The US needs real permitting reform

Vice President Kamala Harris may claim on her website that she will “cut red tape” to make it easier to build more housing , but a recent case in federal court , paired with her commitment to “environmental justice,” shows a Harris administration would only increase regulatory burdens on all construction projects, including clean energy projects.

The most powerful tool environmental activists have for shutting down construction projects of any type (housing, transportation, and energy) is the National Environmental Policy Act. When it was passed in 1970, few people realized how powerful the law was until it was used to shut down the construction of the Tellico Dam in Tennessee because of alleged damage to the habitat of the two-inch snail darter fish.

After the Supreme Court ruled for the snail darter over the people of Tennessee, it took a special act of Congress to exempt the project from NEPA before construction could be completed. However, Congress doesn’t have the time to exempt every construction project from NEPA, and it is not just federally funded projects that are subject to NEPA’s jurisdiction. Every time any federal agency takes any action, such as approving a permit, it must comply with NEPA’s burdensome review process.

If you want to know why the United States can’t build things anymore, NEPA is a big part of the answer.

And, of course, the Democratic Party has only made NEPA more burdensome over the years. Specifically, former President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 12898 in 1994, adding “environmental justice” to the list of matters that must be considered in any NEPA review. Now, Clinton’s executive order is not law. It did not legally add a new “environmental justice” requirement to the NEPA process. And courts have since held that failure to include an “environmental justice” is insufficient to stop a project.

However, if an agency includes an “environmental justice” component in its initial NEPA review, federal courts are now holding that they can stop projects by determining that those “environmental justice” reviews are insufficient. That is exactly what happened last month to two giant liquefied natural gas projects in Texas. When the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission included an “environmental justice” analysis of the project that only included a review of effects within a two-mile radius of the project, the Sierra Club and other radical environmentalists sued, claiming that it was inadequate. A Washington, D.C., circuit court agreed.

The project is now on hold. Thousands of construction jobs are at risk, as is the production of 27 million tons of liquefied natural gas every year. But the circuit court’s decision stretches well beyond this one project. The Biden-Harris administration issued new guidance this year forcing all federal agencies to include more burdensome environmental justice studies in all their NEPA reviews. This means radical environmental activists will find it much easier to find fault with agency NEPA reviews, which means more time in court and less time building things.

It doesn’t have to be this way. America can be a country that builds things again. We just need to massively reform the NEPA process. And that is exactly what Rep. Bruce Westerman’s (R-AR), House Natural Resources Committee chairman, new legislation does.

Not only does the bill limit the scope of what agencies must review, but it also makes it harder for activists to challenge reviews in court.

“This is not permitting reform. It is a flat-out NEPA demolition,” Defenders of Wildlife Vice President Robert Dewey said of the legislation.

Good.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Permitting reform is not just an energy-matter. NEPA has made all construction projects across the country far more expensive and time-consuming than they need to be. Apartment buildings, single-family homes, highways, train tracks, oil wells, solar farms, and transmission lines have all been burdened by NEPA.

The base of the Democratic Party doesn’t care. It prefers environmental stasis over economic growth . But the rest of the country does care. Independents, Republicans, and even moderate Democrats want the U.S. to be a country that builds things again. However, that can only happen after NEPA is reformed.