GPA-Supported Legislation Signed Into Law with Federal Highway Bill

News
The Gas Processors Association (GPA) reports it secured a legislative victory when President Obama signed into law the federal highway bill, H.R. 22, the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, or FAST Act. GPA joined with a coalition of trade associations to support two separate permit streamlining bills, H.R. 348, the Responsibly and Professionally Invigorating Development (RAPID) Act and S. 280, the Federal Permitting Improvement Act of 2015.

Each made it into their respective House and Senate versions of the highway bill. The permit streamlining provisions provided in H.R. 22 will bring greater efficiency, transparency, and accountability to the federal permitting review process, GPA reports. More specifically, the provision requires that agencies involve themselves in the permit process early and comment early, avoiding eleventh hour objections that can restart the entire review timetable.

The provision also establishes a reasonable process for determining the scope of project alternatives so the environmental review does not devolve into an endless quest to evaluate infeasible alternatives. It allows state-level environmental reviews to be used where the state has done a competent job, thereby avoiding needless duplication of state work by federal reviews. Finally, it reduces the statute of limitations to challenge a project review from six years to two years, and requires courts, when addressing requests for injunctions to stop covered projects, to consider the potential negative impacts on job creation if the injunction is granted.

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