SINKING IN
BUREAUCRACY
would have impacts all along their
length as well.
Because the proposed site is located more than 3 miles from shore
— the line where state law generally ends and federal jurisdiction
begins — Cape Wind, like many
offshore projects, also triggered the
full complement of oversight, because construction staging, shorebound electric cables and other
aspects of the endeavor must also
adhere to state guidelines.
Over the course of nine years, all
of this was considered, opened for
public comment, and then reconsidered again. In nearly all cases,
according to the final review document, the impacts were declared to
be negligible, minor or moderate.
In the minds of many green advocates, this level of scrutiny has
done wonders over the last 40
years to keep economic development smart and the environment
safe. But the multiplicity of agencies involved, the lack of strict
time frames, and the reflex to gird
against lawsuits have also dramatically lengthened the review
process, many critics say, not just
for Cape Wind but for all manner
of major infrastructure projects in
the U.S., from road and bridge improvements to power plants and
HUFFINGTON
03.10.13
transmission lines.
In a paper published in the
journal Environmental Law in December, Jeffrey Thaler, a professor
of energy policy, law and ethics
at the University of Maine, noted
that there are currently as many
as “50 different federal environmental and wildlife statutes and
executive orders, largely enacted
or promulgated since 1980 that
create a daunting gauntlet of regulatory hurdles.”
Thaler added that by his own
informal count, there are over
63,000 pages of such regulations
dealing with environmental, energy, resource management and
wildlife at the federal level — and
untold thousands more at the
state level.
Last June, the New York, New
Jersey & Connecticut Regional
Plan Association’s “America
2050” program, which takes a
broad look at national infrastructure planning and policy, published an analysis of NEPA that
bore some startling statistics.
Titled “Getting Infrastructure
Going: Expediting the Environmental Review Process,” the study
found that:
“In the 40 years since the passage
of the National Environmental
Policy Act and the development
of the current federal regulatory