President Donald Trump announced a new administration policy Thursday to boost the nation’s infrastructure without spending more tax dollars.
The administration proposed a new rule under existing law to expedite environmental reviews, cutting the length of review by more than half of the average of five-to-seven years per project.
The law, called the National Environmental Policy Act, has long stalled major construction for highways and bridges.
“From Day One, my administration has made fixing this regulatory nightmare a top priority, and we want to build new roads, bridges, tunnels, [and] highways bigger, better, faster, and we want to build them at less cost,” Trump said at the White House.
The Trump administration has pushed an aggressive deregulatory agenda, and the president often has talked about streamlining environmental reviews.
The administration contends that “modernizing” environmental reviews likely would lower costs for state and local road projects.
“That is why, for the first time in over 40 years, today we are issuing a proposed new rule under the National Environmental Policy Act to completely overhaul the dysfunctional bureaucratic system that has created these massive obstructions,” Trump said.
Since President Jimmy Carter signed the measure into law in 1978, the Council on Environmental Quality has made just one substantive amendment to related regulations—in 1986, according to the White House.
On average, it takes five years to complete an environmental impact statement for a project, and seven years for highways.
“The United States will not be able to compete and prosper in the 21st century if we continue to allow a broken and outdated bureaucratic system to hold us back from building what we need. The roads, airports, schools...
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