Whitehouse: Bipartisan permitting reform bill ‘down to the last strokes’
By Mary Serreze, Providence Business First
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said a bipartisan federal permitting reform bill is in its final phase of negotiation and could be ready within weeks.
“We’re actually in a pretty good place on permitting reform,” the Rhode Island Democrat said Monday morning during his annual address to the New England Council in Providence. “We’re, I think, down to the last strokes, maybe another week of negotiations.”
Whitehouse, ranking Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the talks involve four senators: himself, Committee Chair Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.; Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Mike Lee, R-Utah; and Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., the ranking Democrat on the panel.
“The four of us are working as a team, and it is going well,” he said. “I hope it can land.”
Whitehouse said the measure would speed construction of much-needed clean energy projects, including transmission lines, and ensure that approved projects can’t be abruptly canceled by changing administrations. He predicted it would pass the Senate with large majorities if brought to the floor.
In an interview after the event, Whitehouse said the emerging bill would amend statutes including the National Environmental Policy Act, Historic Preservation Act, Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act.
Asked for his message to environmentalists who have long used NEPA to stop fossil fuel projects such as natural gas pipelines, Whitehouse said environmental standards would not be loosened, but that timelines would become more efficient.
“None of the environmental standards change,” he said.
In addition, he said, there is “enormous market demand for clean energy” with “little natural demand for fossil fuel energy.” As such, “when you make things easier to build, you are by definition making clean energy easier to build.”
Whitehouse, a climate hawk, said “fossil fuel front groups” emboldened by “mischief from the Trump administration” have flipped the script and are now using NEPA — passed 50 years ago to ensure environmental review of large, consequential development projects — to stymie clean energy projects.
“I think what we have seen, is the world in which the litigants against projects were the good guys change to a world in which the fossil fuel industry is propping up litigants to attack good clean energy projects,” he said. “That’s a very important change.”
In fielding earlier questions from New England Council CEO Jim Brett, Whitehouse offered praise for Capito, who “disagrees with me violently on climate change” but has been “terrific to work with.” Capito, who represents a natural gas and coal state, is serving as the negotiators’ intermediary with the White House. Administration negotiators have been “fairly reasonable” — although their position includes items “they’re not going to get.”
The bipartisan permitting reform talks are back on the burner after Whitehouse shut them down earlier this year. He and others pulled the plug on negotiations after the Trump administration suddenly issued stop-work orders against five offshore wind projects slated to serve New England.
Republicans were as unhappy about that move as Democrats, according to Whitehouse.
Capito; Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.; and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. pressed the administration to reverse course, because they want permitting reform to succeed. After courts vacated all five orders, the administration did not appeal. Moving forward, any deal will require the executive branch to refrain from such “illegal interference in existing permitting processes,” Whitehouse said.
In West Virginia, Capito — who supports fossil fuel development — is telling her own constituents a “game-changing” deal is advancing. Speaking last week to a chamber audience, she said energy developers are withholding investment decisions because “they’re not sure if the political winds will blow one way or the other, and whether their projects can get built.”
“It’s going to be bipartisan. I’m not going to get everything I want. And Sheldon Whitehouse is not going to get everything he wants,” said Capito, according to the Inter-Mountain newspaper.
Whitehouse declined to set a schedule, saying floor scheduling rests with Thune and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. The matter is further complicated by a compressed House calendar.
“Nothing in negotiations is ever final until it’s final,” he said. “But I feel good.”
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