{"id":853410,"date":"2021-10-06T16:28:31","date_gmt":"2021-10-06T20:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=853410"},"modified":"2021-10-06T16:28:36","modified_gmt":"2021-10-06T20:28:36","slug":"never-ending-litigation-biden-administration-proposes-road-blocks-to-its-own-infrastructure-priorities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/never-ending-litigation-biden-administration-proposes-road-blocks-to-its-own-infrastructure-priorities\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Never-Ending Litigation\u2019: Biden Administration Proposes Road Blocks To Its Own Infrastructure Priorities"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fnever-ending-litigation-biden-administration-proposes-road-blocks-to-its-own-infrastructure-priorities%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=853410&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><ul>\n<li><strong>The White House proposed environmental regulations that would scale back Trump administration reforms and likely slow down future infrastructure projects.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The proposed rules would reverse changes that former President Donald Trump made to the National Environmental Policy Act which aimed to streamline environmental reviews and accelerate infrastructure projects.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>\u201cThe effects of rescinding those changes would be to once again open up NEPA to become a vehicle of never-ending litigation that would delay the very infrastructure improvements that this administration says they want to undertake,\u201d Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Diane Katz told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The White House proposed environmental regulations that would scale back Trump administration reforms and likely slow down future infrastructure projects.<\/p>\n<p>The Biden administration <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/ceq\/news-updates\/2021\/10\/06\/ceq-proposes-to-restore-basic-community-safeguards-during-federal-environmental-reviews\/\">laid out<\/a> \u201cthree important changes\u201d&nbsp;Wednesday that would affect how the federal government enforces the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA, signed into law by former President Richard Nixon, is a broad law that <a href=\"https:\/\/ceq.doe.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">requires<\/a>&nbsp;federal agencies to review the environmental impacts of their infrastructure projects before approving the projects.<\/p>\n<p>The proposed rule would reverse changes that former President Donald Trump made to NEPA, which aimed to streamline environmental reviews and accelerate infrastructure projects. For example, under the new regulations, federal agencies would be empowered to take a much broader approach toward assessing the environmental impact of any given project.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe basic community safeguards we are proposing to restore would help ensure that American infrastructure gets built right the first time, and delivers real benefits \u2013 not harms \u2013 to people who live nearby,\u201d Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory said in a statement. <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2021\/09\/30\/chamber-of-commerce-industry-leaders-congress-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill\/\">(RELATED: Business, Industry Leaders Urge Congress To Pass Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cPatching these holes in the environmental review process will help reduce conflict and litigation and help clear up some of the uncertainty that the previous administration\u2019s rule caused,\u201d Mallory added.<\/p>\n<p>Experts and pro-infrastructure groups, however, slammed the proposals, arguing that they would be counterproductive to the administration\u2019s own infrastructure priorities. President Joe Biden has <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2021\/09\/28\/biden-infrastructure-chicago-infrastructure-bill-trip\/\">aggressively pushed<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2021\/09\/30\/infrastructure-vote-delayed-talks-stall-left-wing-vow-sink-it\/\">infrastructure reform<\/a> and endorsed the <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2021\/08\/04\/bipartisan-infrastructure-package-kyrsten-sinema-joe-biden\/\">Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act<\/a>, a bipartisan bill that would invest $1 trillion in projects nationwide.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_7296695\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" readability=\"34\">\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-7296695\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Construction workers repair a street near the White House in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 10. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cThe effects of rescinding those changes would be to once again open up NEPA to become a vehicle of never-ending litigation that would delay the very infrastructure improvements that this administration says they want to undertake,\u201d Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Diane Katz told the Daily Caller News Foundation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you want infrastructure improvement, then why would you want to implement one of the primary sources of delay and protracted litigation that kept these improvements from being made to begin with,\u201d she continued. <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2021\/10\/02\/pelosi-infrastructure-vote-pushed-end-of-october\/\">(RELATED: Pelosi Punts: Infrastructure Vote Pushed To The End Of October)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Katz, who <a href=\"https:\/\/republicans-oversight.house.