Biden goes backward on permitting reform
With the vast majority of voters disapproving of President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy, particularly inflation, one might expect that he would be doing everything in his power to grow the economy and restrain prices.
Unfortunately, he is more committed to appeasing environmental activists than he is to delivering prosperity.
On Tuesday, the White House Council on Environmental Quality finalized regulations that undid broad regulatory reforms enacted by former President Donald Trump in July of his final year in office.
Passed by Congress in 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act requires that any action undertaken by a federal agency must first undergo an environmental assessment. Such actions include not just funding for dams through programs such as the Tennessee Valley Authority — NEPA was first used to stop construction of the Tellico Dam in 1973 — but any project that requires federal action, including the simple issuance of a permit (e.g. the clearing brush by a private rancher on land leased from the federal government).
What makes NEPA so powerful is that it gave environmental activists the power to sue in federal court and stop any infrastructure project connected to the federal government simply by claiming whatever environmental assessment completed by the federal government was legally insufficient.
Since NEPA became law, the cost of interstate highway construction has more than tripled, as federal agencies are forced to perform costly reviews to avoid litigation. Even without litigation, to jump through all the necessary legal hoops, an average NEPA review takes over 4 1/2 years and costs $4.2 million.
Trump sought to minimize the cost by implementing commonsense reforms to the NEPA process. Under these, all NEPA reviews would have been completed by federal agencies within two years and would have adhered to strict new page limits. Trump also limited the scope of environmental review to immediate impacts, with no speculative harms such as future indirect carbon emissions.
Biden began undoing these reforms shortly after coming to office, and he finished the process on Tuesday. Under his new scheme, not only are all of Trump’s time and page limits repealed, but Biden has added extra items for federal agencies to consider, including future indirect impacts on climate emissions, “disproportionate adverse effects” on public health, and alternatives to mitigate “climate impacts.”
This extra red tape will cause more delays and higher costs for much-needed infrastructure. But environmental activists are happy. “We are thrilled to see NEPA straightened and restored,” National Audubon Society Senior Director of Climate Policy Sam Wojcicki said. “This rule will ensure that federal agencies are considering the environmental justice and climate impacts of projects,” Rosalie Winn of the Environmental Defense Fund added.
Hooray for “environmental justice,” whatever that is.
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In June 2011, after his trillion-dollar stimulus failed to produce the construction jobs he thought it would, then-President Barack Obama joked to North Carolina business leaders that “shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.” Getting federal projects funded and approved is tough with NEPA in the way.
Republicans introduced an amendment to Obama’s stimulus plan that would have waived NEPA for stimulus projects. Senate Democrats rejected it. They refuse to learn their permitting lesson.
