Over the past year, GOP leaders and the Trump administration have used a law known as the Congressional Review Act to push for coal mining in Montana, oil drilling in Alaska and copper mining in Minnesota, while also attempting to reverse protections for a national monument in Utah.

The rarely used act gives Congress a few months to revoke new federal regulations. Only in the past year has it ever been used to overrule land management plans.

Conservation advocates say Congress is recklessly throwing out detailed plans, which are created after years of research, public meetings and local collaboration. They fear lawmakers’ intervention could upend the long-standing management system that governs hundreds of millions of acres of public lands — with consequences that could threaten endangered species and coal miners alike.

But the fallout could be much more far-reaching than the rollback of protections for specific areas, some legal experts say. By using their review authority in a way that was never thought to apply to land management plans, lawmakers are calling into question the validity of well over 100 other such plans that were never submitted to Congress for review.

If those plans are challenged, it could create legal uncertainty for tens of thousands of leases and permits for oil and gas, mining, cattle grazing, logging, wind and solar farms and outdoor recreation.

“Using the Congressional Review Act (to revoke management plans) is really unprecedented and will have unforeseen consequences,” said Robert Anderson, who served as solicitor for the Department of the Interior during the Biden administration. “There’s a huge playing field of actions that would be forbidden if none of these management plans are lawfully in place. This could bring things to a screeching halt.”

Republicans have argued that congressional action is necessary to unleash President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum frequently refers to public lands as “America’s balance sheet,” and has pledged to increase returns by extracting more resources like oil, minerals and timber.

Montana U.S. Rep. Troy Downing, a Republican who sponsored a resolution to revoke a management plan in his home state, argued during debate on the measure that Montana’s economy and energy demands rely on coal production.

“When the federal government acts recklessly, it is the responsibility of Congress to step in and course correct. … The war on coal must end,” he said.

What’s the Congressional Review Act?

The Congressional Review Act, which was signed into law in 1996, requires federal agencies to submit new regulations to Congress before they can take effect. Congress then has 60 working days to review those regulations, and may vote to revoke them.

If lawmakers reject a rule, federal agencies are barred from crafting a new one in “substantially the same form,” unless Congress passes a new law.

For 20 years, the Congressional Review Act was rarely invoked. But during Trump’s first term, Republicans used it to overturn 16 regulations, such as a rule to protect streams from coal mining pollution. Democrats used the act to revoke three rules from Trump’s first presidency.

But in 2025, Congress and Trump revoked 22 Biden-era rules.

“It seems increasingly popular from Congress as a way to get a quick win to reverse something that happened under the previous administration,” said Devin O’Dea, Western policy and conservation manager with Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, which has opposed efforts to open public lands for resource extraction. “The long-term implications are what we’re concerned about.”

Until recently, management plans for public lands were not considered subject to congressional review. Federal agencies have issued well over 100 such plans without ever submitting one to Congress. Those documents guide the work of agency officials who oversee specific areas of land, often covering millions of acres.

Created after years of public meetings and local feedback, they determine which landscapes will be leased for oil and gas drilling, protected for endangered species or open for off-road vehicles, along with a multitude of other uses.

But last year, Republicans asked the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan advisory agency for Congress, to affirm a sweeping new view of the Congressional Review Act. The office found that certain management plans were subject to review because their land-use decisions “prescribed policy,” and determined that lawmakers’ queries had opened the 60-day review “clock” for the plans in question.

“A very long deliberative process goes into these plans,” said Justin Meuse, government relations director for climate and energy with The Wilderness Society, a conservation nonprofit. “These plans are so broad and multifaceted and deal with so many different things. This is taking a hatchet to something that should be done with a scalpel.”

Using this new tool, Republicans have revoked plans that restricted mining and oil production on federal lands in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming. Meanwhile, House Republicans voted in January to overturn a regulation that blocked development of a mine near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota, a move that now awaits a vote in the Senate.

And GOP lawmakers from Utah are seeking to overturn the management plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in that state.

Conservation leaders say the rollbacks are unprecedented.

“It’s very surprising,” said Autumn Gillard, coordinator with the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition, a group of tribal nations working to protect the monument. “The (resource management plan) is created as a set of advisement points to land managers to reflect on when making decisions. It’s not a direct set of rules.”