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Katz-Heritage-Statement-Federal-Permitting-3-15.pdf\">testified<\/a> about NEPA before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in 2018,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.heritage.org\/sites\/default\/files\/2020-08\/BG3524.pdf\">authored<\/a> multiple <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heritage.org\/sites\/default\/files\/2018-03\/BG3293_0.pdf\">papers<\/a> arguing that the law should be repealed. NEPA has led to arbitrary standards and politicized enforcement, Katz wrote in an August 2020 paper applauding Trump administration changes.<\/p>\n<p>Trump signed several executive orders directed at expediting the environmental review process, making a single federal agency in charge of individual reviews and removing some causes of costly review delays, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ntu.org\/publications\/detail\/the-national-environmental-policy-act-a-roadblock-to-infrastructure-and-how-to-fix-it\">according<\/a> to a recent National Taxpayers Union brief. In 2020, Trump issued a series of reforms modernizing NEPA, which forced agencies to complete reviews within one or two years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe clock is ticking,\u201d Katz told the DCNF. \u201cTaxpayers are paying the bill for the amount of time that the agency has to spend on these reviews, the cost of the infrastructure project, the loss of the benefit that they\u2019re not getting. And that can be either in dollars or in lives saved.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe fact is: Trump\u2019s reforms would help advance the very infrastructure programs and improvements that this administration says it wants to make,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_7296696\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" readability=\"34\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7296696\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7296696\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/GettyImages-1233636410-scaled-1.jpg\" alt=\"A roadworks crew work in Monterey Park, California on June 24. (Frederic J. Brown\/AFP via Getty Images)\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/GettyImages-1233636410-scaled-1.jpg 2560w, https:\/\/cdn01.dailycaller.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/GettyImages-1233636410-216x120.jpg 216w, https:\/\/cdn01.dailycaller.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/GettyImages-1233636410-620x344.jpg 620w, https:\/\/cdn01.dailycaller.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/GettyImages-1233636410-768x426.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn01.dailycaller.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/GettyImages-1233636410-1536x852.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/cdn01.dailycaller.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/GettyImages-1233636410-2048x1136.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-7296696\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A roadworks crew work in Monterey Park, California on June 24. (Frederic J. Brown\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Reviews conducted by the Federal Highway Administration have historically taken seven years on average to complete, according to Nick Goldstein, vice president for regulatory affairs at the American Road &amp; Transportation Builders Association, which supported Trump\u2019s 2020 reforms. If such lengthy reviews continued to be the norm, projects included in the bipartisan infrastructure bill making its way through Congress wouldn\u2019t receive approval until 2028.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe want to build back sooner and we want to build back more efficiently,\u201d Goldstein told the DCNF in an interview. \u201cNow\u2019s not the time to be adding on in a way that will add more time to the legal process.\u201d <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2021\/10\/02\/inexcusable-kyrsten-sinema-accuses-house-democrats-holding-infrastructure-bill-hostage\/\">(RELATED: \u2018Inexcusable\u2019: Kyrsten Sinema Accuses House Democrats Of Holding Infrastructure Bill Hostage)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>National Stone, Sand &amp; Gravel Association (NSSGA) Vice President for Government and Regulatory Affairs Michele Stanley echoed Goldstein\u2019s comments and said NSSGA has long advocated for the modernization of NEPA. The review process should promote \u201cstrong environmental protections\u201d while ensuring timely infrastructure development, she added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNSSGA is concerned that proposed changes outlined today by the Biden Administration will create more red-tape and lead to decades-long litigation,\u201d&nbsp;Stanley&nbsp;told the DCNF in a statement. \u201cUltimately, this will delay implementation and drive up federal costs of key projects that are essential to improving our environment, bolstering communities and keeping America competitive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chamber of Commerce Vice President for Environment and Regulatory Affairs Chad Whiteman said in a statement that the White House\u2019s proposal Wednesday \u201cwill only serve to slow down building the infrastructure of the future.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact <a href=\"mailto:licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org\">licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The White House proposed environmental regulations that would scale back Trump administration reforms and likely slow down future infrastructure projects. The proposed rules would reverse changes that former President Donald &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-853410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}