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Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - We need to simplify environmental permits to boost their impact
In the clash between the competing pro-petroleum and pro-climate visions of the economy, few policy issues are as misunderstood and complicated as our nation's environmental permitting systems. The number of permitting actions is enormous. During a single presidential term, approximately 1.5 million permitting, informal review, and consultation processes are overseen under just five environmental and historic preservation laws. Many of these cover minor actions that would never have required permits in the 1970s and 1980s. Consider the National Environmental Policy Act. Roughly 400,000 'categorical exclusions' are processed under this law each presidential term, compared to about 1,000 major reviews called 'environmental impact statements.' An exclusion isn't an absence of review; instead, it is akin to a simpler kind of permit. There are categorical exclusions to cover summer picnics by federal agencies, a 90- to 120-day exclusion process for a loan to replace powerlines across North Dakota wheat fields, or exclusions for every Agriculture Department grant to a farmer. Most exclusions involve minimal staff hours and are completed in weeks to months, making it hard to object to any one review. But collectively, their issuance requires hundreds of staff and millions of days of project delays. Over four years, about a million similar, small permit processes will run their course under the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and especially the National Historic Preservation Act. Yet almost all the attention on reform has focused on the small number of 'big' permits. For example, President Biden's permitting team reported cutting 25 percent off the average processing time for those 1,000 major environmental impact statements, compared to the first Trump administration, whose permits were also faster than the administration of Obama. On big permits, Democratic administrations have favored adding staff to write and review documents. That strategy works, but it can be hard to maintain, particularly if agency budgets get cut. And most of the laborious steps to finish an impact statement remained unchanged, with some becoming more expansive. Republicans tend to favor the wholesale elimination of major permits — at least for fossil fuel infrastructure — and cutting staff. That pattern showed up across President Trump's executive orders. If maintained by courts and Congress, those orders would eliminate some National Environmental Policy Act regulations and skip most requirements to protect clean water and endangered wildlife by calling permit issuance an emergency. Democrats are increasingly flirting with exemptions for different categories of projects — wind and solar instead of oil and gas, for example. A problem with taking away major permits is that they often have very significant impacts on things that communities in both red and blue states value. Permit reviews can produce much less harmful outcomes. Addressing the millions of smaller permits is a missed opportunity with fewer downsides. First, we should entirely eliminate thousands of small permits by defining the actions they cover as not 'major federal actions' — the original, intended scope of the National Environmental Policy Act. For instance, a provision in proposed permitting legislation redefines all grants and loans this way. This change would benefit thousands of towns, cities, nonprofits and businesses that receive federal funding and wouldn't affect public input because few categorical exclusions ever involve the public in the first place. Second, we can improve remaining small permit processes by expanding reforms that have proven successful in dramatically accelerating timelines and reducing workload while still avoiding or compensating for harms caused by projects. For example, government agencies are increasingly using technology-based 'dashboards' that allow anyone to track the status of an application and exactly which staff are reviewing it. Virginia has achieved the greatest success with this technology, alongside procedural reforms, delivering an expected 70 percent reduction in application review times for 200,000 state decisions over four years. The Department of Energy is piloting AI technologies that could allow more than 80 percent of small permit documents to be machine written. Self-permitting under general permits is another promising reform. Projects that agree to use what are effectively common-sense best practices to avoid harm are automatically approved if they submit the paperwork that proves those practices will be followed. General permits exist under clean water and wildlife laws, although the paperwork required to get these automatic approvals could still be significantly reduced. Offsets — which are opportunities to compensate for unavoidable environmental impacts — also help. Having a supply of pre-approved beneficial offsets has sped up some Clean Water Act permitting by 50 percent. We can't build everything Americans want without having any environmental effect, and having offsets available allows unavoidable harm to be balanced with benefits to similar environmental features nearby. The most important change needed to improve or eliminate millions of small procedures is a culture shift among both permitting agencies and permit applicants. Many government staff are dedicated public servants, but some view institutional caution as a mission and environmental permitting as a battleground instead of an opportunity to problem-solve with constituents. On the other side, many applicants blame agencies when they themselves have submitted flawed or incomplete applications, proposed unreasonable projects, or rejected the idea of regulatory oversight, failing to respect the reality that most Americans want to unlock growth while also stewarding the environment. Making a million small processes more agile, responsive and effective is a key step toward a government that strikes these balances, and that serves the needs of all Americans. Timothy Male is the executive director of the nonprofit Environmental Policy Innovation Center. Dave Owen is an environmental law expert at UC Law San Francisco, specializing in water, land use and administrative law. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
