Reducing and Eliminating Duplicative Environmental Regulations Act
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. FULCHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 6398, the RED Tape Act.
In my home State of Idaho, we have more than 34 million acres of federally controlled land. I just want to put that in perspective for a minute. My good friend on the other side of the aisle is from the great State of New Jersey. You can put more than six New Jerseys just within the Federal land mass in the State of Idaho. That is how big it is.
Why is that pertinent here? It is pertinent because, with that much land mass, you have a seemingly endless flow of processes going on from departments or agencies for approvals for one thing or another: energy impact statements, the NEPA process. Everything ongoing all the time takes years each time.
We had a recent situation with a wind farm project in my home State. Regardless of what you think about wind farms, this was just an actual occurrence. There was a long process of approval where an EIS, an environmental impact statement, was required, and the EPA was a part of that statement every step of the way, running in parallel as part of that EIS. As soon as that was completed by mandate, the EPA had to go back and publicly comment on the process it just went through itself.
That is just one example, Mr. Speaker, of the duplicative situation that we have. This is really problematic when you have a lot of these projects going on. In my home State, that is a prime example.
All the RED Tape Act does is eliminates that duplicative mandate. There is still the process. We are still going through all the areas of concern. It just eliminates the duplication of it.
Mr. Speaker, I would just add, as I close, that this is potentially even more important now than ever before, to make this easier to deal with, because our energy needs as a country are taking a hockey stick in the demand curve. It is only going one way.
So much of the energy needs have to go through these processes. A lot of it is coming right out of my home State. We see this as a real problem. Again, I rise in support of H.R. 6398, and I encourage my colleagues to do the same.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source