WASHINGTON — The Sierra Club said Sunday that a sweeping energy permitting bill pending in the U.S. Senate remains deeply flawed despite revisions released over the weekend, and it urged senators to open the measure to further amendments.
The national environmental group’s statement concerns the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026, known as BAAJA. The senators drafting the bill released a manager’s amendment Saturday, and the Senate scheduled a procedural vote to begin consideration on Monday, according to the group.
The Sierra Club said the amendment partially addressed concerns it raised Friday but that major substantive issues remain.
“The Senate must allow an open amendment process for additional changes to be made,” said Loren Blackford, the Sierra Club’s executive director. “Unless additional dialogue and changes can happen, the Sierra Club cannot support this legislation.”
Blackford said the group sees faster permitting for transmission lines and clean energy as essential, but argued that rushing the bill through would weaken Tribal sovereignty and drop safeguards for clean water and wildlife. She said Senate Democrats “have been given a mandate to act decisively to deliver relief on energy bills.”
In its Friday statement, the Sierra Club said it could not support the roughly 400-page bill as written and laid out five demands. They included changing the bill’s permitting-certainty provisions, restoring Tribal consultation requirements, keeping vacatur — a court’s ability to throw out an unlawful permit — as a legal remedy, preserving states’ authority to protect water quality under the Clean Water Act, and upholding consultation requirements and the definition of best available science under the Endangered Species Act.
“The Sierra Club cannot support this bill as currently written,” Blackford said in that statement, adding of Senate Democrats: “They can and must fight for a better deal.”
The group said the Senate may still vote on the bill during the lame-duck session that follows last week’s midterm elections. Permitting legislation affects how quickly energy projects, including power lines that carry electricity to regional grids such as the one serving New Jersey, can win federal approval.
This report is based on information from the Sierra Club.
Source: Sierra Club
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