a day ago
- Politics
- The Hill
We need to simplify environmental permits to boost their impact
In the clash between the competing pro-petroleum and pro-climate visions of the economy, few policy issues are as misunderstood and complicated as our nation's environmental permitting systems. The number of permitting actions is enormous. During a single presidential term, approximately 1.5 million permitting, informal review, and consultation processes are overseen under just five environmental and historic preservation laws. Many of these cover minor actions that would never have required permits in the 1970s and 1980s. Consider the National Environmental Policy Act. Roughly 400,000 'categorical exclusions' are processed under this law each presidential term, compared to about 1,000 major reviews called 'environmental impact statements.' An exclusion isn't an absence of review; instead, it is akin to a simpler kind of permit. There are categorical exclusions to cover summer picnics by federal agencies, a 90- to 120-day exclusion process for a loan to replace powerlines across North Dakota wheat fields, or exclusions for every Agriculture Department grant to a farmer. Most exclusions involve minimal staff hours and are completed in weeks to months, making it hard to object to any one review. But collectively, their issuance requires hundreds of staff and millions of days of project delays. Over four years, about a million similar, small permit processes will run their course under the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and especially the National Historic Preservation Act. Yet almost all the attention on reform has focused on the small number of 'big' permits. For example, President Biden's permitting team reported cutting 25 percent off the average processing time for those 1,000 major environmental impact statements, compared to the first Trump administration, whose permits were also faster than the administration of Obama. On big permits, Democratic administrations have favored adding staff to write and review documents. That strategy works, but it can be hard to maintain, particularly if agency budgets get cut. And most of the laborious steps to finish an impact statement remained unchanged, with some becoming more expansive. Republicans tend to favor the wholesale elimination of major permits — at least for fossil fuel infrastructure — and cutting staff. That pattern showed up across President Trump's executive orders. If maintained by courts and Congress, those orders would eliminate some National Environmental Policy Act regulations and skip most requirements to protect clean water and endangered wildlife by calling permit issuance an emergency. Democrats are increasingly flirting with exemptions for different categories of projects — wind and solar instead of oil and gas, for example. A problem with taking away major permits is that they often have very significant impacts on things that communities in both red and blue states value. Permit reviews can produce much less harmful outcomes. Addressing the millions of smaller permits is a missed opportunity with fewer downsides. First, we should entirely eliminate thousands of small permits by defining the actions they cover as not 'major federal actions' — the original, intended scope of the National Environmental Policy Act. For instance, a provision in proposed permitting legislation redefines all grants and loans this way. This change would benefit thousands of towns, cities, nonprofits and businesses that receive federal funding and wouldn't affect public input because few categorical exclusions ever involve the public in the first place. Second, we can improve remaining small permit processes by expanding reforms that have proven successful in dramatically accelerating timelines and reducing workload while still avoiding or compensating for harms caused by projects. For example, government agencies are increasingly using technology-based 'dashboards' that allow anyone to track the status of an application and exactly which staff are reviewing it. Virginia has achieved the greatest success with this technology, alongside procedural reforms, delivering an expected 70 percent reduction in application review times for 200,000 state decisions over four years. The Department of Energy is piloting AI technologies that could allow more than 80 percent of small permit documents to be machine written. Self-permitting under general permits is another promising reform. Projects that agree to use what are effectively common-sense best practices to avoid harm are automatically approved if they submit the paperwork that proves those practices will be followed. General permits exist under clean water and wildlife laws, although the paperwork required to get these automatic approvals could still be significantly reduced. Offsets — which are opportunities to compensate for unavoidable environmental impacts — also help. Having a supply of pre-approved beneficial offsets has sped up some Clean Water Act permitting by 50 percent. We can't build everything Americans want without having any environmental effect, and having offsets available allows unavoidable harm to be balanced with benefits to similar environmental features nearby. The most important change needed to improve or eliminate millions of small procedures is a culture shift among both permitting agencies and permit applicants. Many government staff are dedicated public servants, but some view institutional caution as a mission and environmental permitting as a battleground instead of an opportunity to problem-solve with constituents. On the other side, many applicants blame agencies when they themselves have submitted flawed or incomplete applications, proposed unreasonable projects, or rejected the idea of regulatory oversight, failing to respect the reality that most Americans want to unlock growth while also stewarding the environment. Making a million small processes more agile, responsive and effective is a key step toward a government that strikes these balances, and that serves the needs of all Americans. Timothy Male is the executive director of the nonprofit Environmental Policy Innovation Center. Dave Owen is an environmental law expert at UC Law San Francisco, specializing in water, land use and administrative law.
