Environmental Permitting Reform, NEPA Assignment, and the Future of Environmental Policy with Eric Beightel

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Eric Beightel, Federal Strategy Director at Environmental Science Associates about Environmental Permitting Reform, NEPA Assignment, and the Future of Environmental Policy.  Read his full bio below.

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Showtimes: 
0:19 - Right Whale Facts!
7:18 - Interview with Eric Beightel starts
18:38- The bureaucracy and challenges of environmental permitting
36:55 - The benefits and futures of NEPA Assignment for states
45:12 - #FieldNotes

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Eric Beightel at www.linkedin.com/in/ericbeightel

Guest Bio:
As Federal Strategy Director, Eric serves as an advisor to ESA’s clients on the full range of regulatory challenges, helping navigate the ever-evolving changes to federal policies, processes, and funding requirements.

A seasoned practitioner with a career spanning 25 years in federal, state, and private sector positions, Eric Beightel is a nationally recognized expert on environmental policy, NEPA, and the federal permitting process. Throughout his career, he has continually played a leading role in driving the national effort to streamline the environmental permitting process for major infrastructure projects.

Before joining ESA, Eric was the Presidentially appointed Executive Director of the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (Permitting Council) where he was responsible for overseeing a portfolio of more than $75 billion in large-scale infrastructure projects, supporting federal agencies and project sponsors through expedited federal environmental review and permitting that advanced dozens of critical projects to completion, realizing their economic and environmental benefits for the nation.

Eric previously served under prior federal administrations as a Senior Environmental Policy Advisor at the Department of Transportation and as a subject matter expert to the Office of Management and Budget. In addition to his public sector positions, he also has held national infrastructure and environmental policy and strategy roles with national and global consulting firms, bringing hands-on experience with project implementation and delivery for complex infrastructure projects.

Eric Beightel holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas and a Master of Public Policy degree from George Mason University.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Hello and welcome to EPR, your favorite environmental enthusiasts, Nic and Laura. On today's episode, I talk about giving good presentations. We interview Eric Beightel about environmental permitting reform, NEPA assignment, and the future of environmental policy. And finally, in keeping with our interview, here are some fun facts about North Atlantic right whales.

The North Atlantic right whale is a critically endangered species with fewer than 380 individuals remaining, facing high risks from vessel strikes and fish gear entanglement. These massive baleen whales grow up to 55 ft long and weigh over 70 tons. They are identified by their unique white callous patterns on their heads, cows of the sea, you could say. They live along the Atlantic coast of North America, feeding on zooplankton. They are really cute, very big, very slow animals, and how about that? There we go, hit that music.

This year, NAEP is hosting their annual conference and training symposium in Anchorage, Alaska from Monday, May 11th through Thursday, May 14th. The conference is a great opportunity to learn about new projects, share technical knowledge, network with other industry professionals, and engage with environmental leaders. Not a member yet? Join NAEP with special discount code EPR for $25 off your membership. Register now at www.NAEP.org.

Let's get to our segment.

OK, no Laura today, so it is just me in the chair, and one of the things we were talking about before we turned the mics on was about giving good presentations, and it's something I've done a lot of, but I will try to keep my advice and thoughts to as broadly as I can, right?

I think the number one goal of any presentation is, you know, to inform, right? That's what you're trying to do, and the way you do that has to be very authentically you, and that is easy to say. It is hard to understand what that means.

So, you'll see advice, you know, about looking at who you're talking to, or posture, or, you know, tone, trying to mix up your words. There's all kinds of stuff like that, but, you know, effective speaking is really caring about what you're talking about, right? That's hard to fake.

If you do care about it, you're going to do. You're gonna be invested in what you're doing, you're going to take time to make sure that you get your thoughts together, and you will present that as well as you can. And I think that's not always apparent, you know, sometimes you're giving a presentation on something you don't care about, or you don't know about, or it's not that interesting to you, and it can come off differently than how you mean.

