Welcome to America's dreaded process for issuing construction permits. This process was made famous by former President Barack Obama's lament. His administration struggled to spend stimulus during the Great Recession. - ready project.
statement of impact.As required by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, it must be prepared each time a federal agency takes action or approves a project with significant environmental impact. there is.It will take years to develop and implement these statements. Hundreds or thousands of pagesAs soon as it is completed, it becomes the subject of lawsuits from parties trying to slow down the project, claiming that problems were overlooked.
According to Common Good, a bipartisan research organization with a bipartisan advisory board, the resulting delay cost America trillion dollars. Old infrastructure will not be renewed, new and clean energy sources will not be developed, and as a result the environmental quality will be compromised and not improved.
As a condition of his support for the climate change bill, West his Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said his party would also take up a "side deal” was secured. Next month, it will prioritize the approval of certain energy-related projects (including those in West Virginia), lock in review process timelines, and authorize sweeping reforms to shorten the length of litigation.
Despite the enormous costs of stalled development and the obstacles it poses to the Democrats' own stated priorities, Party members have traditionally resisted all efforts at such reforms. On the contrary, the Biden administrationhas worked to undo the reforms implemented by the Trump administration that limited the scope of review to the direct and foreseeable impacts of the project. Manchin no longer has the power to rally support on this issue because the vote was first.
Why not allow reform, a bipartisan priority? Democrats say they care about the environment, but it's a weird way to do it. Countries with entrenched environmental concerns, such as Germany, Canada and Australia, all haveefficient and streamlined permitting processesto reach fast final decisions and enable projects to move forward. .
Also note that theNational Environmental Policy Actor NEPA provide no real protection. Laws such as the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act make various activities that can harm the environment illegal. But all NEPA does is create red tape, incentives for bureaucrats to act as slowly as possible, and endless opportunities for litigation over whether the process was fully followed. Remember, NEPA complaints are not about whether someone is harming the environment. It's about whether someone wrote a good enough report on the environment.
The passion to maintain NEPA comes from environmental activists and lawyers who look to NEPA to stop projects that have no legal basis to stop. This becomes apparent when they start listing the many horribly tainted projects they fear will move forward without adequate NEPA review. But of course, laws already exist to ban projects that pose unacceptable environmental risks. Can be stopped without NEPA review. And if activists want to keep more projects off-limits, they can lobby to make those laws tougher. Instead, they look to NEPA to enable them to achieve through bureaucracy what they could never achieve through democratic processes.
Allied with these activists are homeowners who want access to every tool possible to stop development that could erode property values. They are easily spotted at local hearings,about several salamander speciesendangered by affordable housing developments scheduled to be built near their neighborhoods. Sudden Concernprofesses support for affordable housing without sacrificing salamanders.
Laws like NEPA and many state-level equivalents weaponize such baseless petitions into a viable threat of legal action. In a recent high-profile case, when Berkeley, California residents filed a lawsuit under the state's Environmental Quality Act, the judge concluded: It succeeded in temporarily halting the expansion of enrollment at the city's public universities. Additional students may "cause an adverse change or alteration of the physical environment."
On the one hand, this kind of problem scares politicians. Politicians want more projects to build faster, but they feel more pressure from vocal stalwarts than from the majority of voters who don't want to create a federal government. ing. case out. On the one hand, such issues would be of great significance if leaders could show people the link between the tedious details of policy and the very real ways it affects their lives. It provides an opportunity to take action that wins public support. Departure factories and housing shortages. Most voters support getting things done.
The key is to go beyond technical fixes that might improve the process slightly, such as 'inter-agency coordination' or 'estimated time limits', and instead focus the problem on the main Recognize it as one of the diseases. America.
It's time to completely phase out NEPA. People must obey laws that protect the environment. It's not a law that requires you to write a book report on the environment. Create a right to build so that citizens can seek quick remedies in court if a project becomes embroiled in bureaucracy. If the activist loses the lawsuit, we will have them pay the full cost of the lawsuit as well as the costs of delaying the project.
"There is nothing wrong that cannot be cured by what is right in America," former President Bill Clinton proclaimed in his first inaugural address.He may also have added: Could be something wrong with America, yet another environmental impact statement is amended. But there are many problems that can be solved more easily if you spend less time on paperwork.