1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

your constituent, I urgently write you to oppose the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act. I support increasing clean energy production, but this bill does far more harm than good and I am deeply concerned about the damage it will unleash on our communities, public lands, and wildlife habitats. The rollbacks and changes to our nation’s bedrock environmental laws included in this bill have not been adequately vetted, and given that this process will have virtually no opportunity to fix or address the most harmful provisions and their potential unintended consequences, we urge you to instead consider the benefits of laying a strong foundation for future success by taking more time to craft a thoughtful energy bill rather than rushing through a closed door package where the impacts have not been fully understood. What we do know is that this bill could: - Allow environmentally damaging projects to evade public notice and review. - Impose a statute of limitations that would undermine communities’ ability to seek judicial review of unlawful projects —while denying the public notice of decisions. - Restrict the ability of states, tribes, and local communities to protect local waterways and drinking water supplies threatened by large energy projects, like gas pipelines. - Weaken protections for threatened and endangered species including by excluding relevant information from certain species reviews, ultimately leading to projects harming and killing rare wildlife and habitat. - Ensure that harmful permit decisions made by the Trump administration will be nearly impossible to reverse in the future. These are not risks I am willing to take and I implore you to oppose this legislation.