The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee this week advanced a bill that would revamp the federal permitting process for infrastructure projects.
The legislation was introduced by U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), as the Federal Permitting Reform and Jobs Act. It builds on efforts already undertaken by Portman and U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) in 2015, under the Federal Permitting Improvement Act. That act eventually became part of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, reforming the federal infrastructure permitting system in the process and creating the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, while leaving environmental protections intact.
“Since 2015, dozens of projects have benefited from FAST-41’s common-sense process that provides increased transparency and better communication between agencies charged with permitting infrastructure projects,” Portman said. “Those projects have included everything from natural gas pipelines to wind, solar, and hydro-electric energy projects. And not only is FAST-41 benefiting our nation’s infrastructure, it is helping to create good jobs.”
For covered projects, FAST-41 reduced the statute of limitations for challenges under the National Environmental Policy Act from six years to two. The new bill would, if passed, extend the FAST-41 process to more transportation projects, expand the consulting authority of the Permitting Council and ask agencies to demonstrate how they will achieve permitting within two years or why they cannot. Most importantly, the bill would make FAST-41 permanent, rather than locked into its current seven-year sunset clause.
“The Permitting Council has saved projects more than a billion dollars so far. And we’ve now learned that for projects that voluntarily applied to become covered projects, the permitting process takes, on average, 2.3 years less than it would otherwise,” Portman said. “The goal of this legislation is to make FAST-41’s benefits permanent, apply it to more federal projects to ensure they get done on time and under budget and expand the authority of the Permitting Council to see to it that those things happen.”