In Minnesota, advocates for the Boundary Waters wilderness area say it is treasured for its pristine lakes, where paddlers can fill their water bottles straight from the surface. They fear efforts to allow a copper mine near the headwaters of the area will irreversibly pollute the most popular wilderness in the country.

“We weren’t expecting the Congressional Review Act to be on the table in this way,” said Libby London, communications director with Save the Boundary Waters, a coalition seeking to protect the wilderness area. “It sets a really scary precedent that undermines decades of land management decisions.”

Officials at the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management did not grant interview requests. Staff at the House Committee on Natural Resources did not grant an interview with U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican who chairs the committee and who has championed using the Congressional Review Act to allow more mining and drilling.

Legal questions

Environmental groups have condemned Republicans’ use of the act to push for more resource extraction. If Trump wants more mining and drilling, they say, then federal agencies should take the time to draft new management plans using the same rigorous process.

But perhaps more concerning to some public land stakeholders are the potential implications for a whole host of other lands. None of the plans issued by federal land managers over the past 30 years were ever submitted for review, because no one at the time considered them to be rules.

In other words, hundreds of plans covering millions of acres of land could be deemed invalid under the new congressional interpretation that they qualify as rules.

“That right there is chaos,” said Peter Van Tuyn, a longtime environmental lawyer and managing partner at Bessenyey & Van Tuyn LLC. “Those (plans) go across the full spectrum of what land managers do: conservation and preservation, mining approvals, oil and gas drilling, resource exploitation, public access and recreation. There’s a very real chance that a court could say that a resource management plan was never in effect and all the implementation actions under the umbrella of that plan are invalid.”

In a letter to the Bureau of Land Management late last year, The Wilderness Society and other organizations identified more than 5,000 oil and gas leases that could be legally invalid, as they were issued under management plans that were never reviewed by Congress.

Public lands advocates say the same logic could be applied to mining leases, grazing permits, logging, outdoor recreation and many other activities covered by agency planning documents. Many industries that rely on public lands, such as hunting and fishing guides, could be thrown into chaos.

“Let’s say you’re operating as an outfitter,” said Ryan Callaghan, president and CEO of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. “Having something like an entire resource management plan rolled back would be a huge curveball, and something you’d have an absolute inability to plan for as a business owner. It’s very reasonable to have a lot of questions as to what the ramifications are.”

Industry concerns

Some industry leaders are also worried about the precedent Congress is setting by wiping out plans that were created after years of local input and consultation.

“I’m fairly concerned about that,” said Kathleen Sgamma, a longtime oil and gas advocate who now serves as principal for Multiple-Use Advocacy, a consulting group focused on federal land policy. “It’s not unreasonable to think about a future day where there is a Democratic trifecta and they would be able to (revoke) old plans likewise.”

Sgamma was nominated by Trump to lead the Bureau of Land Management, but withdrew her nomination last spring amid fierce opposition from conservation groups, and following the publication of a memo in which she had criticized Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

She said she was less concerned with the idea that previous plans could be declared invalid. She argued that, if challenged, agency officials could submit those old plans to Congress and start the 60-day review “clock” before litigation advanced.

The greater uncertainty, Sgamma said, is the provision that agencies cannot adopt rules in “substantially the same form” as those that have been revoked by Congress. While Republicans intend to target restrictions on drilling and mining, they are using the Congressional Review Act to revoke entire plans. That could prevent agencies from issuing new plans covering less controversial topics, such as campgrounds and trails.

Van Tuyn, the environmental lawyer, shared that concern.

“If they have a plan that looks 80% like the previous plan, and a court says 80% is ‘substantially similar,’ what does the agency do? Go back to the drawing board and say 50%? You used to have all this public access and now you can’t?” he said.

The Public Lands Council, which advocates for ranchers who operate on public lands, did not respond to an interview request. Western Energy Alliance, which advocates for oil and natural gas production, did not grant an interview request. The American Petroleum Institute did not respond to an interview request. Public Lands For The People, which advocates for mining on public lands, did not respond to an interview request.

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

On the night of Jan. 2, there was an explosion on a well pad in eastern Ohio’s Guernsey County. In shaky Facebook videos, the volunteer fire department chief warned off “looky-loos,” as a burning tank fed dark, billowing clouds of smoke off in the distance.

