08.15.17

Hoeven: President Signs Executive Order Providing Regulatory Relief for Infrastructure Development

WASHINGTON – Senator John Hoeven today issued the following statement after the president signed an executive order to streamline the environmental review and permitting process for major infrastructure projects.

“Our nation’s infrastructure needs to be repaired and updated in order for us to continue having a competitive economy,” Hoeven said. “It is important that we ensure our infrastructure programs are solvent and we advance creative, bipartisan solutions like the Move America Act to help fund state’s infrastructure. At the same time, regulatory relief like this is an important step to help reduce costs of major projects, make taxpayer dollars go further and still ensure good environmental stewardship.”

Specifically, the executive order signed today:

  • Implements a single, streamlined federal decision policy, under which the lead agency would work with all relevant agencies to complete the reviews for major infrastructure projects, with the agencies signing a joint Record of Decision.
  • Sets a two-year goal to process all environmental documents for all major infrastructure projects.
  • Begins a review of the entire permitting process to improve performance across the government and hold agencies accountable.
  • Makes clear that environmental protections will be maintained and that the review process should focus on good outcomes, rather than the bureaucratic process.

The president’s order dovetails with Hoeven’s Move America Act, bipartisan legislation he recently introduced that would help fund private-public partnerships through tax exempt-bonds and tax credits to grow and repair the country’s infrastructure. This would lower overall costs and give state and local governments flexibility to construct the infrastructure they most need. Qualified projects include roads, bridges, transit, ports, rail, airports, water and sewer facilities and broadband.

In addition, Hoeven continues working through measures like his North American Energy Infrastructure Act to prevent unnecessary delays for important energy infrastructure projects like pipelines and electrical transmission lines that cross the national boundaries between the U.S. and Canada or Mexico. Hoeven introduced the legislation last Congress and is working to advance a similar measure during this session.

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