Executive Order 13807: Permitting Process

What the Executive Order Says

Executive Order (EO) 13807 is entitled "Establishing Discipline and Accountability in the Environmental Review and Permitting Process for Infrastructure Projects".  It was issued on August 15th, 2017 and has 7 sections.  It deals with streamlining the permitting process for the anticipated infrastructure spending that was a campaign promise last year.

Section 1

This section defines the aspirations of this EO which is to streamline Federal Government decision making so that decisions can be made quicker so as to expedite starting up construction activities.

Section 2

This section defines the policy.  Essentially this can be summarized as wanting to conduct environmental reviews through the various Federal agencies in a coordinated and efficient manner.

Section 3

This section contains definitions for "Authorization", "CAP Goals", "Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council", "Infrastructure Project", "Major Infrastructure Project" and "Permitting timetable".

Section 4

This section defines that the Federal Government will start creating agency and personnel performance goals to reduce the time to conduct environmental reviews to 2 years.  Further, information on whether these goals are being met will be published.  The Office of Management and Budget is responsible for the collection and publishing of the performance data.

Section 5

This section is about "process enhancements."  This includes the mechanism of establishing a "champion" for each infrastructure project which is winding its way through the review process and having that "champion" be responsible for shepherding the decision to a conclusion as quickly as possible.  Essentially, it is customer service.

Section 6

This section revokes EO 13690 entitled "Establishing a Federal Flood Risk Management Standard and a Process for Further Soliciting and Considering Stakeholder Input" which had been issued by the previous President in 2015.  It also modifies some of the process defined in EO 13766 entitled "Expediting Environmental Reviews and Approvals for High Priority Infrastructure Projects".

Section 7

This section contains the legal fine print to assure the constitutionality of the EO.

My Commentary

With respect to section 6, the roll back of the Federal Flood standards, it is ironic due to the intervening events with Hurricane Harvey and the damage due to flooding along the Texas coastline and elsewhere.  Clearly, this EO has not yet had any impact, but in the long run, this will result in more homes and businesses being built in flood hazard areas.  Further, as always with the current President, he is obsessed with trying to undo the actions that had been taken by the previous administration.
On that, it is always much easier to tear down than to build, just ask anyone who has done even a small home renovation project.  In the past 7 months since the inauguration, a fair amount has been undone, especially in the Justice department, but little has been achieved.  Even those things which looked like easy wins have turned out badly.  And even this revocation is actually flawed since EO 13690 is actually a modification to a previous EO.  And therefore, it does not actually eliminate Flood Risk Management, but reverts it back to older processes as defined in EO 11988 which had been issued under President Carter.
It needs to be noted that in section 2(b), previous administrations would have emphasized that decisions on environmental impacts need to be made based on information gathered in a scientific way.  Here, the decisions need only be "informed" although it does not state what information should be considered.  I have to admit there are some worthwhile goals expressed in the policy section.  To the extent that Federal agencies are jointly responsible for conducting environmental impact reviews, there should be obtainable efficiencies by reducing duplication and ensuring co-ordination across the various agencies, but this being an EO, it cannot actually change the Rules (i.e. the Code of Federal Regulations).  This is good since the last parts of Section 5 do seem to direct agencies such as the FPISC and CEQ to be responsible to push through environmental reviews with people who are political appointments making decisions.
In reading this, one thing I had been suspicious about is whether this streamlined permitting process could be used for private enterprise to build a manufacturing plant.  It does not seem likely.  However, nuclear power plants (despite how unlikely it is that someone would want to try to build a new one) fall into what can be considered by this EO.
This is in some ways a well thought out comprehensive document that seems to have been written by some knowledgeable policy wonks and ends up being relatively unpartisan in comparison to a lot of the EO's that have been issued by the current administration.  It should be noted that this EO is essentially version 2 of EO 13766 which actually details out some of how things can be made faster and better, but also it is based on a previous model "Synchronizing Environmental Reviews for Transportation and Other Infrastructure Projects" dating from 2015 (See Section 5(b)(iv)(A)).
It is not easy to judge just what are the long-run implications of this EO.  Faster decisions by governments on environmental approvals would be welcome, provided these approvals (or rejections) are fact-based and scientifically sound.  But the Federal government is only one piece, as is mentioned within the EO, state, local and tribal governments get involved as well.