Comes today the issue of Trump 2.0 fighting to lessen the burden of government regulation and what that looks like in real life. It is not a sexy subject, but it is essential to allowing the American business genius to prosper. A growing body of regulation is never a benefit to business.
Lots of prospective projects are smothered in their cribs by regulation.
I think of unnecessary and overly broad government regulation like kudzu, that infamous Southern invasive species that grows and kills everything.
If you have travelled in the South, you have seen kudzu smothering the landscaping and killing the hosts that carry it. It was introduced into the United States as a potential soil stabilizer in the late 1800s.
Fine, dear reader, we can talk kudzu another day. Here’s the specific example I want to discuss today and it is a win for Trump 2.0 and the United States.
Some stalwart oil explorers and developers wanted to connect a promising oilfield — the Uinta Basin — in northeast Utah via rail to existing pipelines and eventually to Gulf Coast refineries. Doesn’t seem to be a wildly difficult thing to do, does it?
Haha. It was a bloody nightmare, took more than a decade, and ended up at the US Supreme Court.
Here are the pertinent facts:
1. So, the proposed rail line follows the path of the Colorado River for about 88 miles.
You will find that many rail lines in the US follow rivers because they eventually flow downhill to some destination, in this case a good connection to existing pipelines.
2. To build a railroad, one must obtain a permit from the Surface Transportation Board (founded in 1996), an independent agency within the Department of Transportation.
The STB is a 5-person board appointed by the President and confirmed by Congress with the President appointing the chairman of the STB. The terms are for 5 years.
3. To obtain a permit to build a railroad, the applicant must submit an environmental assessment for STB review. Upon favorable review of the environmental assessment, the STB issues a permit and the applicant begins construction.
This environmental assessment must conform to the provisions of the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act.
The regulatory framework in this instance is the Surface Transportation Board and the National Environmental Policy Act.
Not easy, is it, Big Red Car?
No, it is not easy to get that permit, dear reader, and the battlelines between the oil industry and its detractors always form on the environmental assessment and the permit. The detractors include the normal cast of climate alarmists and environmental sky fallers.
1. This is a bit of kabuki theater with the original planning for the railroad dating back to 2012.
2. By 2019 the applicant had planned three alternative routes for the railroad.
3. It took two years for the Surface Transportation Board to approve one of the three alternative routes based on comparative environmental impact.
4. In 2023, the naysayers convinced the US District Court to overturn the approval from the STB saying that even more environmental assessment — more than the 3,600 pages submitted — was required.
5. The case ended up at the US Supreme Court where the decision by the US District court was reversed by a vote of 8-0 with one Supreme Court Justice recusing himself (Gorsuch).
The US SCOTUS decided that 3,600 pages was enough.
Well, now it will take about two years to construct the project at a cost of less than $2B (100 permanent jobs and 300 construction jobs) and it will be the first “greenfield” railway project built since the 1980s anywhere in the United States.
The Supreme Court has made it clear that environmental impact assessments cannot be used to bludgeon worthy infrastructure projects.
But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car. Let’s try common sense for a change, shall we?
