In 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) approved Lease Sale 258 without fully considering cumulative impacts to Cook Inlet Belugas, the impact of vessel noise, and alternatives for a reduced sale and meaningful reduction of overall impacts to Cook Inlet’s fragile ecosystem. Inletkeeper, alongside community and national partners, challenged the approval in court—and won in 2024. The court agreed that BOEM had violated the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), ordered the agency to go back and conduct a supplemental environmental impact statement, and suspended Hilcorp’s lease while the review was underway.
That lawsuit was a major victory for the rule of law, for science, and for Cook Inlet communities. But now, BOEM is cutting the public out of the very process the court ordered, as a result of the weakened National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) regulations.
That decision is unacceptable. It reverses BOEM’s earlier commitment to transparency, and undermines the very purpose of NEPA. Cutting the public out of the process is more than a procedural shortcut. It shuts Alaskans out of decisions made in their own back yard. It sets a dangerous precedent, and it puts Cook Inlet | Tikahtnu at risk.
Since it was first established in 1970, NEPA has given people a voice in the federal decisions that shape their communities. It requires agencies to study the environmental consequences of major projects and to invite the public into the process, ensuring that those most affected aren’t silenced when powerful industries come knocking.
Public participation is not a box to check—it is the heart of NEPA, and the American process of decision making. Community members bring local knowledge, scientific research, and perspectives that agencies too often miss. Time and again, public input has reshaped or stopped dangerous projects before irreparable harm was done.
What’s happening in Cook Inlet is part of a national trend. The Council on Environmental Quality, which oversees NEPA, has steadily weakened its rules, encouraging agencies to do less analysis, move faster, and involve fewer members of the public. The result, as we clearly see here, will be communities sidelined, science minimized, ill advised projects fast-tracked, and irreparable harm done.
One thing must remain absolutely clear: agencies like BOEM still have the discretion to engage the public and take climate and environmental justice seriously. They are simply choosing not to.
Cook Inlet communities deserve better. They deserve to know what is at stake, to ask hard questions of their decision makers, and to have their voices heard before decisions are made that could change their home forever. To deny Cook Inlet communities the chance to weigh in is to silence the very people most immediately affected, and places decisions about our home in the hands of Washington bureaucrats and giant corporations.
We urge BOEM not lower their standards of review but use their discretion to take the time and input required to properly vet this project. Inletkeeper will fight to ensure that Cook Inlet communities are informed, not sidelined. The answer to past mistakes is not to make future ones in secret.