OPINION:
Build American. President Biden tagged this phrase when he visited my congressional district last year, and I hear it from my Republican colleagues on my side of the aisle nearly every day.
Regardless of political party, there’s no question we all want to build American There’s just one problem.
It’s nearly impossible to “Build American” under the federal government’s burdensome permitting and regulatory framework.
Whether it is tapping into our domestic energy resources, constructing the transmission lines that power American homes and businesses, building roads and bridges, preventing wildfires, or responding to droughts, you can thank the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for holding up these critical projects, and in some cases effectively killing them altogether.
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, “The NEPA process begins when a federal agency develops a proposal to take a major federal action.” In other words, if you want to drill for oil on public lands, you must go through NEPA. If you are building a natural gas plant, you must go through NEPA. If your local highway project receives federal funding or traverses a strip of federal land, you must go through NEPA.
Its scope is broad, ambiguous, and given the number of projects that get swept up in its expansive dragnet, compliance adds years sometimes even a decade to project completion times.
For instance, it takes more than ten years to permit a mine in America. Yet, Canada and Australia, both with similar environmental standards, can permit one in less than three.
And that’s just one sector.
Take, for example, President Obama’s federal pilot program in 2011 to accelerate the permitting process for seven major transmission line projects. More than ten years and two presidents later, only two of them have been completed. The rest remain stuck in various stages of NEPA’s byzantine no-man’s-land, incomplete, or abandoned.
The costs of consigning major infrastructure and development projects to this never-ending bureaucratic treadmill are not simply academic.
We are already seeing the effects today as home heating bills were up 18% nationwide this winter, many states continue to receive rolling blackouts warnings, and as the United States imports 80% of its rare earth elements directly from Communist China, despite being the leader in element production 40 years ago.
We are also seeing the effects of NEPA as it relates to keeping our federal forests and lands healthy. This “bedrock environmental law” delays the mechanical treatments needed to prevent catastrophic wildfires.
As Americans struggle under the weight of soaring energy prices, sit in gridlocked traffic, or prepare to face another wildfire season, NEPA continues to hold important land management and construction projects hostage, trapped in a permanent state of analysis paralysis.
Meanwhile, the workers and employers mobilized to do this work face uncertainty, delays, and potential layoffs, while taxpayer dollars are frittered away on paperwork and red tape instead of concrete and steel.
It’s time for lawmakers to roll up our sleeves and modernize this antiquated, half-century-old law.
One key first step was House passage of H.R. 1, the Lower Energy Costs Act.
The bill holds federal decisionmakers accountable. By setting time limits for completion of NEPA reviews at one year for environmental assessments and two years for environmental impact statements. It also puts limits on endless litigation by imposing a 120-day deadline on legal challenges to final agency actions concerning energy and mining projects. These reforms will ensure that key projects are not constantly subjected to death by delay.
Furthermore, H.R. 1 cuts through bureaucratic red tape by requiring that certain low-impact activities and activities in previously studied areas on public lands are not classified as major federal actions under NEPA. This would allow a wide variety of projects to be expedited and completed in a timely manner.
America produces the cleanest oil, gas, and critical minerals in the world, but that doesn’t do us any good if they are locked up in a straitjacket of archaic policies and perpetual legal action.
If we are serious about “Building American,” and ensuring that the 21st century will be an American Century and not a Communist Chinese century, it starts with getting our own house in order. That starts with enacting the kind of commonsense NEPA reforms included in H.R. 1.
• U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, Wisconsin Republican, is Chairman of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands. He represents the state’s 7th Congressional District.
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