New York Times
a day ago
- General
- New York Times
Does a River Have Legal Rights?
In early May, an orange floral fire burned across Northern California river banks in celebration: an explosion of poppies, goldenrod and other native plants, marking the first spring after the biggest de-damming project in U.S. history liberated the Klamath River from its confinements. The recovery of the wider Klamath watershed began last year with the demolition of four dams, and the free-flowing river now provides roughly 400 miles of restored habitat for salmon and steelhead trout. It's also creating wetlands, helping the regrowth of forests and brush and leading to major improvements in water quality. The Klamath's revival is a beacon of hope at a time of deep ecological gloom for the United States. President Trump and his administration have made clear their intention to drastically de-prioritize the natural world in favor of economic interests. Rivers and other freshwater bodies are among the ecosystems most vulnerable to this rapid reorientation. In declaring a national energy emergency, a Trump executive order effectively waived large portions of the Clean Water Act to fast-track energy projects, weakening protections for free-flowing rivers and increasing the risk of watershed pollution from mining and drilling. River health is also now threatened by the administration's drive to expand American timber production; logging degrades water quality by increasing soil erosion and sediment runoff. By narrowing the definition of 'the waters of the United States,' the Environmental Protection Agency has made it easier for pollutants such as fertilizers, pesticides and mining waste to enter bodies of water. The doctrine of human supremacy, which waxes strong in the current administration, portrays life as a hierarchy with humans at the top, rather than a web within which humans are entangled. Consider that a scant 0.0002 percent of Earth's total water flows in rivers at any given time, yet rivers have been vital, fragile accomplices to human flourishing for thousands of years. To view rivers only as sources and drains is to reduce them to base functions rather than to see them as the life-giving, world-shaping forces they are. Over the past 20 years, a powerful movement has emerged that contests human exploitation of the natural world. It is usually known as the rights of nature movement, and it calls for recognizing the inherent, inalienable rights of ecosystems and natural communities to exist and flourish. At its best, the rights of nature movement challenges anthropocentric presumptions, which are embedded in our laws and imaginations. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Chicago Tribune
3 days ago
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
IDEM releases new inspection report for U.S. Steel facility
A new inspection by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management has been positive for U.S. Steel's Midwest plant in Portage. The Midwest plant received satisfactory results in most areas, including receiving waters; effluent/discharge; permit; stormwater; facility/site; operation; maintenance; sludge; flow measurement; laboratory; records/reports; and enforcement. The facility received marginal ratings in self-monitoring and effluent limits compliance. Marginal ratings are just below satisfactory and still considered acceptable. The facility has a history with chemical spills, as recently as 2019 when the plant shut down due to a hexavalent chromium discharge, according to Post-Tribune archives. A spokesperson for U.S. Steel said in a Wednesday email that IDEM inspections occur 'fairly regularly.' The U.S. Steel Midwest plant is on an accelerated inspection schedule, said an IDEM spokesperson in an email. 'Since 2024, IDEM has conducted nine wastewater inspections at the U.S. Steel (facility),' the statement said. IDEM did not say why U.S. Steel is on an accelerated pace and if it is because of past incidents at the Midwest plant. National Pollution Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permitted facilities usually receive regular inspections every two years, according to IDEM. The Clean Water Act prohibits discharging pollutants through a point source into U.S. waters unless a group has an NPDES permit, which can limit discharge, monitoring and reporting requirements, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The permit helps ensure discharge doesn't hurt water quality or public health. U.S. Steel's NPDES permit is valid through Sept. 30, 2026, according to the industrial facility inspection report. The most recent inspection was completed on March 5. 