And even if you do care about something, even if you're really passionate about it, it may not go the way you want it to, but it will have gone better because you cared. And I think a lot of times it's easy to say I can't do that cause it didn't go well one time, right?

And it's like, I think about the countless presentations I've given in my life, the amount of times I've opened my mouth, you know, so many times I've said the wrong thing or said it poorly, but most people give you grace. Most people aren't going to sit there and be upset with you because you didn't say something exactly the way you wanted it to, and I think sometimes you have to give yourself that grace as well, and it's much harder to do for you than it is for others.

But still, when you are trying to do a presentation, I think one of my early life lessons is actually from a leadership training I was in with my first company, and they had us all, we all got different prompts about a project, and we had to brief the C-suite, the corporate leaders of the company, on our project and our solution to the problem they presented to us. We had basically an evening to do it.

And I got to do the presentations the next morning. I was the 2nd or 3rd, I think, something like that. I went pretty early, and I was thankful for that. But I did fine. I did a good job. I had prepared. I had done my due diligence, and then the person that went on after me started talking.

And then froze and did not speak again for the rest of the time. I mean, we're talking 7 words in, he froze, blank slate. There was encouragement to keep going, but they did not stop until the timer was up, which I actually think was a pretty good technique because you have to understand your space.

Like you have to understand the amount of time that you have. If you're giving a 3 minute presentation versus a 5 minute presentation, those are different, and if you go over, that's not good. If you go way under, also not good. It's very memorable.

I don't remember any of the other speeches there. I don't even remember mine, and I gave it. But I definitely remember that one moment, and it had turned out that he'd tried to memorize everything he was going to say. And got 7 words in and forgot the 8th word, and he needed the 8th word to get to the 9th, which happens to people all the time.

And, you know, there is such a thing as being prepared. There is such a thing as being overprepared, and I think that's what happened there. When you have a presentation and you want to do well, sometimes there's that you put that pressure on yourself, right? I've got to make sure this is perfect.

It doesn't have to be perfect. It's not going to be perfect. It can be great without being perfect, and I think there's a lot of pressure we put on ourselves to do the not just good but perfect, and like there, there's a good example. I just said good instead of well. So, you know, I'm gonna think about that for like an hour.

But you can't, you know, be that hard on yourself. You can't be that difficult on you. There's always gonna be challenges that you come up with. Like, I still remember, I'll never forget the worst I ever was on stage. I will never forget the air conditioning turning off.

So it went from like quiet to silent. And I still had 3 minutes of a set left, and I'm up there with no one, I mean, 100 people looking at me, and no one giving me time. I'm talking, I'm trying to tell jokes, and no one is saying a word. They're not laughing, they're not booing, they're just waiting for me to leave.

And I didn't want to. I finished the jokes I wanted to tell. I did not just leave, which was, you know, a commitment I'd made to myself when I was starting this. I'm like, you're gonna be bad sometimes, you're going to fail. You have to commit to what you said you were going to do. You said you'd be up there for 3 minutes or for 5 minutes, you were up there for 5 minutes. 3 of them are horrific, but I survived, and that's kind of one of the things we talked about with Eric today.

Sometimes, you know, those worst moments do end. The beginning of your next good presentation starts as soon as your bad one ends, right? So it's just, it's always really hard to feel in the moment, especially right after, but those things end, life moves on, everyone moves on.

Yes, I still think about that presentation. I don't remember the person's name. I can remember his face, I guess, but that's not really, I don't even remember who it is. I just remember the presentation. I took what I needed from that, you know, I tried to learn from that experience. And so try to do that to yourself.

I know there's a lot going on these days, so that's a good place to go. It kind of fits in with what we're talking about. So I'll wrap up. Thanks for listening, everybody.

Let's get to our interview.

Hello and welcome back to EPR. Today we have Eric Beightel with us. Eric is the federal strategy director at ESA Environmental Science Associates. Eric, it's great to have you here.

