Heard this report on NPR yesterday and thought it worthy of posting.
Environmental groups announced that the White House is considering use of the Antiquities Act to declare several ocean zones as "monuments," which are tantamount to federal "parks." The White House Council on Environmental Quality did not confirm the report, but did say that it was considering the intiative. The scale (in terms of acreage protected by such an act) is, excuse the pun, monumental.
The protected areas would be the waters in the Central Pacific, centering on the Howland-Baker atolls. Rose Atoll in American Samoa, the Mariana Trench near Guam, as well as waters in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Southeastern coast of the U.S. The Central Pacific area alone is 600,000 square miles.
The Antiquities Act predates the National Environmental Policy Act by more than six decades. Federal law provides for the creation of marine sanctuaries (the National Marine Sanctuaries Act), but the process is lengthy, some taking a decade to create and implement (owing to the public comment and input).
I doubt you'll see an Environmental Assessment for this or litigation to compel the government to do such a study. But, the NPR report does mention some concerns about ensuring public input to this "process".
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