EPA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order as soon as Tuesday [8-15-17] that would sharply compress the time federal agencies spend weighing environmental reviews of highways, bridges and other infrastructure projects.
The order, according to a senior administration official, will require federal agencies to cooperate from the earliest stages of the permitting process for large-scale construction projects, with the goal of eliminating late-stage requests for information or further review that many construction industry officials, developers and elected officials blame for the nation’s slow pace of building critical infrastructure.
The goal is to pare down to ‘one federal decision’ whether a proposed project can go forward, the official said.
Mr. Trump’s executive order is an attempt to get federal agencies to cooperate more readily on environmental reviews, the official said. Once a new project has been approved by the lead federal agency, such as the Army Corps of Engineers, the order will require other agencies with jurisdiction to decide whether to issue their own permits within 90 days—with a goal of shortening the federal project review process to two years or less, from as long as a decade or more under current practice.”
-Ted Mann, “Executive Order Looms on Curbing Environmental Reviews,” The Wall Street Journal online, Aug. 14, 2017 11:54pm