Jonathan Wood
In 2011, President Obama issued a
presidential memorandum
urging federal agencies to “take steps to expedite permitting and
review,” including “setting clear schedules for completing steps in the
environmental review and permitting process.” Such bureaucratic delays,
Obama explained, interfered with the “engine of job creation and
economic growth[.]” In recognizing the significant costs that
excess bureaucracy imposes, Obama was in good company. Presidents of
both political parties long have sought to make the National
Environmental Policy Act (
NEPA)
— a federal statute that requires agencies to produce reports on the
environmental effects on their actions — work for the American people...This month,
President Trump’s Council on Environmental Quality
proposed
the most comprehensive reworking of NEPA regulations in four decades,
intending to finally solve some of these problems. Among the changes
outlined are a formal goal of completing environmental reviews within
two years, establishing a presumptive page limit of 300 pages, and
clarifying how agencies should decide what environmental effects to
focus on. Critics of the proposal charge that this undermines
public participation and informed decision-making. The first objection
can be answered easily. Most people reading this never have seen — much
less attempted to read — a draft environmental impact statement, and the
few who tried to review one likely got discouraged well before they
reached page 1,000 of the document. A complicated, years-long process
favors litigious special-interest groups at the expense of participation
by ordinary people. Informed, reasoned decision-making is a goal
that few oppose. But in NEPA’s case, agencies extensively analyzing
every minor or speculative impact can have a significant cost and one
that likely exceeds any benefit. Nor is this simply an economic
development versus the environment issue. The delays and expense
associated with an overly bureaucratic process also pose real
environmental costs. Most directly, they deplete funds that agencies
otherwise might spend advancing their missions. More significant,
if less obvious, is that NEPA’s delays and expenses can undermine
innovation. Erecting substantial obstacles to new facilities creates a
competitive advantage for existing competitors, even if those existing
facilities have more significant adverse environmental impacts. Finally, doing nothing risks wholesale exemptions from environmental review for politically salient projects. Congress
has authorized
the president to waive a host of environmental regulations to build
border infrastructure and has considered similar exemptions for other
infrastructure projects. A more efficient NEPA process likely would
reduce political pressure for such exemptions...
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