Cutting red tape is tough. President Trump deserves praise for his latest effort, which should end the choke hold that the environmental movement has placed on economic growth and jobs.
Ironically, the reforms proposed by Trump must now clear a unique hurdle: the additional red tape which surrounds every effort to change existing regulations.
Long-entrenched regulations have allowed the misuse of the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act. These abuses often block improvements to infrastructure.
Just ask eco-friendly Colorado about the 13 years it took to produce an environmental impact statement for widening super-congested Interstate 70 near Denver. The monster document required hundreds of public meetings and was 15,951 pages long. That much paper also kills a lot of trees.
Almost two-thirds of highway projects must wait six years or more for environmental reviews, and only 7% of reviews are done within two years, according to the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The council in January issued Trump’s revised regulations to streamline the process of these environmental reviews.
The average impact statement now runs over 600 pages. The new maximum would be only 150 pages, unless “senior agency officials” approve 300 or more pages.
A new time limit is also set. Environmental assessments must be completed within one year, and environmental impact statements must be finished within two years (again, unless exceptions are granted by senior-level officials, who must be assistant department secretaries or higher).
Standardized NEPA policies are established to prevent rogue agencies from designing their own.
Also added is a new requirement saying, “These regulations do not create a cause of action or right of action for violation of NEPA, which contains no such cause of action or right of action,” and “minor, non-substantive errors that have no effect on agency decision making shall be considered harmless and shall not invalidate an agency action.”
Hopefully this will end lawsuits that use technicalities to block projects for additional years and waste millions of dollars.
But these and other reforms must survive a bureaucratic gauntlet before they go into force. A 60-day public comment period is underway until March 10. Then, unless the new rule is made final before the end of May, in 2021, the new Congress and president (should Trump not win reelection) would have time to block it under the Congressional Review Act.
Overzealous environmental pressure groups are trying to use the online public comment portal to raise questions and create delays. Already they have organized and posted over 11,000 complaints based on “climate change,” more than 4,000 objections from people calling themselves a “national park lover,” 3,000-plus protesting a “negative impact on birds,” and over 12,000 who label the reforms as “misguided” or “dangerous.”
The pro-growth forces are not nearly as well-organized as the green machine. But the red-tape delays can also hurt green causes:
- The major Vineyard Wind project off the New England coast is now stalled by extended government environmental reviews.
- In Nevada, the Spring Valley wind farm was delayed seven years by NEPA reviews.
- Citing NEPA, activists have filed lawsuits halting a major wind energy site at Lake Erie. That type of lawsuit might not be possible under the proposed new regulations.
Of course, fossil fuel projects are also hampered by NEPA. So are many transportation projects. In addition to Denver’s:
- A new transit line in Maryland was delayed 14 years.
- The Taos, New Mexico, airport had a 20-year delay.
- Seattle’s airport suffered a 15-year environmental review delay.
- The New York-New Jersey Bayonne Bridge had a 10-year wait.
There are many other examples and too many lawsuits. A Federalist Society report documents billions of dollars wasted and over 4,000 NEPA lawsuits against federal agencies, often with taxpayers footing the bill for lawyers on both sides.
Trump’s proposal won’t end environmental protections, but it will speed up the studies and cut out the nonsense. Winning this fight against the Red Tape Monster will benefit people all over the country.
Former congressman Ernest Istook is president of Americans for Less Regulation, a practicing attorney, and teaches political science.
