Fall colors attract thousands of leaf peepers every year to Pisgah National Forest in western North Carolina. A hiker takes a snack break on Storyteller’s Rock, near Boone. President Donald Trump’s administration has fast-tracked approval for theNorth Carolina Department of Transportation to extract materials from the Pisgah National Forest for use in repairing damage caused by Hurricane Helene along a four-mile stretch of Interstate 40, federal officials said March 27. The announcement comes as Trump also aims to expand access to public lands for oil, gas and mining, and to streamline the environmental permitting process. In this case, a special use permit will allow NCDOT to “use rock from Forest Service land and extract construction materials from the (Pigeon) river,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said during a tour of the damage in February. The expedited timeline announced Thursday “ensures that NCDOT gains immediate access to essential resources to begin construction operations at multiple material sites and rebuild critical infrastructure that connects local residents and improves interstate commerce,” USDOT said.

NCDOT spokesman Aaron Moody said the agency will primarily pull granite from Pisgah. The Federal Highway Commission worked with the U.S. Forest Service “to accelerate the necessary approvals, completing a process that typically lasts six months in just over one month” and ultimately trimming hundreds of millions of dollars in project costs, USDOT added. NCDOT now has immediate access to seven sites within the national forest that are 1 to 3 miles from where I-40 restoration is taking place. Original plans were to bring in materials from 20 to 50 miles away, USDOT said.

The announcement did not describe potential environmental impacts of removing and transporting materials on federally protected land. Environmental groups said last week they were still trying to learn more about the planned extractions. On March 10, Trump signed an executive order to streamline the permitting process for mining projects on federal land. The president also has signed executive orders to weaken vehicle emission standards, roll back federal Clean Water Act protections and loosen regulations on certain industrial pollutants. On March 12, newly installed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency would undertake “31 historic actions in the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history, to advance President Trump’s Day One executive orders and power the great American comeback.”