Source: United States Senator for West Virginia Shelley Moore Capito
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To watch Chairman Capito’s floor remarks, click here or the image above.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, delivered remarks on Senate Floor outlining the need for comprehensive, bipartisan reforms to our nation’s environmental review and permitting processes.
“The opportunity is here, this is right in front of us, and I can guarantee you that I will be at the forefront of these efforts to make sure that these reforms can become a reality. I encourage my colleagues to heed the importance of this moment,”Chairman Capito said.
Below are the floor remarks of Chairman Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) as delivered.
“As we both know, for too long, critical projects central to American energy development, infrastructure improvement, and economic development have been trapped in a cycle of redundant reviews, shifting goalposts, endless red tape, and regulatory uncertainty.
“Businesses large and small, looking to build things in our country again, really need certainty that is necessary for long-term investments, and projects needed to deploy new energy technologies, and efforts to restore the environment, have been caught in the same regulatory swamp as well.
“This has been loaded on for years. Years of changes in guidance have created a complex web of ever-expanding, duplicative, and contradictory requirements, while Congress has not stepped in to provide the clarifications that our country needs. All this has led to lost jobs, missed economic opportunities, and higher prices across America, underpinning the importance of comprehensive reform to our environmental review and permitting processes. I can tell you, I get asked about this consistently, every day, more than a few times a day.
“So, let me talk a little bit about my home state of West Virginia. I’ve seen firsthand how projects that our communities rely on face needless delays and how costs are then shifted to our families who pay more for energy, housing, transportation, and basic goods as a result.
“These types of delays nearly stopped what will become one of the most environmentally friendly steel production facilities in the world that will employ over a thousand people in Mason County.
“Top highway projects, like Corridor H that would improve both safety, mobility, and create economic development, have encountered multiple permitting delays and uncertainty under a litany of environmental statutes. Even West Virginia water extensions, broadband deployments, and bridge replacements have all faced delays from the federal permitting process.
“If you’ve spent time in my state, visited our communities, or traveled across our mountains, it’s obvious how important these projects are to our state of West Virginia. They impact everything from how we heat our homes, to how we connect our schools with internet, and maintain the roads and bridges that our residents travel on every single day.
“Point blank, these delays are holding our state and every state back from reaching our full potential, robbing our people of investments and economic development that would improve the quality of their lives. I believe it is time for Congress act.
“Clearly, I am no stranger to the ever-illusive topic of permitting reform. Throughout my time in the Senate, I have introduced multiple bills on the subject and have been involved in the regulations on this topic, and while we were able to include some reforms in the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act, it is very clear that much more needs to be done.
“The fact of the matter is, each one of us in this chamber has a critical need in our state that could be addressed by improving our permitting and environmental processes. Like building more housing, we always hear about a housing shortage, or bringing energy projects online, we hear about the expansions of nuclear, that are going to be held in the permitting process, or improving the conditions of surface transportation infrastructure, just to name a few. No matter what our constituents need, we all know that permitting reform is needed to deliver projects more quickly and more efficiently.
“In my role as the Chair of the EPW Committee, where we have jurisdiction over the laws that set the framework for our environmental review and permitting processes, I could not be more earnest in my desire to lead this effort with our Ranking Member. Our Committee’s involvement on this issue remains apparent by the delivery of not just this speech we’re doing together, but as we continue to work together with the goal of crafting bipartisan legislation.
“Together, we started bipartisan conversations in our Committee in February, when we held a hearing to gain the perspectives of leaders who are directly involved with navigating these processes.
“To ensure that we would gather a complete look at all of the issues, we kept the hearing record open for over a month to give all stakeholders the opportunity to share their experience with these existing environmental review and permitting processes, and identify challenges and recommend possible solutions to this Congress.
“From this record, we garnered 107 submissions representing 146 individual organizations, and an additional 854 individual requests on how to improve the federal environmental review and permitting process.
“These responses have helped the EPW Committee identify the challenges that persist across the wide variety of projects and to identify consensus on the potential solutions to address these challenges.
“While we’ve talked about the issue of permitting for a number of years in Congress, it’s important that we currently find ourselves, I think, in like-thought all across the spectrum. Each branch of the federal government, from the Executive, to Congress, and the Judiciary, are united in our dissatisfaction with the current permitting and environmental review processes.
“The Trump Administration has taken numerous actions to cut red tape and to put the United States in the best possible position to grow our economy and create jobs.
“The Supreme Court delivered a unanimous decision in the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition case in May that validated what many of my colleagues and I have long been saying, and that is the responsibilities of federal agencies under the [National Environmental Policy Act] have evolved beyond what Congress intended, creating roadblocks instead of considering the environment in federal decision-making.
“Right now, we have the momentum, I believe, needed to deliver meaningful and lasting reforms to the environmental review and permitting process, and I believe this is an unprecedented opportunity and something we can truly accomplish.
“I do believe, and we know this well, Senator Whitehouse and I know this well, that there are areas of strong disagreement in this area between the two of us, and what we’re going to try to do is to find those areas of like-thinking, that moves the process along. No matter how difficult it might be, this is the only way we get a permanent solution, so we don’t see the swings of the environmental process that we’ve seen over the last few years.
“To start, durable and implementable reforms need to be successful, they have to be bipartisan. Legislation that the Senate crafts must take into account all types of projects, not just politically favored projects no matter who is favoring them, or projects that will support the infrastructure needs of some Americans but not others. We must provide clarity and transparency in these processes, and be thoughtful in the way we craft the legislation.
“We need to address every stage of these processes to find efficiencies while balancing public health, the environment, and the needs of our economy, and our legislation must establish guardrails that cease the endless amounts of agency delays and litigation that stunts the development of our projects. I’ve seen investments in my state collapse under the weight of legal challenges, denying benefits to those that needed it the most.
“I want to stress that modernizing these processes does not mean cutting corners or weakening our environmental and public health protections, and this is exceedingly important to all of us and to the process. It means focusing the government on meeting the needs of the American people, ensuring the quality of our environment for generations to come, and making the processes more efficient, predictable, and transparent so that they’re not stuck in a bureaucratic purgatory of endless litigation.
“The reality is this, hardworking Americans want a government that works for them, not one that keeps them waiting for the benefits that many of these projects promise to their communities. What happens when you wait, if the project still goes forward? It gets more and more and more expensive with time.
“I was encouraged to see bipartisan efforts from our colleagues in the House of Representatives, as last week, Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman and Representative Jared Golden announced a proposal to address many of the concerns I just laid out.
“As negotiations continue in the Senate, we must remember that it will take the collaboration of both chambers [of Congress] and the Administration to get impactful legislation across the finish line.
“The opportunity is here, this is right in front of us, and I can guarantee you that I will be at the forefront of these efforts to make sure that these reforms can become a reality. I encourage my colleagues to heed the importance of this moment, and many of our colleagues are talking about this and have great expertise in this area, and we need your help.
“With that, I yield the floor.”