EPA Regulatory Review Underway

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has invited the public to participate in a comprehensive review of its “significant” environmental regulations to determine whether any such rules should be modified, streamlined, expanded, or repealed to make the Agency's regulatory program more effective or less burdensome in achieving its objectives. This review comes in response to President Obama’s January 18, 2011, Executive Order (EO) 13563, “Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review” that orders all federal agencies to review all existing significant regulations and, within 120 days, provide a plan on how this will be accomplished. Specifically, EO 13563 directs federal agencies to consider “how best to promote retrospective analysis of rules that may be outmoded, ineffective, insufficient, or excessively burdensome.”  It also orders federal agencies to follow guidelines when proposing regulations.  These guidelines include conducting cost/benefit analyses, tailoring the regulation to impose the least amount of burden, specifying performance objectives rather than certain behaviors and assessing available alternatives such as incentives and choices.  In addition, the agencies are directed to enhance public participation, promote innovation, provide for flexible approaches and ensure scientific objectivity. President Obama’s new policies on regulation affirm sound principles and practices that have been in effect since the 1980’s; nonetheless, they also may reveal a new appreciation for the effect regulations can have on economic well-being, and the importance of a balanced regulatory approach. EPA is soliciting public input on its plan via its website through March 20, 2011.  EPA also plans to hold a public meeting in Washington, D.C. on March 14, and listening sessions in other parts of the country.  By late May, EPA will provide the public with its retrospective review plan, as well as the initial list of regulations it plans to review. More information about environmental laws and regulations that impact construction is available online at http://www.cicacenter.org.