Latest news with #federalpermitting
Forbes
5 days ago
- Politics
- Forbes
Alaska Cong. Begich Seeks More Balanced Protections For Marine Mammals
The House Water, Wildlife and Fisheries Subcommittee held a July 22 hearing on a draft bill sponsored by Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK) which would amend the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Begich and other supporters of reform of the MMPA believe the law needs to be modernized to better reflect current science, eliminate conflicts and duplication of bureaucratic processes, and provide for more consistent and certain application of the law. The effort to amend the MMPA is in line with the Trump administration's goal of streamlining federal permitting processes to speed development of domestic energy resources needed to meet rising demand. 'The MMPA has been in place for over 50 years and during that time, it's served an important role in conserving marine mammals and protecting our oceans,' Begich said. 'As the decades have passed, we've seen how its implementation, particularly in the use of vague or overly precautionary standards, has led to confusion, delay and unintended harm.' He also stated: 'My goal is simple. I want a bill that protects marine mammals and also works for the people who live and work alongside them, especially in Alaska.' An Array Of Competing Stakeholders As will always be the case with an effort to amend one of the major federal statutes related to environmental or wildlife protections, the proposed bill has attracted strong views both pro and con. Wyoming Republican Harriet Hageman, who Chairs the subcommittee, said the discussion draft 'will make vital reforms to the MMPA,' and would advance 'the goals of House Republicans and the Trump Administration to streamline the permitting process and provide clear direction to federal regulatory agencies.' But the bill's opponents had different views, often becoming emotional in their statements. Kathleen Collins, Senior Marine Campaign Manager, International Fund for Animal Welfare, said the notion of the proposed reforms making their way into law 'is heartbreaking.' She went onto warn members that, if the bill is ultimately passed and signed by President Trump, 'The blood of thousands of marine mammals will be on the hands of Congress, and the entire well-being of the ocean ecosystem could very well be altered.' Along the same lines, Alaska Director at the Center for Biological Diversity Cooper Freeman warned, "If Begich's bill passes, it would needlessly make our marine mammal species far more vulnerable to injury and death than they already are and could change Alaska's oceans forever. We can't let his bill become law." EnerGeo Wants To Eliminate Redundancies Certainly, it is not in any stakeholder's or policymaker's best long-term interests to amend the MMPA in a way that would produce the fright scenario outcomes laid out by the bill's opponents. Any short-term gains which might be made would quickly be washed away by an inevitable backlash should changes to the law be tied to major harms to protected species. By the same token, it is not in the public's best interest to allow identified inefficiencies and duplications of bureaucratic processes to needlessly impede commercial fishing, energy, and other offshore industrial activities. The bill's proponents believe there is a middle ground to be struck to properly balance all the competing stakeholder interests. One such proponent, Forrest Burkholder, President and CEO of SAExploration, who testified on behalf of EnerGeo Alliance, told the hearing that fixing these issues would 'increase permitting efficiency, decrease uncertainty, and ultimately benefit all stakeholders, the implementing agencies, and most importantly, marine mammals.' EnerGeo Alliance is a trade association representing the geoscience industry which conducts most geological and seismic surveys for wind, oil and gas, and other industries seeking to mount offshore developments. In a recent interview, Dustin Van Liew, senior vice president, global policy & government affairs, told me that EnerGeo's main goal for legislation is reforms that promote 'the objective application of the best available scientific and commercially available data and information.' A lack of objectivity and an inconsistent application of the law is a common complaint from the business world, since uncertainty in the regulatory process only serves to make project planning and execution more difficult and costly. Van Liew says that, too often, permitting decisions are based on non-objective assumptions and computer models that are loaded up with findings from non-peer-reviewed study drafts rather than sound science. EnerGeo has also compiled a list of examples of time-wasting duplications of efforts stemming from competing requirements between the MMPA and the Endangered Species Act (ESA). One of the main drivers of this longstanding problem is that the two laws are, generally, administered by different agencies: The MMPA by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) inside the Department of Commerce, and the ESA by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) at the Interior Department – with additional overlaps depending on the species being managed. 'There are varying layers of requirements that the two different departments and the agencies within those departments are all trying to analyze,' Van Liew says, adding, 'And then of course NEPA overlays all of this as well,' a reference to time-consuming environmental impact statements required under the National Environmental Policy Act. One Piece Of A Much Larger Energy Permitting Puzzle Last month's hearing on Begich's discussion draft is an early step in the long, complicated process of turning a bill into law. But the testimony taken serves to highlight tensions between the myriad stakeholder interests at play. It also helps to highlight the larger drama that makes getting to a bigger, comprehensive approach to streamlining federal permitting processes such a gargantuan goal to attain. When one realizes that modernizing the MMPA to allow human offshore activities while preserving marine mammal protections is just one piece in a puzzle made up of a thousand equally challenging parts, the task seems overwhelming. Yet, if America is to be able to meet its future energy demands, getting there is less a goal than it is an imperative.
