It’s no secret, America badly needs an infrastructure upgrade. In 2021, the crumbling state of America’s infrastructure earned it a grade of C- from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Spoiler alert: it’s the highest grade our country has received in 20 years.

But as sea levels continue to rise and extreme weather events become more frequent, we must insist that our roads, bridges, and other infrastructure are engineered to be more resilient to the increasingly severe effects of climate change. If recent hurricane seasons have taught us anything, it’s that such a build-first-ask-questions-later infrastructure bill isn’t just short-sighted – it’s dangerous.

For decades Congress and the federal government starved local and state governments of badly needed money to finance infrastructure upgrades, effectively stalling projects before they even started. Rather than addressing the trillion-dollar elephant in the room and plugging the mile-wide funding gap, opponents in Congress bankrolled by corporate lobbyists have instead peddled the false claim that NEPA and other environmental regulations are responsible for otherwise unrelated project delays. Their goal is to make it easier to rubberstamp permits for dirty fossil fuel projects

Further gutting environmental review will do little to improve the state of our infrastructure. In fact, stacking additional reforms on top of one another before agencies are able to fully implement them or fully analyze their effectiveness is likely to slow down project reviews, not speed them up. Moreover, in the absence of NEPA, project sponsors would still have to comply with underlying environmental statutes, such as the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act, among others. The difference is that the process would become disjointed, as project sponsors would have to apply separately to each agency asserting jurisdiction.

NEPA and the environmental review process is an asset, not an impediment, to sound decision-making. If we are serious about “Building Back Better,” we must restore and strengthen NEPA. A just transition demands it.

Fast-tracking environmental reviews following natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes isn’t just short-sighted, it’s dangerous. NEPA and other climate resilience safeguards make infrastructure stronger and empower local communities to lead reconstruction efforts

Existing environmental laws provide more than sufficient flexibility to facilitate timely post-disaster reconstruction. There are numerous administrative measures at the disposal of the executive branch designed specifically to expedite disaster response. President Trump’s delayed decision to temporarily waive the Jones Act in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Irma, which requires that goods shipped from one American port to another be transported on American-built and owned vessels, is one such example of this type of executive action. Other major legislative measures include:

• The Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, which waives NEPA procedures for certain federal actions carried out within a Presidentially declared emergency or disaster area;
• The Clean Water Act, which generally exempts “emergency reconstruction of recently damaged” infrastructure from some permit programs and provides fast-track permitting for a variety of other activities;
• Numerous provisions in the Endangered Species Act enabling federal and state agencies to protect people and property in emergency situations, including an exemption from formal consultation in life-threatening emergencies.

By eliminating post-disaster environmental review of reconstruction projects, Congress all but assures that the next big hurricane to hit Florida or Puerto Rico will be equally catastrophic by creating perverse incentives for big developers to rebuild the same structures in the same manner, all subject to the same pre-disaster vulnerabilities.