Posted on January 30, 2009 by Bradley Marten
President Obama has pressed Congress this week to enact an economic stimulus package that would “double our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy like wind, solar, and biofuels . . . and build a new electricity grid that lay down more than 3,000 miles of transmission lines to convey this new energy from coast to coast.”[i] On Wednesday, January 28, 2009, the House passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (H.R. 1), which contains nearly $15 billion in capital investments and loan guarantees for renewable energy projects and new electric transmission lines, and $18.5 billion for energy efficiency programs. The Administration’s stated goal is to spend this money in the next 18 months. This may be possible for the energy efficiency projects such as weatherizing homes and government buildings. But for dozens of new wind farms and thousands of miles of transmission lines, it is not, and a good part of the reason is that those projects have yet to undergo environmental review or receive necessary permits.
[i] These remarks came in the President’s first weekly address, which was delivered on Saturday, January 24, 2009. The address can be viewed at this link.
Typically, siting a transmission line, wind farm, or other major energy facility involves obtaining a long list of environmental permits, each of which has a review process that can be used by opponents of the project to delay and sometimes defeat it. Moving infrastructure projects forward quickly will only be possible if Congress and the Administration speed up the environmental review and permitting process.
In a January 26, 2009, report, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will take up to seven years to spend the money that H.R. 1 dedicated to expanding alternative energy. Experience teaches that this estimate may be overly conservative. For example, the Arrowhead-Weston Transmission Project, a 220 mile transmission line from Wisconsin to Minnesota, took nine years to permit and construct, even though all but 50 miles of it were in existing transmission line corridors. Southern California Edison’s Tehachapi Transmission Project, a 250 mile transmission project to deliver electricity generated from wind farms in Southern California, took over 10 years to design, permit, and begin construction. Indeed, portions of the project are still undergoing environmental review by the U.S. Forest Service and others.
Recently, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger requested up to $44 billion for transportation, energy and water projects in California, claiming that these projects will create as many as 800,000 new jobs. Knowing that traditional environmental review would slow short-term job creation, Governor Schwarzenegger asked the Obama Administration to “waive or greatly streamline National Environmental Protection Act requirements consistent with our statutory proposals to modify the California Environment Quality Act for transportation projects.”
The proposal drew immediately fire from environmental groups. In a January 13, 2009, letter to House and Senate Democratic leaders, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the League of Conservation Voters and Environment California called Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposal “unproductive and harmful” to the federal debate over reviving the economy. “Inevitably, in the course of congressional consideration, special interests will assert that we cannot afford the NEPA process in a time of national urgency,” they said. “The truth is that we cannot afford that kind of leap-before-you-look rashness.”
The new Administration must navigate this tension – quickly addressing the economic crisis while maintaining the integrity of the environmental review process. Doing so will require identifying ways that environmental review and permitting can be streamlined and modernized, alongside the infrastructure system. We ought to be able to get wind farms and bridges and light rail built in a time frame that provides the short-term stimulus our economy needs, and also allow for sufficient environmental review to make sure our resources are protected. This article lays out some of the options the new Administration may wish to consider as it seeks to balance job creation with environmental stewardship.
Approaches for Streamlining the Environmental Review Process
Use Existing Provisions Allowing Temporary Waivers
Many environmental regulatory statutes contain waivers of applicable requirements in response to natural disasters or other emergency conditions. For example, the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act authorizes NEPA waivers to facilitate prompt responses to natural disasters.[1] Similarly, the White House Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ) is authorized to approve “alternative arrangements” allowing federal agencies to modify or limit NEPA review in response to natural disasters.[2] Other federal environmental laws with emergency response provisions include the Clean Water Act[3] and CERCLA.[4]
In response to Hurricane Katrina, CEQ approved expedited NEPA review procedures for certain U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood control projects. EPA temporarily waivedcertain Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and other environmental regulations in Katrina’s wake. Both Louisiana and Mississippi issued similar emergency administrative orders, temporarily suspending certain environmental regulations to facilitate clearing hurricane debris and other emergency response actions.
Waivers Based on Grounds of National Security
In 2002, after the Natural Resources Defense Council obtained a preliminary injunction halting the U.S. Navy’s use of a low-frequency, active, surveillance towed array sonar system,[5] President Bush issued a “Presidential Exemption from the Coastal Zone Management Act,”[6] in order to “ensure effective and timely training of the United States naval forces in anti-submarine warfare using mid-frequency active sonar.” The Presidential exemption allowed the Navy to train and certify strike groups capable of deployment “in support of world-wide operational and combat activities, which are essential to national security.”
