White House looks to speed infrastructure pace

The Trump administration and congressional Republicans are eyeing changes to how environmental laws are enforced as part of major infrastructure legislation.

President Trump and his aides have been promising since before the inauguration that a $1 trillion infrastructure package would be coming. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao told senators recently that the proposal is “several weeks” away.

{mosads}While funding has long been a top focus of the legislation, Chao, the GOP and lobbyists say that changing or streamlining the environmental permitting process is likely to be a prominent feature of the bill.

Cutting down on the years it takes state and local governments to obtain permits under laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act is essential to accomplishing Trump’s goal of expanding and fixing the nation’s roads, bridges and airports, Republicans say.

Overhauling the rules would reduce the time it takes to build projects, cut costs and ultimately bring the country more and better infrastructure, they argue.

But Trump is likely to face pushback from Democrats and environmentalists, who see talk of reform as a threat to bedrock environmental protections.

The streamlining of permits has long been central to federal infrastructure discussions, and highway funding bills in 2012 and 2015 included measures exempting projects from certain requirements.

But the GOP says there’s significant room for improvement.

Trump used a 6-foot chart to illustrate the lengthy permitting process for a federally funded highway at an April meeting with business executives at the White House.

“This is anywhere from a 10- to 20-year process. You have … 17 agencies. You have hundreds and hundreds of permits. Many of them are statutory, where you can’t even apply for the second permit until six months go by,” Trump lamented. “So this is to build a highway. This is a simple highway.”

He told the executives gathered that he wanted to reduce the 10-year process down to four months.

Chao didn’t get into many specifics at the recent Senate hearing, except that the administration wants some permitting processes to happen concurrently. She said the goal is to reduce burdens while maintaining environmental protections.

“All of us care about the environment, and we care about all construction projects, and that they should be conducted in a way that is responsible. But as we examine the permitting part of construction projects, we find that … many times there are duplicative and redundant requirements which impede and slow down the approvals for a construction project,” she said.

“And so we are looking at those redundancies and seeing whether there’s some way, sometimes, where it would be appropriate to do things concurrently as well and not so much sequentially.”

Chao’s testimony was delivered to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which has held numerous meetings about the infrastructure package, including one focused primarily on environmental standards.

“Simplifying these processes will allow for construction companies to start hiring and for workers to begin building faster; it is a commonsense way to boost our economy and upgrade our public works,” Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said at the hearing. “If we find ways to streamline review processes, mindful of environmental protection and other public interests, then we can initiate projects more promptly.”

Advocates have some specific ideas for Trump and the GOP. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, for example, wants to make it easier for state agencies to take over the environmental review process from the federal government.

“These state DOTs are absolutely stewards of the environment, and they want to be, and they want to do the right thing,” said Shannon Eggleston, director of the environmental program at the group that represents state transportation departments. “It’s just really the processes and the cost and time of making those determinations could be a lot more efficient.”

Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a conservative group led by GOP mega-donors Charles and David Koch, sees the infrastructure bill as a way to consider larger reforms of the statutes that govern infrastructure projects.

“It seems to me that there is appetite within the administration to reevaluate these policies,” said Chrissy Harbin, spokeswoman for AFP. “We’re not saying scrap NEPA or get rid of the Clean Air Act. What we’re saying is, take time to vet these policies.”

To Democrats and environmentalists, the reforms being discussed are unnecessary at best and harmful at worst.

Scott Slesinger, legislative director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the real problem with infrastructure is funding, and permitting reforms can only go so far.

“Republicans want to do infrastructure, but they don’t want to pay for it,” he said. “They’ve been tip-toeing around the gas tax … and everyone knows that our infrastructure is suffering because of lack of funding for it, not because of streamlining.”

Sen. Tom Carper (Del.), the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the previous streamlining reforms should have a chance to take full effect before lawmakers consider more.

“We need to, I think, maybe hit the ‘pause’ button for a little bit and let us implement what was in the 2012 law and the 2015 law. And then we’ll see where we are,” he said.

“Is there more than we can do, should do? Perhaps. But let’s at least find how effective our 2012 and 2015 changes are.”

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) expressed more alarm at the prospect of changes to the rules. He fears that the streamlining talk is merely a veiled attack on environmental protections.

“I think it’s a slippery slope on all those, that once you begin to weaken them, waive them in the name of streamlining and expediting, you de-emphasize certain laws,” he said. “These will be seen as minor, collateral damage, in the scope of the world. And our job is to emphasize that they’re not.”