Yeah, great to be here, Nic. It's been, been a long time coming. I've been trying to get on the show for a while and, it's like ships passing in the night, but find a way to make it happen.

Yeah, I'm really happy to do that, and I'm also thankful we only did this recording one time and definitely didn't have to restart it because I messed up. That, that would be silly. That would never happen. My answers will be the same, I promise you.

So, obviously, Eric, there's a lot to get to with you, especially about, you know, you're changing your roles that happened last year, but I do want to start with you telling us a little bit about what your role is at ESA.

Yeah, so, I started ESA last, last January, so right after the inauguration, I took a week off. Turned out that that was the one week that Savannah had had snow for 6 years or something. So instead of me playing golf and like trying to clear my mind before I started this new adventure, I was at home with the kids on snow days for most of that week.

Not what I had envisioned, but it was good. I was still able to kind of center myself. And, you know, I hit the ground running at ESA. My role as the federal strategy director is to just pay attention to what the administration's doing, what each of the agencies are doing as it relates to environmental permitting review, what Congress is doing as it relates to permitting reform.

And to a lesser extent, you know, what the courts are doing as it relates to those same topics. I'm not an attorney, but obviously the court decisions have a very clear impact on how we effectuate these laws and regulations.

And so we may talk about seven counties, uh, down the road, but like, you know, there are, there have been some consequential decisions recently that have, will inform and have informed how we do the permitting stuff. And so my role really is to provide our internal staff the actual intelligence that they can use to talk to their clients, so they can go in and have an understanding of how this landscape is changing, but also to be able to advise our clients, you know, how are you going to position your projects for success in this very dynamic policy landscape.

The rules you thought you understood have almost certainly changed somewhat. And so, how do you position your project to be successful moving forward? How do you adapt, and how do you plan for this sort of disruption?

It's been great. I've been working towards this type of a job for most of my career, and I'm really happy to have finally landed in this position where all I get to do is just write and think about policy and advise clients on policy. It's great.

So, that's a great thing to hear, and I'm really curious, honestly, what, OK, so you have an idea of what's happening, right? Like, 7 counties is a great thing. We will talk about some of that, and some of what's coming and what's changing.

You know, a lot of what, like, what my job is, right, is basically someone saying, what's the permitting requirements for this? What am I supposed to do right now? And, you know, you have this idea, OK, we're in a new world order, quite literally, some of what we have been doing historically is completely different than what it was.

How do you start with what your job is? Like, you know, OK, I need to know what Congress is doing. Am I talking to senators and representatives, or am I reading blog posts? How do you actually start to build out what the path forward is for permitting?

I read a lot. When you look at my browsers, I have many, many tabs open for different news sources, different agency websites, Federal Register, you know, congress.gov, all the things. So, reading first and foremost, but also being active in industry groups, you know, like ACEC. I'm on the Water and Environment and Energy Committees there as well as Transportation Committee, and, you know, just paying attention to what they're hearing, using those industry groups as kind of the direct link to Congress because they are going to be the lobbyists, the advocates on a lot of these topics, but they open those doors.

I'm very careful to not engage in any sort of actual advocacy, but happy to have the conversations with staff when they need technical assistance and just staying plugged in, generally speaking, and, and, you know, a lot of the folks who were in the Biden administration have moved on to other roles who are still in the policy space and just keeping a pulse on what they're doing and what they're hearing, and really all of this is, I mean, it's a network of policy wonks who just want to stay on top of the topic du jour, and it's all about just talking to people, reading, talking, talking it through.

Each client and each project is gonna interface with these changes a little bit different. So like talking with our staff, like, a great example of this would be DOI's pause on renewable reviews where they funnel everything up through the secretary's office. You know, when that memo came out last July, you know, it was really scary for a lot of our clients.