The United States Supreme Court upheld the President’s action, finding that the public interest in adequately training the Navy’s antisubmarine forces “plainly outweighs” conservationists’ interests in studying marine mammals that may be injured by sonar exercises.[7]
Legislative Exemptions for Specific Projects
Congress has also periodically either limited or exempted review under NEPA and other environmental statutes for specific projects or categories of projects. For example, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 modified the environmental compliance requirements for a broad range of energy-related projects. The modified environmental compliance measures included:
- Establishing a rebuttable presumption that certain oil and gas projects conducted on federal land are categorically exempted from NEPA review (§ 390);
- Exempting hydraulic fracturing in aid of oil, gas, and geothermal energy extraction from certain requirements in the Safe Drinking Water Act (§ 322);
- Exempting oil and gas exploration, production, and transportation construction projects from the Clean Water Act’s construction stormwater regulations (§ 323);
- Requiring EPA and federal land management agencies in Western states to develop a pilot project to expedite environmental review and permitting under NEPA, the ESA, the Clean Water Act, and other federal statutes (§ 365);
- Expediting the permitting process for natural gas facilities located on federal lands (§ 366); and
- Shortening the time frame for appealing permitting decisions under the Coastal Zone Management Act (§ 381).
Congress has also exempted or provided limited NEPA review for other projects, for example:
· The TransAlaska Pipeline was exempted from NEPA review after completion of the initial EIS (43 U.S.C. § 1625(d));
· Certain actions taken pursuant to the Clean Air Act are exempted from NEPA review (15 U.S.C. § 793(c)(1));
· Department of Energy decisions to grant or deny exemptions from regulations governing fuel use at coal-fired power plants are exempted from NEPA review (42 U.S.C. § 8473);
· For certain retrievable radioactive waste storage projects, an Environmental Assessment (as opposed to an EIS) constitutes sufficient compliance with NEPA (42 U.S.C. § 10155(c)(2)(A));
· Alternate environmental review procedures have been established for determining surface transportation rights-of-way in the Arctic National Preserve (42 U.S.C. § 410hh(4)(d); and
· Certain Department of Housing and Urban Development funding decisions are exempt from NEPA review, based on certification of compliance with state and local laws (42 U.S.C. § 3547(2)).
Using Streamlined Environmental Review to Address Economic Conditions
While legislative, regulatory, and executive precedent exists for either waiving or limiting environmental review, those precedents have rarely been used to justify waiving environmental review on the grounds of an economic crisis.[8] But precedent exists for using “alternative arrangements” for environmental review in response to economic concerns. In 1980, after General Motors threatened to build a new manufacturing facility outside the city limits unless the city cleared and delivered an appropriate site for the facility, the City of Detroit declared a state of emergency based on an economic crisis. In September 1980, CEQ approved an “alternative arrangement” under NEPA allowing the Department of Housing and Urban Development to release loan guarantee funds prior to the completion of NEPA review.[9]
The challenge for the new Administration and Congress is to strike a balance between expediting environmental review while maintaining sufficient oversight to prevent bad decision making. Options to achieve that goal include: (1) expediting funding for “shovel ready” projects which already have undergone federal and state environmental review and obtained necessary permits; (2) using programmatic environmental review of project categories that would obviate the need for project-specific (and often redundant) environmental reviews; (3) providing limited exemptions or streamlined environmental review for specific categories of projects; and (4) limiting judicial review of final agency approvals for projects funded by the stimulus bill, while providing for oversight, review, and approval by CEQ.
For more information, please contact Bradley Marten
[1] See 42 U.S.C. § 5159.
[2] 40 CFR § 1506.11.
[3] Under 40 CFR § 122.3, the President or an agency acting with delegated Presidential authority may grant a waiver of the NPDES requirement if necessary to address substantial threats to public health or welfare. EPA invoked this exception in response to Hurricane Katrina. Another exception is 40 CFR § 122.41(n), which allows a wavier in the event of an “upset,” which is the temporary failure to comply with NPDES permit conditions based on factors that are beyond the reasonable control of an operator, for example, a power failure or a large spill of contaminants into a collection and treatment system.
[4] CERCLA provides the President and EPA with broad authority and flexibility to undertake response actions whenever there is a release or threatened release of a hazardous substance which presents an imminent and substantial danger. See 40 CFR § 300.400(e)(1).
[5] See NRDC v. Evans, 232 F. Supp.2d 1003 (N.D. Cal. 2002) (for more information on this decision, see Colleen C. Karpinsky, A Whale of a Tale: The Sea of Controversy Surrounding the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the U.S. Navy’s Proposed Use of the SURTASS-LFA Sonar System, 12 Penn St. Envtl. L. Rev. 389 (2004)).
[6] Per its terms, the Presidential Exemption was based on the “Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 1456(c)(1)(B) of title 16, United States Code.”
[7] Winters v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 555 U.S. ___, 129 S. Ct. 365 (2008).
[8] While NEPA allows agencies to allow “alternative arrangements” suspending or modifying environmental review, CEQ regulations limit their applicability to “actions necessary to control the immediate impact of the emergency.” 40 CFR § 1506.11 (emphasis supplied).
[9] Although the full NEPA review was eventually completed, the “alternative arrangement” allowed HUD and the city to expedite project activities in response to an economic crisis. The facts of the Detroit “alternative arrangement” are summarized at Crosby v. Little, 512 F. Supp. 1363 (E.D. Mich. 1981).