The Western Environmental Law Center holds more than 30 years of deep and expansive expertise regarding public lands and health protection, energy development, watershed and wildlife protection, and climate action in the West. We are acutely cognizant of the imperative to build green infrastructure in a way that respects people and place. Yet we are alarmed at the depth of harm the newly proposed “Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act” (BAAJA) would inflict on bedrock public health and environmental laws and, by extension, to the people and places of the West. This bill, if passed into law, would recklessly transform the legal and policy landscape, taking power away from the public and giving new and enhanced powers to technology, energy, finance, and other development interests.
Our experts prepared a short policy analysis on the concerning provisions in BAAJA (S. 5653). This sprawling bill would stack the deck for fossil fuels, strip states’ and Tribes’ rights, reduce the National Environmental Policy Act to a mere box-checking exercise without force, and diminish the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act in ways that would cause widespread harm.
Read our policy analysis here, and please reach out if you have any questions.
“This permitting deal is a betrayal of public lands, water and wildlife, and environmental justice values that Westerners depend on for clean air and water, places to hike, hunt, and fish, and the inestimable sense of freedom the West provides us all,” said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center. “The permitting deal concedes to fossil fuel and data center interests while falsely pitting the imperative to build green infrastructure against people and place. It is a surrender to President Trump’s noxious agenda and pathology of ‘energy dominance’ that emerged from Project 2025. We will fight this terrible deal tooth and nail.”
Contacts:
Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, Western Environmental Law Center, eriksg@westernlaw.org
Marlyn Twitchell, 541-485-2471, ext. 144, twitchell@westernlaw.org
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