“leads to health problems and more economic strain”
“airborne pollution causing respiratory issues”
“decreased environmental health which they will have to deal with themselves”
The comment
The recision of this regulation would be ill-suited for the long term environmental and economical health of the United States. To do so will incite abuse in rural areas that cannot effectively make their voices, opinions, and concerns heard over far larger corporate slash outside interests. It all but incentivizes bad actors to push for deforestation in parklands and encourages horribly mismanaged exploitation of natural resources in the name of the nebulous idea of 'rural economic opportunity'.
Too often is the case where the 'economic opportunity' is a way for resources to be siphoned off away from the local area into privatized interests, giving negligible economic growth to the area at best in the very short term, and a massive environmental bill that gathers interest every year as the norm. Rescinding this would actually encourage the transfer of potential wealth and opportunity away from those local areas, as they often lack the resources (be it monetary, equipment, or manpower-wise) to actually utilize it, leading to outside - often larger privatized entities - to come in and 'take over' so to speak. This means that the local area will not see any of the economic benefits of opening up these lands (or will receive a 'trickle-down' version, which does not work in actuality). Most of the time, these operations will use the local energy/utilities grids without building them up, leading to the locals having to 'share' the existing utilities on a now strained grid. Even if the utilities are built up, the local area will still be left with the bill more often than not in the name of 'investing into the area'.
Deforestation and disruption of natural habitats by road building, along with exploitation of natural resources has proven to have far greater and longer lasting negative impacts than any benefits that are provided - such as nesting/den locations being destroyed of endangered/at-risk animals, water sources being reduced or polluted, and the ground becoming polluted and torn up by road building. Local communities are left with decreased environmental health which they will have to deal with themselves, and further leads to health problems and more economic strain (groundwater contamination from resource extraction, airborne pollution causing respiratory issues, soil degradation leading to crops/plants being less healthy and/or more susceptible to increasingly uncommon weather wreaking environmental damage - floods, fires, erosion, etc.)
Lastly, under the Trump administration, deregulation has lead to more economic and health damage towards the people of the United States. The deregulation and recision of previous environmental laws has a proven track record of benefiting only private investors, some of whom are foreign, leading to the common citizen to foot the bill for damages caused. These pushes have been done to benefit these mega-corporations, such as the oil and coal businesses, which have a long and damning list of long-term environmental and health damages that far outlast any temporary profit gained from the exploitation of our resources.
No one who isn't on the payroll or directly benefiting from these polluting corporations is pushing for this deregulation.
Rescinding this will allow for disastrous results.