Environmental groups sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over a plan to sell oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico. The groups say the sale violates a core environmental law and threatens coastal communities and endangered whales.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said the government failed to conduct reviews required by the National Environmental Policy Act, a bedrock law that has been in place for more than 50 years. The law, known as NEPA, requires the government to evaluate projects’ environmental and health risks and to study alternatives.
The federal office that organizes the leases, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is within the Department of Interior, says it won’t follow the NEPA guidelines and has instead performed its own assessment. The lease sales were mandated by the sweeping domestic policy law signed by President Trump in July, and the bureau determined that NEPA didn’t apply to lease sales put in place by this legislation, according to Alyse Sharpe, an Interior Department spokeswoman.
The lawsuit said the bureau’s alternative assessment failed to account for the environmental risks or to properly evaluate reasonable alternatives.
The suit argues that millions of people who live on the Gulf Coast depend on the waters for fishing, tourism and recreation, and that they would face harm from the oil and gas operations. It cited the 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf, which led to the worst offshore oil spill in American history, and said that activities like oil exploration and refining affect both ecosystems and coastal communities.
It also said that the Gulf of Mexico is a diverse ecosystem that is the home to the critically endangered Rice’s whale, fewer than 100 of which remain, according to federal statistics.
The lease sale, planned for Dec. 10 and covering roughly 80 million acres, is the first of 30 required in U.S. waters in the Gulf over the next 15 years, according to the terms of the policy bill signed in July. The bill also mandated six lease sales in Cook Inlet in Alaska.
The NEPA law was signed by President Richard M. Nixon in 1970 after a devastating oil spill off the coast of California. Since then, there has been almost no fossil fuel development along the California coast. But last week, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration planned to allow new oil and gas drilling there and also near Florida, as part of a broader plan for offshore leasing over the next five years.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who was attending the U.N. climate summit in Brazil at the time, declared the proposal to drill in the waters off California “dead on arrival.”
The Gulf of Mexico has abundant oil and gas operations in its western and central regions. Those operations have helped make the United States the largest oil producer in the world.
Republicans in Florida have long opposed oil operations in the eastern Gulf, near the Florida coastline. President Trump, at the end of his first term, had instituted a 10-year moratorium on drilling off Florida.
The lawsuit filed Tuesday accused Matthew Giacona, the bureau’s acting director, of participating in the sale despite a conflict of interest because of his previous work with the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents offshore oil, gas, wind and ocean-mineral businesses.
Ms. Sharpe, the Interior Department spokeswoman, said neither the department nor Mr. Giacona would comment on the litigation.
The suit was filed on behalf of Healthy Gulf, based in New Orleans, and Friends of the Earth, based in Washington, by the public interest law firm Earthjustice. The Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club were also parties and co-counsel.
Karen Zraick covers legal affairs for the Climate desk and the courtroom clashes playing out over climate and environmental policy.
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