GETTING CLOSER TO ‘SHOVEL READY’

 

What better way to slow the growth of a dynamic country such as ours, than to impose restrictive and time consuming environmental regulations.  Was  that  possibly  the plan of the Green/Globalist/Marxist Movement?   Ya think???   Nancy

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Getting Closer to ‘Shovel Ready’

Environmental impact statements shouldn’t take 13 years and more than 16,000 pages.

The Editorial Board  January 13, 2020

Traffic backs up on Interstate 70 near Silverthorne, Colo., Jan. 7, 2018. PHOTO: THOMAS PEIPERT/ASSOCIATED PRESS

EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE:  On Thursday the Trump Administration released a proposed rule to streamline NEPA reviews. One highlight is that the process would have presumptive limits: two years and 300 pages for a full environmental impact statement; or a year and 75 pages for a smaller environmental assessment. Thorny cases could go longer with written approval by “a senior agency official of the lead agency.”

If you visit an aging American megaproject—say, the Hoover Dam—you’ll probably see a startling statistic about how quickly it was built. Congress authorized the damming of the Colorado River in 1928, construction started in 1931, and the 726-foot concrete wonder opened in 1936. That’s a “shovel ready” job.

Today even modest public works, including roads, bridges and airport runways, can spend years in limbo, no thanks to the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. That 1970 law requires an environmental study of any major project that involves federal funding or permitting. NEPA hasn’t been overhauled in 40 years, which is why the Trump Administration deserves applause for moving last week to modernize it.

Everybody wants to protect the environment. But NEPA isn’t doing the job sensibly. No single agency has responsibility for its enforcement, unlike the Clean Water Act or the Clean Air Act. There’s no obligation for the feds to keep a specific timeline. Environmental assessments and impact statements are often monstrously detailed, since agencies and sponsors are trying to make them litigation proof.

The result is a regulatory morass. From 2013 to 2017, the average final impact statement took more than four years and ran 669 pages, the Council on Environmental Quality said last summer. The longest file was for a contentious 12-mile expansion of Interstate 70 in Denver. The final report ran 8,951 pages, plus another 7,307 pages of appendices. The whole rigmarole took 13 years.

That kills time, wastes taxpayer money, discourages development, and makes the government opaque to people without lawyers on retainer. Even bureaucrats don’t examine all this stuff. As Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said on a call with reporters: “When I asked our senior managers if they were reading these documents that were several thousand pages long, they said, emphatically, no.”

In 2017 Philip Howard’s outfit, Common Good, estimated the cost of a blanket six-year delay on big projects. He came up with $3.7 trillion, including environmental losses, injuries to health, highway congestion, and so forth. Think about it: 13 years of studying I-70 is 13 years of Coloradans cursing traffic while their engines vaporize gasoline in first gear.

On Thursday the Trump Administration released a proposed rule to streamline NEPA reviews. One highlight is that the process would have presumptive limits: two years and 300 pages for a full environmental impact statement; or a year and 75 pages for a smaller environmental assessment. Thorny cases could go longer with written approval by “a senior agency official of the lead agency.”

There’s some tightening of definitions. Courts have held that NEPA doesn’t apply to projects “with minimal Federal involvement or funding,” the proposal says. It would codify this understanding of case law, while also asking the public to opine on “whether there should be a threshold (percentage or dollar figure)” and how it might be set.

Liberals are atwitter because the rule would delete language that requires evaluating a project’s “cumulative impact.” That’s a fuzzy concept—which is why environmentalists love it, since they can claim that a study of an oil pipeline didn’t account correctly for its contribution to the rising sea level in 2100.

“Determining the geographic and temporal scope of such effects has been difficult,” the proposal says, leading to “encyclopedic documents that include information that is irrelevant or inconsequential to the decision-making process.” Instead agencies should focus on effects that are “reasonably foreseeable” and “have a reasonably close causal relationship.” This could still include greenhouse emissions.

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Characterizing the Democratic response as “knee jerk” would be an insult to knees, or jerks, or both. “This means more polluters will be right there next to the water supply of our children,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. Two things she might consider: First, NEPA also slows progressive priorities, like public transit. A study of Maryland’s purple light-rail line ran for 9,225 total pages and 10 years. The American Wind Energy Association welcomed NEPA reform last week, blaming the outdated rules for “unreasonable and unnecessary costs and long project delays.”

Second, streamlined permitting means more work for organized labor. Standing with President Trump on Thursday at the White House was Sean McGarvey, head of North America’s Building Trades Unions. “This proposal does nothing to take away from the protections for our citizens, for our taxpayers, for our workers, or for our environment,” he said. Mr. McGarvey added that he’s hoping for thousands of new construction jobs.

The NEPA rule won’t be finalized for 60 days, leaving room for public comment. In the interim, here’s a public comment: It’s about time.

 

 

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