Congress needs to honor permitting reform deal | Opinion

The “Inflation Reduction Act” was passed recently by Congress after lengthy negotiations with the prime Democratic Senate holdout, West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin. The bill package won his approval, and therefore guaranteed passage, on the promise that crucial and substantive reforms to the system for issuing federal permits for infrastructure — including critical energy development projects — would be undertaken. It is now incumbent on Congress and the White House to make good on that promise.

The deal struck required that comprehensive permitting reform legislation would be passed by the end of this fiscal year ending on Sept. 30. Though the Senate is set to vote on a measure that includes at least some permitting reform this week, its passage is in question. In fact, some key members of Congress are actually now actively trying to back pedal. They are insisting that any permitting reform package be significantly watered down, to the point of being meaningless, and offered as a stand-alone bill rather than incorporated in must-pass legislation, jeopardizing its prospects for passage altogether. 

Congress needs to address and hopefully improve the current lengthy and expensive federal permitting process. The National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) has evolved into a bureaucratic nightmare and has not been updated since its inception in the 1970s. Permitting delays have resulted in critical energy and other infrastructure projects held up for years by red tape. Some entities use NEPA to tangle a project in legal morass which often delays or even halts projects that have been desperately needed for many years.

The energy industry is particularly impacted by permitting challenges and delays. Almost every American has felt the economic pain of constricted energy resources during the past year. Though gasoline is down from its historic highs of a few months ago, the average price per-gallon remains at an egregious $3.75 here in Colorado. There are signs that it will soon climb back up again as we head into the winter months. The energy industry contributes more than $46 billion annually to the Centennial State’s GDP and supports 340,000 jobs. Given this time of economic uncertainty and high inflation, streamlining permitting is desperately needed. 

Not all of these problems are directly due to domestic policies. The War…