Hurricanes present new challenge to Trump’s fast-track permit plan
“The executive order will facilitate construction of things in places we know almost for sure are going to flood, and that’s terrible public policy,” Eli Lehrer, president of the R Street Institute, a free-market think tank in Washington, told the Washington Examiner.
Lehrer says speeding up the permitting process is a “perfectly worthy goal,” but he worries about a part of President Trump’s Aug. 15 executive order that rolls back the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, established by former President Barack Obama in 2015.
The standard required the federal government to account for climate change and sea-level rise when building infrastructure in floodprone areas.
“That standard is basically a way of stopping dumb stuff from being built,” Lehrer said. “Rescinding it may make it slightly easier to build infrastructure, but it also assures infrastructure that’s built will be destroyed. It’s hugely fiscally irresponsible.”
