Speed Limits on Trump’s Infrastructure Drive: Federal Laws, Rare Species and Nimbys Environmental regulations and neighborhood opposition routinely bog down projects and will likely constrain the administration’s plan to spend $1 trillion on ‘highways, bridges, tunnels, airports’ By David Harrison

Posted By on February 13th, 2017

https://www.wsj.com/articles/speed-limits-on-trumps-infrastructure-drive-federal-laws-rare-species-and-nimbys-1486931892

Almost sixty years ago, officials at California’s transportation department unveiled a plan to build a six-mile freeway extension in Los Angeles County.

They are still working on it.

During the 1960s, the road plan appeared on track. In the 1970s, new environmental laws required voluminous studies and sparked legal fights between the neighboring towns of South Pasadena and Alhambra, which lie along its intended path. The project remains under review.

 “I am totally for the national and statewide environmental laws,” said Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Association of Governments, who supports the extension project. Still, “sometimes it gets to be ridiculous.”
Many lawmakers and economists agree with President Donald Trump that America needs to fix a backlog of infrastructure needs, which the Transportation Department pegs at $926 billion. There’s a similar agreement that conservation and preservation laws have helped mitigate damage on neighborhoods and the environment.

A tour through of the nation’s thorniest infrastructure struggles shows how these two goals are often in conflict. As a result, long, costly reviews and legal battles will likely confront Mr. Trump’s efforts, just as they delayed much of President Barack Obama’s 2009 economic-stimulus efforts.

“You would have to fix some of these issues” said McKinsey & Co. partner Tyler Duvall, a DOT assistant secretary for policy in the George W. Bush administration, “in order to get the money into the system in a productive way.”

The president has yet to reveal details of his plan. On Jan. 24, Mr. Trump issued an executive order calling for expedited reviews on “high priority” projects. Before signing, he said: “We can’t be in an environmental process for 15 years if a bridge is going to be falling down or if a highway is crumbling.”

Any significant new infrastructure-spending package would have to clear Congress. And executive orders alone won’t do much to change a well-entrenched four-decade-old regulatory process, said Philip Howard, chairman of Common Good, a think tank favoring looser federal regulation. The White House didn’t respond to requests for comment.

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