Forbes
30-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Trump's Permitting Chief Wants To Take ‘Yes' For An Answer
FILE - President Donald Trump holds an executive order regarding the reform of the Nuclear ... More Regulatory Commission in the Oval Office of the White House, May 23, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) Efforts to streamline federal permitting processes related to energy projects of all types have been long promised by officials in both the executive and congressional branches of government, but real progress has been hard and slow to come by. The complexities of the issues and the broad array of competing stakeholders, along with lawsuits which often delay progress for years at a time, all combine to create a permitting morass which is extremely hard to untangle. Former West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, then the powerful chairman of the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee, ran into this wall when he tried build a critical mass of support for semi-comprehensive legislation in the wake of the passage of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Despite having made a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in exchange for his becoming the deciding Senate vote on the IRA, Manchin was unable to put together a majority in either house of congress. WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 29: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) arrives for a Senate Committee on Energy and ... More Natural Resources hearing on Capitol Hill on September 29, 2022 in Washington, DC. Earlier this week, Manchin announced that he would move forward on government funding legislation without his signature energy permitting reforms included. (Photo by) The simple reality is that none of this is simple: If it was, it would have already been done. Emily Domenech Wants to Change the Permitting Culture This is where Emily Domenech comes in. Appointed by President Donald Trump in May to lead the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (Permitting Council), Domenech's mission is to lead the executive branch's search for innovative ways to speed up the process while maintaining environmental protections and respecting stakeholder rights. Emily Domenech, Executive Director of the Permitting Council. As I've written here previously, it is a simple fact that the vast majority of federal permitting mandates and delays emanate from major statutes governing environmental protections. These are longstanding laws like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which were enacted with bipartisan support and have attained broad public buy-in. 'I think everyone would agree that these laws were well-intended when they were first written,' Domenech told me in a recent interview. 'But,' she continues, 'they're a little out of date, and frankly, have been expanded far beyond what Congress originally intended.' Pointing to NEPA as an example, Domenech notes that it's a 12-page law which has led to thousands of pages of complex regulations as bureaucrats in previous administrations have worked to expand the scope of their authority. 'That doesn't make any sense,' she explains, 'If Congress gives you clear directives, you should be able to follow them without adding on thousands of new requirements that change with every administration. That just doesn't work.' It isn't just about revising processes and regulatory restructuring: A culture shift needs to happen. Mining: A 29-Year Permitting Endurance Test When then-President Joe Biden promised in July, 2021 to mount a 'whole of government approach' to onshoring mining and supply chains for an array of minerals critical to the success of the wind, solar, and electric vehicles industries, many pointed out the reality that none of this can happen unless those new mines, plants, and factories could obtain timely permits to move forward. The Biden White House's lack of focus on speeding the permit process meant his administration ended with precious little to show for the whole-of-government approach that failed to address this key element. Where mining is concerned, Domenech points out that 'no one's financing from the private sector if it takes you 29 years to get a permit, which is the average time it took to get a permit for a mine in America until this administration.' That has all begun to change over the last six months as the Permitting Council has named at least 13 new mines to qualify under the Fast-41 transparency process to speed environmental reviews required under the NEPA law. Included among the new list are mines for lithium, copper, molybdenum and other critical and rare earth minerals. 'We have an incredibly abundant country with incredibly available resources that are just waiting to be tapped into,' Domenech says, 'but unfortunately, particularly in the critical minerals and mining space, the federal government has been the primary impediment to developing those resources. That's backwards. We have to turn that around.' Indeed, the turnaround has already begun, as three of the mines have received their final permits to proceed in recent weeks, including the first new domestic coal mine in years, the Hurricane Creek Mining, LLC to mine coal on Bryson Mountain in Claiborne County, Tennessee. The Department of Interior approved the permit 'through expedited environmental review under newly established procedures designed to speed up reviews of energy projects in response to the national energy emergency declared by President Trump earlier this year.' Nuclear Also Has a Need for Permitting Speed Amid a rising consensus that the U.S. will need a major expansion in its nuclear power fleet to meet rapidly-rising electricity demand driven by AI datacenters, Domenech says big changes must take place in the way nuclear projects are permitted. Fortunately, those efforts have already begun. Pointing to Trump executive actions and provisions in the recently-enacted One Big Beautiful Bill Act, she says, 'Congress has taken some great steps forward when it comes to nuclear. We've prioritized investments in research. We've empowered the Department of Energy to build first of their kind reactors on DOE sites. You saw that reflected in some of President Trump's executive orders on nuclear in the last few months.' There is also a pressing need to modernize the decades-old regulatory structure and administrative processes at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to better reflect both the evolution of nuclear technologies and current societal needs. 'We've also directed the NRC to change the way they think,' she says. 'We have the gold standard of nuclear regulation here in the United States, but unfortunately that often leads to a position where the default is to build nothing. The safest option is always to do nothing. And unfortunately, that's not the safest option when it comes to our national security in the long run because we must be able to make these investments.' That default to doing nothing is an approach which evolved out of America's lone significant nuclear power incident, which took place at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island facility 46 years ago. Today's nuclear technology is vastly safer than the technologies that were in place half a century ago. 'The new, innovative technologies coming online today are incredibly safe,' Domenech notes. 'They are built and designed with safety as the top priority. So, we have to change the culture over at the NRC to say, how do we get to 'yes' in the safest way possible?' The Permitting Road Ahead Domenech is quick to point out that these same principles, the same need to find ways to change the default permitting answers from 'no' to 'yes,' apply all forms of energy projects. She is also fast to note that this can and must be done while continuing to ensure proper focus on protecting the environment. 'America has an incredible track record when it comes to environmental responsibility,' she says. 'We are a prosperous nation that has the ability to invest in not only our environmental standards, but also conservation in a way that doesn't exist in the rest of the world.' Domenech's view is that America's track record of leadership on protecting the environment is perhaps the best argument for speeding the permitting of new domestic energy projects. 'Building it here in the United States, changing that default answer to 'yes,' is not only best for our national security, it's also best for the environment. And that's something I think people miss all the time.' The fact that she doesn't miss that key factor helps explain why Domenech was the choice to head up the Permitting Council during such a crucial inflection point in America's energy history.
