Frank Pallone: “Some of my Republican colleagues just suggested that this bill would not waive any environmental requirements. For…”

“Some of my Republican colleagues just suggested that this bill would not waive any environmental requirements. For instance, yesterday, at the Rules Committee, the sponsor of the legislation indicated that H.R. 161 did not waive or alter any applicable environmental requirements under the Clean Air Act or NEPA. While it is true that this legislation does not actually amend any provisions of the Clean Air Act or other environmental statutes, the bill would require automatic issuance of a pipeline-related permit under statutes like the Clean Air Act, if the responsible agency, such as EPA, has failed to act within the 90 days. This is the 90 days beyond the 1 year that I mentioned before. Basically, that makes FERC the agency that would issue the Clean Air Act permit. Under this bill, FERC would decide how to create a BLM right-of-way permit or a Clean Water Act discharge permit. As a result, the legislation would effectively override the permitting decisions of agencies like EPA or DOI and turn FERC into a superpermitting agency. I just want to point out, while it is true that the text of the actual Clean Air Act might remain unchanged under this bill, the effect of the bill would be that the Clean Air Act permits would be automatically issued by FERC if EPA fails to act within 90 days.…”