AGs From 9 States Oppose CTIA Proposal to Examine Siting Rules Changes
Attorneys general from nine states on Friday opposed CTIA’s request for a rulemaking to update regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The proposal faces extensive opposition (see 2505010019), but CTIA said it found broad support for moving forward. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has promised to focus on streamlining regulation and cutting red tape (see 2503030040). Reply comments were posted Friday in RM-12003.
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The AGs said that an independent agency, the FCC isn’t bound by broader Trump administration directives on environmental reviews. President Donald Trump's executive order limiting reviews pertains to “energy exploration and production on Federal lands and waters,” but “the Commission has no role in regulating energy exploration or production,” the AGs said.
“CTIA’s proposal that the FCC not evaluate the cumulative effects of the Commission’s actions is inconsistent with NEPA,” the AGs said: CTIA also “improperly urges the Commission to abandon long-settled and statutorily-required procedures for historic preservation review in violation of the text of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA).” AGs from New York, Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin and Massachusetts signed the filing.
“Commenters in the record, representing a diverse group of stakeholders, express strong support for the relief requested in CTIA’s Petition and related reforms to the Commission’s environmental and historic preservation rules,” CTIA countered. These commenters recognize that the commission’s existing rules “are outdated and have not kept pace with changes in the law and unnecessarily burden wireless deployments, delaying the benefits of newer and faster wireless broadband services,” CTIA said.
Crown Castle Fiber supported CTIA. Reviews “can be onerous and add significant delay and cost to our efforts to deploy small wireless facilities,” Crown Castle said. “In light of new statutory mandates, executive orders, and actions by the Council on Environmental Quality, it is both timely and necessary that the Commission reexamine its environmental and historic preservation rules, as the Petition requests,” the company said.
The National Congress of American Indians and the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers jointly urged the FCC to reject CTIA's petition. The tribes rely on NEPA and NHPS “to protect their heritage,” the groups said: “Tribal Nations are intimately linked with the environment. Our traditional cultural places and places of religious and cultural significance, commonly referred to by society at large as sacred sites, are tied to the living world in complex ways that are different than the broader American culture.”