Potential faster national permitting process could have impact in North Dakota

BISMARCK — A number of North Dakota business groups on Wednesday, Aug. 23, met to discuss avenues to speed up infrastructure projects that require federal approval.

Representatives from the national, state and Grand Forks/East Grand Forks chambers of commerce gathered via teleconference along with Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, and Russ Hanson, executive vice president of Associated General Contractors of North Dakota, to discuss their support for the U.S. Chamber’s “Permit America to Build” campaign.

Permitting reform is likely to be a widely discussed topic as Congress returns. The bills that push the policy could impact North Dakota’s industries and environment, according to business and environmental groups.

“If there is federal dollars … in construction, then the federal rules and guidelines apply, and as a state that is very heavily dependent on a strong federal highway program — it impacts a very large number of projects,” Hanson said.

Advocates for permitting reform secured a win during negotiations over the U.S. debt ceiling in June in the Fiscal Responsibility Act. The legislation includes a section that places some limits on the length and scope of reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Industry groups say they want Congress to go further. Among the policies being pushed are efforts to lessen the time frame a party has to challenge a project under NEPA. There also are discussions on limiting the ability to use the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act to block a project, according to Christopher Guith, senior vice president for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Global Energy Institute.

“There should still be an ability to bring a challenge, but it needs to be much more timely, something like six months as opposed to six years,” he said.

Ness said the national chamber’s campaign could make it easier for the state’s oil and gas companies to access certain minerals that he said are being blocked by small plots of federal land. There is a checkerboard nature of land and mineral ownership in western North Dakota, where parcels of federal, state and private property are intermingled.

“Ultimately, America is going to block up to 58 million barrels of oil that would be produced in North Dakota’s Bakken if we cannot get these leases approved and moving forward,” Ness said.

He added his support to the national chamber’s push for removing the social costs of greenhouse gases from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Act, as well.

Some environmental groups favor permitting reform in the name of speeding up deployment of renewable energy, but many remain skeptical of the policy’s ability to achieve their broader goals.

Scott Strand, senior attorney at the Environmental Law and Policy Center, said most NEPA lawsuits to block a permit are filed in a timely manner.

“If you’re an environmental group like us and you wait five years to sue somebody, then the project’s going to get built; it will be too late,” he said.

Scott Skokos, executive director of the Dakota Resource Council, said weakening NEPA protections would do more harm than good, even for energy projects his organization supports.

“I wouldn’t want to force a bunch of rural communities to have wind farms and solar panels if there’s no real process for them to have input into those projects where those are being sited,” he said. “The way that we get decisions made, it might take a little bit longer, but people are not going to be as hostile to that stuff if the decisions are made in a way where everyone has input.”

Permitting reform has long been a policy priority of U.S. industry groups. Advocates for the policy cite the often yearslong legal, regulatory and environmental review process that many projects are required to undergo if any federal approval is needed.

The Laborers’ International Union of North America, Minnesota and North Dakota supports permitting reform to the extent that the policy makes it more difficult to tie up projects in court, but the group does not support lowering environmental standards, according to Marketing Manager Kevin Pranis.

“The people who hate pipelines want every opportunity to stop a pipeline, but then they would like there to be transmission for clean energy, and it’s the same problem,” he told The Bismarck Tribune. “If you want to have nice things, you have to make it possible to build them.”

Pranis added he believes speeding up the permitting process would be beneficial to his union’s members by creating more employment and reducing many of the legal costs projects have to incur.

Strand said he believes discussions concerning speeding up siting procedures are legitimate, but the issue would be better addressed through increased federal staffing. He worries permitting reform could be used to weaken environmental protections.

Strand believes large projects should take longer to permit due to their potentially widespread impacts.

“I don’t know if there’s really a way to make (large projects) go a lot faster unless we’re going to start eliminating the fundamental requirements about clean air and clean water,” he said.