The accident happened at the Groh well pad which is operated by Gulfport Engergy. No one was injured in the blast and first responders determined the safest course of action was to let the fire burn itself out. Guernsey County Emergency Management Agency issued an evacuation notice within half a mile of the well pad. The agency lifted its advisory about 14 hours later.

In a statement, Ohio Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Karina Cheung said the agency is still investigating the cause of the fire and assessing damage.

“Preliminary findings indicate that one containment tank was affected,” she said. “All produced fluids have been safely removed. There was no release of fluids into the environment and the well pad remains shut down and inactive.”

“There were no reported injuries, no reported impacts to wildlife, and no reported impacts to water,” she added.

Context and track record

But to some, the incident highlights concerns they’ve been raising for years about oil and gas drilling — particularly as exploration expands to state lands.

The Groh well pad sits about five miles from Salt Fork State Park. While the site doesn’t draw from within the park, the accident is a reminder that Salt Fork was recently opened to oil and gas exploration thanks to a 2022 law signed by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.

Those leases don’t allow well pads within the boundaries of state land, but opponents argue more exploration means more accidents. And with drilling infrastructure creeping closer, they contend, it’s a matter of time before those accidents affect public land.

“These are accidents that have great potential to cause people serious breathing and respiratory illnesses from air emissions alone,” Melinda Zemper from the organization Save Ohio Parks said.

Although she’s quick to note the difference in scale, Zemper compared the accident to the 2023 train derailment in East Palestine.

“Sometimes when you have explosions,” she added, “you don’t know what chemicals are going to be released into the soil and the water nearby the well pad.”

The group has organized opposition to drilling leases on public land since state officials began awarding them through the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Oil and Gas Land Management Commission.

Gulfport Energy has been awarded seven of those leases in Belmont and Monroe Counties.

Save Ohio Parks argues the recent Groh well pad fire isn’t an isolated incident.

In 2020, Gulfport agreed to a $3.7 million settlement with the U.S. EPA over its operations in Ohio. The company faced $1.7 million in penalties and was directed to invest $2 million in upgrades to reduce emissions at its facilities. The company has also had several accidents in Ohio, primarily related to spilling brine or other drilling fluid. In 2013, state officials fined the company a quarter million dollars over leaks at seven well pads in Belmont and Harrison Counties.

Ohio Capital Journal reached out to Gulfport Energy but got no response.

Accidents and reporting

Taking a step back, the organization FracTracker argued the Groh well pad explosion is a symptom of a broader problem. In an analysis of incident records from 2015 to 2023, Gwen Klenke found at least 1,900 well-related incidents reported in Ohio.

“I think the larger context is just that this industry is prone to accidents,” she said, “and that there will be accidents as we start to frack and extract on state lands — not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.”

The bulk of incidents Klenke documented have to do with release or discharge — of gas, brine or other chemicals involved in drilling. Nearly 160 of those incidents are classified as explosions or fires, but only two reference injury or property damage. Under ODNR designations, only three incidents are classified as major or severe since 2018.

Ohio Oil and Gas Association President Rob Rob Brundrett points to the lack of major incidents as “a testament to the industry’s rigorous safety standards and practices.”

“Considering that only .004 percent of ALL Ohio oil and gas operations have had a major reportable incident during that timeframe, I have, and will continue to, put our industry’s safety numbers against any other labor-intensive industry in Ohio,” he added.

But Klenke argues that low number of major incidents points to shortcomings in reporting and classification rather than a strong safety record. Kathiann Kowalski from the Energy News Network highlighted ODNR’s classification system in a 2023 report as well.

The agency relies on a matrix to determine the severity of an incident, but its criteria are subjective and complex. Does the burned-out tank at the Groh well pad constitute “moderate” or “major” on-site equipment damage? If the fire burned for at least 14 hours, does that push it into the category of a major incident (12-24 hours to control impact) or does the apparent lack of off-site spillage ratchet it down to a minor incident?

In her report, Klenke points to two other incidents involving explosions at homes that involved injuries. Because the reporting system allows just one category, they were listed as “explosion/fire,” but they could’ve also been listed as “injury” or “property damage” among other designations.

Klenke explained neither incident was listed as “major” or “severe” under ODNR’s designations.

“They were calling those moderate or minor explosions,” she said, “when those should really be considered major if they’re damaging property, they’re damaging folks’ health.”

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.

Well pad explosion raises concerns about drilling on Ohio public land is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.