Action Needed To Help Support Draft Federal Permitting Reforms
Earlier this month, Connecting the Dots reported the Trump administration announced a plan to reform the federal environmental permitting process for federal infrastructure projects. If the proposed changes go into effect, they would be the first major alterations to National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) rules in more than four decades.
According to a fact sheet from the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, the proposed changes would modernize, simplify and accelerate the NEPA process by establishing presumptive time limits of two years for completion of environmental impact statements (EISs) and one year for completion of environmental assessments and by promoting the use of modern technologies for information sharing and public outreach.
Reviews can now take up to 10 years.
The public has until March 10, 2020 to comment on the proposed rules, and can do so by clicking here. The Energy Equipment and Infrastructure Alliance, which MSCI is a member of, also has created an easy-to-use platform to make comments to the Trump administration. Click here to access it.