That’s because a federal agency issued them illegally, failing to notify the Tribe or address their safety and environmental concerns.

Walter Echo-Hawk, a member of the Pawnee Nation, talks about fracking operations near his home in Yale, Oklahoma with Earthjustice attorney Michael Freeman. (Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice)

But the Trump administration weakened that kind of community power. Last year, the Supreme Court decided federal agencies can ignore foreseeable environmental harms — letting them pick and choose what impacts to study, no matter what communities say. This decision is part of a broad campaign by polluting industries and their political allies to silence people and limit their ability to fight back.

Not only has the highest court weakened NEPA, but the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) gutted the rules that told government agencies how to comply with NEPA and advised them to revise their procedures to speed permitting. The CEQ also directed agencies to cease environmental justice reviews that would identify disproportionate pollution impacts on communities of color and other historically overburdened groups. This could ultimately mean less standardized environmental reviews for projects and less scrutiny on who will bear the environmental impacts. At the same time, conservatives in Congress are proposing further attacks on NEPA this year that would limit communities’ ability to challenge harmful projects.

At a time when all branches of the U.S government are using every opportunity to weaken NEPA, Earthjustice and our allies will continue our decades-long fight to defend and strengthen the “people’s environmental law.”

3. Nondisclosure Agreements for Data Centers

The AI data center industry is driving a massive buildout of fossil fuel infrastructure and slowing the transition to clean energy while hiding information from the public about the environmental impacts and costs involved.

Proposals for AI data center construction and energy usage are often hidden from the public through fast-tracked proceedings, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), and complex financing deals.

Local leaders, such as county councils, are signing NDAs with tech companies, and by the time many residents learn what’s planned, the project is often close to approval. In fact, some tech companies like xAI are trying to evade government oversight and permitting processes all together.

Construction of new xAI data centers next to the company’s Colossus 2 facility in Memphis, Tennessee. (Brad Zweerink / Earthjustice)

In addition to secrecy, energy and tech companies are trying to fast-track proceedings before federal and state agencies, and before state utility commissions, which further limits public involvement. People often have no idea how much electricity a proposed AI data center would require, nor how much water it would use. And they don’t know whether the AI companies are paying for all their energy usage or relying on the public to subsidize them.

Earthjustice is working to ensure communities know the pollution and financial burdens AI data centers create. And we’re helping them voice their concerns and fight back.

We’re doing this:

• In front of public utility commissions, which regulate energy companies and approve the permits that let them build power plants to supply AI data centers with energy: Earthjustice attorneys argue before these commissions that AI data centers should not be fast-tracked without public scrutiny and full disclosure of impacts and financing.
• In state legislatures: Earthjustice is also working to shape state laws and policies to protect people from bearing the cost of AI data center energy usage and the environmental harms of building and operating them. In California, Colorado, Washington, New York, and Washington, we’re engaging on bills that would require more transparency and reporting from data centers.

Learn more about data centers and what we’re doing to fight their pollution and protect communities