During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Val Hoyle (D-WA) spoke about the need to increase transparency in the NEPA process.
00:00At the time, the chair recognizes the gentleman from Oregon, Ms. Hoyle, for five minutes. Ms. Hoyle.
00:05Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses for taking the time to travel here today.
00:10I think all my colleagues would agree that we need to build more and improve our infrastructure
00:15in every corner of our country. Our roads, bridges, even our broadband infrastructure
00:19are far behind comparable countries. And on this committee, we should agree that investing
00:25in infrastructure brings high-quality jobs and economic growth.
00:28I also think we can agree that we can build and develop more while also protecting our environment
00:34and tackling climate change. It should be a both-and approach.
00:39However, in order to do that, we have to reckon with the fact that under the current permitting system,
00:44projects take way too long with a convoluted, burdensome, and non-transparent process.
00:50It's why I was proud to work with Representative Garrett Graves to pass legislation to build an online portal
00:55so that people, whether in affected communities or developers, could track the process without spending
01:00$1,000 an hour for a lawyer, because my constituents can't afford that.
01:05Look, we need project sponsors to work with communities to address the issues before beginning the NEPA process.
01:12We need public input, environmental safeguards, and also a clearer path to getting to yes or no
01:18if a project won't move forward. Waiting 15 years to get a no is not reasonable, and we've had that in my district.
01:26We need clarity in these decisions in a reasonable time period, and at some point, we've got to do the hard work
01:32of figuring out how to make it easier for the best possible projects to move forward as quickly as possible
01:39while prioritizing community, tribal consultation, environmental protections, in meaningful ways for communities to have input.
01:47Building standards to ensure the infrastructure that we're investing in is built with the highest quality workforce
01:52with registered apprenticeship utilization to train the next generation of tradesmen and women.
01:58And we can do all this if we're willing to have those real conversations in this committee.
02:03And that's on Democrats as well as Republicans, but it doesn't mean just gutting everything.
02:10So I'd say, Mr. Mergen, I know you've addressed this, but what are the most common causes of project delays?
02:18The most significant cause of project delay is lack of capacity in the agency and agency expertise to process.
02:26I do think, you know, I think one of the things that we agree on is that we need more study of this.
02:32Not all EISs are prepared by contractors.
02:36Some are prepared in-house.
02:39Whether contractors are doing the EIS can add to delay, and it can also make it more expeditious.
02:48But the fundamental problem is the lack of capacity.
02:51And then also you need to have good documents submitted to move forward on, right?
02:56And you need to leverage technology.
02:59And the porthole that you mentioned is an important way.
03:02We can come up with these mechanisms, like dashboards and the like, that alert people to where things are in the project.
03:10To obviate the need for them to get lawyers to see where things are going.
03:14So it's all of those things.
03:16Now, Mr. Campbell, I represent Oregon's 4th Congressional District, mostly rural, has a larger land area than Denmark or Switzerland.
03:24And as of last year, there were over 50,000 households in my district that were unserved by broadband.
03:30We only, I'm three miles outside the city.
03:33We got high-speed internet at the end of 2019.
03:37And the people up the road from me still don't have it.
03:40Never mind frontier in our much more rural areas.
03:42So I think we should be approaching this the same way we did rural electrification.
03:49So how do, I'd like to ask you, A, if you were able to use successfully used funds for broadband that were included in the IAJA,
03:59and how do staffing shortages at federal agencies impact the process to get permitting?
04:05So let me ask the answer to the second question.
04:08I'm not sure how staffing has impacted it.
04:11And we don't do broadband ourselves, but our owners do broadband.
04:15And they've taken upon themselves, and they were really requested by the governor to take the lead on serving rural utility, rural areas with broadband, because we've got the poles there.
04:27And many of them are doing that.
04:29Some of them are just facilitating that with contractors, because they really didn't want to get into broadband business.
04:34And would you agree that it is critical that we get broadband to our rural and frontier communities as the same level of priority that we did with rural electrification,
04:46and with that same kind of federal investment, interest, and energy?
04:52We do.
04:52We as co-ops believe that it's in our interest to facilitate that.
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