Promoting Efficient Review for Modern Infrastructure Today Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Chair, I rise in strong opposition to the PERMIT Act, Republicans' latest attempt to help corporate polluters dodge responsibility.

This alarming bill would weaken the Army Corps' permitting process and EPA's Clean Water Act authorities, threatening my district, where the Clean Water Act protects our waters, our salmon, and our people.

Moreover, this bill would impose an unworkably short 60-day review of dredge-and-fill permits. Two months is simply not enough time for underresourced communities to understand the effects that a project could have, let alone to mount any meaningful opposition to protect themselves.

Access to judicial review ensures that communities, Tribes, and local governments can challenge decisions and raise potential harms that have not yet been considered. Without it, agency actions just go completely unchecked.

This legislation prioritizes polluters over people's clean water and public health, and it especially puts all the harms disproportionately on our low-income and rural constituents and our communities of color. They deserve so much better. They deserve our support, rather than throwing them under the bus.

Our permitting systems do need to be improved, and we have found a way in our State to do that. This is a false solution that attacks essential clean water safeguards and undermines access to our courts.

I oppose it, and I hope, as the ranking member said, that we can come back and do real permitting reform that doesn't throw communities under the bus and protects our waters.

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