White House Seeks to Expedite Permitting, Review for Infrastructure Projects
OMB and the White House Council on Environmental Quality “issued new guidance providing direction to federal agencies to take a series of actions to significantly expand the use of, and ultimately the number of infrastructure projects on, the Federal Infrastructure Permitting Dashboard, a tool for publicly tracking agency progress on completing federal permitting and environmental review processes for proposed infrastructure projects,” said OMB’s Shaun Donovan and Christy Goldfuss, the head of White House CEQ, in a blog post.
The change mainly affects the Department of Transportation, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard. The federal agencies contributed to an update in the “Synchronizing Environmental Reviews for Transportation and Other Infrastructure Projects” handbook, also known as the Red Book. A posting on the DOT site said it was the first Red Book update in nearly 30 years.
The Red Book is designed to provide “practical, real-world guidance to federal agencies, applicants, project sponsors and consultants on how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of key permits and reviews required for these projects,” DOT said.
“To deliver infrastructure projects that achieve real impacts for the American people, we need to act with urgency and recognize that every day counts,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in the online statement.
“Today's actions help us get there. We are pushing ourselves to improve efficiency, coordination and collaboration so that federal permitting becomes a sprint rather than a relay race," Foxx added.
The permitting dashboard was launched in 2012 to highlight and track 52 high-priority projects, such as the Tappan Zee Bridge, as they progressed through the required permitting and review process, DOT said. The guidance also designates specific permitting and review schedules and milestones for each project to report. Additionally, the dashboard website recently has been redesigned to accommodate this expansion and features and functionality will continue to be added, DOT said.
Under the new guidance, the 11 federal agencies that play a significant role in the permitting, review, funding and development of infrastructure projects will, starting in October, identify new infrastructure projects for which standardized milestones and coordinated schedules will be posted within 90 days. Such projects would include major transit projects, airport capital improvements, ports and dams, electricity and broadband transmission, and renewable energy generation facilities, DOT said.
The reported milestones will include target and actual dates of the receipt of an application, permit issuances or approvals, the release of draft and final environmental impact statements for review and comment, and the issuance of final decisions for all required federal reviews, DOT said.
