Complete misrepresentation of NEPA
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“We’ll reported, mostly interesting concept, and generally well paced. Usually a podcast like this would deserve a 5-star review, but episode 4 has some egregious exaggerations. More specifically, the podcast’s characterization of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is grossly misinformed (at best) or misleading (at worst).
An economist was brought in to mention how “costly” NEPA is and then the general argument is made that this process, while useful, creates major hurdles for infrastructure projects because it creates an avenue for virtually anyone to sue. There is so much incorrect about this characterization of NEPA, but two major things stand out.
First, not all federally-funded projects require an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) as the podcast argues. There are two other categories classes of action (Environmental Assessments and Categorical Exclusions) that projects can take if they will not have major impacts on the environment. An EIS is specifically for projects that have no way to avoid major adverse environmental effects. Of course a massive project like the one discussed on the podcast would require substantial environmental review to identify and mitigate the environmental impacts or will create. There is more nuance than this in NEPA but pretending an EIS is always required and always time consuming and expensive is blatantly false.
Second, the use of an economist as some sort of expert on NEPA as a process is misguided. Their consideration of what made infrastructure projects more expensive was exclusively looked at through an economic lens (obviously) with the ultimate conclusion being that it must be NEPA that is causing major price increases. NEPA certainly played a part in this but it was clear the economist and the podcaster have no real understanding of NEPA so there is no feasible way they would actually be able to consider how NEPA may increase the cost of projects. If you’re going to make the major argument in one of your episodes that NEPA created a situation where the Big Dig became much more expensive and much more time consuming at least have people involved that actually understand basics about the process.
I say all of this as a person who literally works side-by-side with environmental reviewers for the government involved in grants awarded to infrastructure projects.”
Asuthyo35 via Apple Podcasts ·
United States of America ·
12/15/23
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