Trump Issues Memo to Speed Permitting by Updating Technology
President Donald Trump is ordering EPA and other agencies to “leverage technology” upgrades to speed permitting reviews, including eliminating the use of “paper-based applications and review processes,” reducing the length and increasing the accessibility of documents and maintaining “a readily available source of information relevant to the judicial review of any permits.”
In an April 15 memo, Trump notes the government’s current approach causes “significant delay to important infrastructure projects that impact our economic well-being. This will now change. My Administration will apply modern technologies to longstanding problems to deliver outstanding results at 21st-century speeds.”
It directs EPA and other agencies to “make maximum use of technology in environmental review and permitting processes for infrastructure projects of all kinds,” including roads, bridges, mines, factories and power plants.
It also sets a 45-day deadline for the chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) -- a position that remains without a nominee -- to issue a “Permitting Technology Action Plan” for modernizing technology, to be formed in consultation with the National Energy Dominance Council and relevant permitting agencies.
The plan should set a data and technology standard for permit applications and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews that must be implemented within 90 days and include minimum functional requirements for NEPA and permitting-related software. It should also include a roadmap for creating a unified permitting and NEPA review data system with shared servers; new platforms; resulting outcomes; and an implementation timeline.
Further, it calls for the CEQ chair to establish and lead, within 15 days, an “Interagency Permitting Innovation Center” to “design and test prototype tools that could be implemented under the permitting plan. This should include software for case management systems; application submission and tracking portals; automation of application and review processes; data exchange between agency systems; and acceleration of complex reviews.
A White House fact sheet says the memo “builds on” Trump’s Unleashing American Energy executive order (EO), which directed CEQ to rescind its NEPA regulations.
That action “removes a burdensome layer of bureaucracy, creating a clear path for agencies to expeditiously reform their own NEPA procedures.” The return of CEQ to a “consulting body, combined with the implementation of modern permitting technology, will enable better interagency coordination, resulting in the greatest and fastest permitting reform ever to take place.”
Growing Uncertainty
While Trump’s new permitting memo may ultimately result in faster issuance of permits, it comes amidst growing uncertainty about the policies governing project approvals.
For example, CEQ earlier this month directed all agencies to revoke their NEPA implementing rules and replace them with nonbinding guidance, walking back its earlier directive, as outlined in the EO, for agencies to reissue NEPA rules consistent with Trump-era CEQ NEPA requirements by early next year.
Eight agencies, including the Department of the Interior, face a June deadline to act, while EPA faces a September deadline.
It also comes days after CEQ revoked its rules April 11 and has yet to respond to the nearly 90,000 comments it received.
CEQ has not responded to a request for comment on why it is directing agencies to implement NEPA through guidance in lieu of rules but one source said it is because the White House “did not agree with the previous direction CEQ gave” for agencies to reissue their rules.
Brett Hartl of the Center for Biological Diversity says it is unclear why the Trump administration is intent on revoking NEPA rules.
“The law itself says that each agency should have regulations, so if we are following the plain meaning, then every agency should have regulations. If they just do guidance that signals that they cannot handle the workload in the time required by the executive orders, so they can’t have it both ways. If they want to get rid of the NEPA regulations and have each agency do their own, OK. But if they don’t want to have every agency do their own regulations, then they should never have scrapped the NEPA CEQ regs.”