'The latest IDEM inspection shows that U.S. Steel continues to meet our environmental obligations and adhere to the limits set forth in our operating permit,' said a statement from U.S. Steel. 'Environmental excellence is a top priority for the dedicated employees at all of our facilities, and we are always working to improve our processes and invest in technologies that will help us meet that goal. We also continue to work collaboratively with IDEM and other agencies to comply with our permit requirements.' The Portage-based Midwest plant is a steel finishing facility that operates as part of Gary Works, according to U.S. Steel's website. The plant creates tin mill products and hot-dip galvanized, cold-rolled and electrical lamination steels. The products are used in automotive, construction, container and electrical industries, according to IDEM's website. Receiving waters for the Midwest plant include the Burns Waterway, which the facility had previously released chemicals into, according to Post-Tribune archives. One chemical included hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen that can lead to nasal and sinus cancers, kidney and liver damage, nasal and skin irritation and ulceration, and eye irritation and damage, according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. In 2017, a spill at the plant leaked more than 900 pounds of the chemical, leading to closures of beaches in and near the Indiana Dunes National Park. Low levels of a carcinogen were found in Lake Michigan because of a pipe failure at the steel plant, which caused contaminated water to be released to the wrong wastewater treatment plant. In 2019, the facility was offline for about a week due to the hexavalent chromium discharge. U.S. Steel recorded a spike of .845 pounds per day, according to Post-Tribune archives.
Time of India
4 days ago
- Science
- Time of India
SpaceX's 9th Starship rocket loses control during test flight; what went wrong this time?
Elon Musk's giant Starship rocket launched again from Texas on May 27 for another test flight. This time, the rocket lost control of its altitude due to a leak. SpaceX announcers said during the live broadcast that a controlled landing was unlikely. Starship had a similar problem during its third test flight. Two test flights ended in explosions over the Caribbean, scattering debris and forcing airplanes to change course in early 2025 too. Starship, the largest rocket ever built, on Tuesday's (May 27) flight, used 33 engines in its lower stage, called 'Super Heavy' to lift the rocket to near space. After separation, Starship ignited its six engines and flew around Earth for less than an hour, performing several tests. The rocket was supposed to launch dummy satellites, but a door on the spacecraft did not open as planned. Coverage of the flight ended when contact was lost with the rocket. Announcers predicted the rocket would land in a disoriented position. SpaceX planned to land the booster over water. The company wanted to test whether the booster could land safely without one of its three center engines firing. This engine was deliberately turned off to see if the other engines could handle the landing. Live Events Starship has made similar flights three times before. However, it never flew beyond North America on its last two flights. Both times, it exploded shortly after launch, sending debris over the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos and forcing flight diversions. The launchpad is near a state park and wildlife refuge in Boca Chica, Texas. This has raised concerns among environmentalists. Reports from the Environmental Protection Agency and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality show that SpaceX violated the Clean Water Act by releasing tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater. The company was fined about $150,000 in September 2024. Environmental groups also report that launches have destroyed nests of vulnerable shorebirds in the area. SpaceX says two different problems caused the failures. The January failure was due to a stronger-than-expected vibration, which stressed the rocket's propulsion hardware. The March failure was caused by a hardware failure in one engine, leading to a fire onboard. After investigating, SpaceX said these failures happened at similar points in flight but were caused by different issues.
