Faster permitting will support Trump agenda, EPA administrator says

The Environmental Protection Agency can further Trump administration priorities like artificial intelligence dominance with faster permitting, according to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who spoke with governors and the press during the Western Governors’ Association meeting in Santa Fe on Tuesday.

In March, the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to make significant changes to its permitting processes and reconsider regulations limiting carbon emissions, clean air standards that regulate coal power plants, the use of wastewater in oil and gas operations and more. But Zeldin expects Congress to take up permitting reform after it clears the hurdle of passing a mega-budget bill, potentially meaning more permitting processes get sped up or cut altogether.

“One of the ways that the EPA can help, regardless of whether or not Congress acts on a permitting reform bill, is that there were some examples that we saw coming in where EPA was purposely gumming up the works on particular permitting requests that the Trump EPA disagreed with,” Zeldin said. “And instead of getting in the way, we are helping to get approvals of these permits.”

Environmental advocates strongly objected to the March changes.

“We had 27 separate climate disasters costing over a billion dollars last year. Now more than ever the United States needs to step up efforts to cut pollution and protect people from climate change,” Jason Rylander, legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, said in a statement.

The EPA — which has already shed at least 1,300 employees who left voluntarily over the last six months, according to Politico reporting — plans to continue restructuring, and the agency is expected to shrink spending by 65% from 2024 to 2025, Zeldin said. Despite the reduction, Zeldin said the EPA can tackle backlogs of state implementation plans, pesticide reviews and new chemical reviews.

“We inherited a lot of backlogs, and there were employees of the agency, great employees of the agency, but given missions that were not core statutory obligations, and I don’t believe that an agency employee should be prioritized on work that is not a core statutory obligation,” Zeldin said.

North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong asked the administrator to consider making rules that are less prescriptive.

“If you’re trying to meet a methane requirement in New Mexico, or you’re trying to meet a methane requirement in North Dakota, we would much rather you told us what it is and let us do it, as opposed to prescribing how to do it,” Armstrong said. “Because if we can figure out a better way to do it, states are way faster at adapting to that regulatory change than any federal government agency under any administration.”

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham agreed with the sentiment.

“If you let states figure out how to do it, they can figure it out with their partners effectively and meet some of the best environmental standards in the world,” Lujan Grisham said.