Raúl Grijalva: “This amendment requires the Government Accountability Office to study the sufficiency of the current environmental…”

“This amendment requires the Government Accountability Office to study the sufficiency of the current environmental review process for offshore wind projects. I think we can all agree that offshore energy projects, including offshore wind projects, need to be studied thoroughly before being built, and the National Environmental Policy Act helps us do that review. However, H.R. 1, the polluters over people act, guts the National Environmental Policy Act. If I lived in a coastal community, I would be pretty nervous about how H.R. 1 makes it harder for stakeholders to weigh in on projects that might affect my community. This amendment scrutinizes the environmental review process for renewable energy development, but the underlying bill guts the review process for all offshore development. As we have seen in the Gulf, the infrastructure needed for oil and gas drilling has decimated wetlands, and oil spills like the BP disaster close beaches and kill wildlife. Scientists have found that seismic surveys for offshore oil exploration are far more damaging to marine mammals than surveys for offshore wind. A couple-page GAO study on whether environmental reviews of offshore wind are strong enough doesn't make up for the cuts to those reviews in H.R. 1. A better path forward is to reject the polluters over people act and, instead, make sure Federal agencies have the tools, capacity, and resources they need to complete reviews in a timely fashion. Mr.…”