Streamlining Federal Permitting Key to Safe, Reliable Water Infrastructure
From the Natural Resources Committee:
Today, the Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans held an oversight hearing on the state of the nation’s water and power infrastructure.
“Water infrastructure is perhaps the most important, yet overlooked, form of infrastructure in our nation,” District Manager of Kennewick Irrigation District Charles Freeman stated. “The need to invest in our nation’s water infrastructure grows with each passing day.”
Duplicative and cumbersome federal permitting processes have stifled the development of new water and power infrastructure throughout the West and impeded the modernization of existing facilities.
“Environmental reviews and the federal permitting process for infrastructure projects are at the center of the regulatory problem,” Research Fellow in Agriculture Policy for The Heritage Foundation Daren Bakst argued.
In California, the current water system was designed to serve 22 million people, yet the State currently has 39 million residents and is expected to double in population by 2050. Despite growing demand, the “analysis-by-paralysis” nature of federal permitting has kept projects at a standstill.
For example, the proposed Sites Reservoir in California has been under environmental review for more than a decade.
“[We] need to look at creating new processes and tools that can help us and our federal, state and local partners accomplish our goal of successfully building and operating this new large reservoir storage project,” General Manager of Sites Project Authority Jim Watson stressed.
Bakst attributed the nation’s aging water infrastructure to the explosion of paperwork and costly, time-intensive analysis requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and other environmental statutes.
“Unnecessary federal red tape does not protect species, eliminate water pollution, or provide cleaner air. It does however make it more difficult for water and electricity to be provided to Americans,” Bakst said.
Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT), questioned Baskt if it would be beneficial to establish a process where a lead federal agency is identified for NEPA review.
“That would go a long way in achieving the objective and helping reduce the unnecessary duplication and red tape that exists with NEPA,” Baskt answered.
The Trump administration’s infrastructure plan included a “one agency, one decision” proposal, among other reforms, to boost efficiency in permitting reviews and project approvals.
“It is encouraging that we now have an Administration [that] understands that federal permitting reform must be the first thing we address if we want to get serious about addressing our nation’s infrastructure needs,” Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans Chairman Doug Lamborn (R-CO) stated.
Click here to view full witness testimony.
As Trump Fails to Invest in Infrastructure, GOP Ignores Drinking Water Needs at Today’s Hearing
From the Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee:
As President Trump continues to tout his much-criticized infrastructure “plan” – which invests almost nothing in badly needed infrastructure and demands imaginary state and local funding for projects – Republicans at today’s Water, Power and Oceans Subcommittee continued to ignore the many American communities lacking clean drinking water because of deficient or nonexistent water infrastructure. Instead, Republicans focuses their demands on more water specifically for select factory farms. The hearing revealed a disturbing pattern of Republican indifference to low income communities that have, in some cases, gone decades without reliable, clean drinking water thanks to a simple lack of funding and attention.
The hearing saw Republicans repeating stale talking points about why select farms need more water while they ignored the pressing need for drinking water infrastructure in their own communities and elsewhere. Droughts and inadequate infrastructure investment contribute to more than a million people in California alone being exposed to unsafe drinking water each year.
Newspapers across California have pointed out that a lack of water infrastructure hits poorer Americans the hardest. As a San Diego Union-Tribune August 2017 op-ed pointed out:
California affirmed the human right to safe and affordable drinking water in 2012, when it became the first state in the country to legislatively declare that “every human being has the right to safe, clean, affordable and accessible water.”
But five years later, still, 300 communities and a million Californians — that’s three times the entire population of Iceland, and more than the population of Flint, Michigan — lack this basic human right, as they are exposed to unsafe drinking water each year.
Despite Republican refusal to discuss it, the need for clean drinking water infrastructure is well known across California. As Subcommittee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) said during his statement:
More than one million Californians every year are exposed to unsafe drinking water, in many cases because of non-existent or deficient water infrastructure. My Republican colleagues from the San Joaquin Valley should understand this issue very well, and yet, we rarely ever hear about these communities’ needs in this committee… The only time they seem to bring up these communities is unfortunately when they are convenient props to advance their agenda of rolling back environmental laws.
Indeed, Huffman pointed out that the Majority’s memo for today’s hearing, posted online, goes into detail about to need to deliver more water to farms, but never mentions the pressing need to deliver clean drinking water to the many American communities that go without it.
“Republicans see infrastructure as just another way to reward their friends and ignore everyone else,” said Ranking Member Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) following the hearing. “President Trump’s infrastructure plan doesn’t put real money into our communities, and even if it did, Republicans on Capitol Hill won’t spend a dime outside their political friend circle. This is what the real Republican infrastructure plan looks like: Americans suffering from a preventable lack of drinking water because the party in charge doesn’t think it’s worth their time to help them.”
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About News Worth Noting: News Worth Noting is a collection of press releases, media statements, and other materials produced by federal, state, and local government agencies, water agencies, and academic institutions, as well as non-profit and advocacy organizations. News Worth Noting also includes relevant legislator statements and environmental policy and legal analyses that are publicly released by law firms. If your agency or organization has an item you would like included here, please email it to Maven.