Like, how are you going to navigate this? Is this gonna stop your project? Are you at risk because you have funding that's committed and you're not gonna be able to expend it or get to construction and operation in time? There's all these factors that come in and they affect each project slightly differently, and it's really helpful to hear kind of firsthand how it's affecting them, so you can have those conversations with others like.

You know, this policy, I understand that this is somewhat of a grudge, but also they are exercising their executive discretion on how to implement these laws and regulations, and they want to have greater oversight and all the talking points that they've shared, but it has real impact. But they don't always understand that.

And so how do you communicate those effects. And so a lot of my job is also writing about it, you know, I write blogs for ESA. I have an internal newsletter that I send out every week or every two weeks that summarizes the happenings within Congress and the agencies, and it's just information sharing.

And that's really what it is. It's just kind of learning about it, sharing the info, getting feedback and figuring out how you pivot to manage whatever's in front of you, because we. We're not gonna be able to predict what this administration is going to do other than it's gonna be, yeah, exactly, and man, we're definitely gonna dive into some of the actual advice and thoughts you have on where we are now, but I wanna know, was there like an eight year old version of yourself who's like, hey, you know what I wanna do when I grow up? I'm gonna read and I'm gonna write about permitting.

When did that happen? How did you get to here, you know?

No, uh, the eight year old version of myself wanted to be a marine biologist and study sharks.

Me too. All right, I'm right there with you.

But I, cause I grew up in Kansas and like that we had no water, um, so yeah, yeah, yeah. Sharks are amazing.

Yeah, I would say I stumbled into it. When I got to KU, the University of Kansas, where I did undergrad, I had no idea what I was gonna do. My roommate, my best friend from high school, he and I lived together. We, you know, we grew up in Lawrence, went to KU, so we, we didn't stray far.

Stayed in the comforts of our hometown. And he took a class at KU as intro to Environmental studies, and it was first semester. I did not take that class. But he came, you know, back to the dorm and was like, this is amazing. We're talking about all this stuff, and I was like, oh, maybe I'll take that next semester.

And so I did. And then started a path that took environmental law, environmental policy, environmental economics, environmental ethics, and this whole kind of course load focused around the environmental industry.

And it was really interesting, I think, looking back on the sorts of courses that I took and how it kind of shaped my thinking. It was very academic, but there were some still practical applications of it, like the environmental law class that I took was not at the law school, it was a liberal arts class, but it helped you understand the reasoning behind Congress passed the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, CERCLA, RCRA, all the things.

And I took that experience and my first job out of college was doing environmental permitting for long linear telecom projects across the West. So I was at a civil engineering firm in Kansas City. They were doing telecom installations across like Northern California, Utah, Nevada, and also some marine cable landings from the Pacific into Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach.

And that was my kind of first exposure to real project-level public involvement. I had to call people at Hermosa Beach who were, and I did not know this at the time, but Hermosa Beach has a very active beach volleyball scene, and they were going to disrupt some of the beach volleyball courts for this landing site.

And so I had to call people and be like, hey, this is Eric Beightel from, you know, BHC Consultants. We're working with Tyco to help support this cable landing. We may disrupt your beach volleyball court, and they were not happy.

And, you know, it's the strange perspectives that you get talking with folks and what their very unique interests are. But, you know, fast forward, I did that for a while. I did some natural resource management for the Army National Guard for a few years, and then I moved to DC in 2006.

Started working for Federal Highways, doing environmental planning and permitting. And then I moved to the Office of the Secretary after a couple of years at Federal Highways, and that coincided with the Obama administration coming in.

And so, I was a career civil servant, but I was moving into the office of the Secretary at the same time that all those appointees were coming in. And so we were all learning the department at the same time. I built some really great relationships with those folks, and through that was able to really focus on some of the policy priorities of President Obama, which was accelerating project delivery.

And so I just kind of, over time, that became my thing. I fell into it a bit because it wasn't what I had thought I was going to be doing, but it just naturally became the thing I was most passionate about, and I just, over the years, have worked at it consistently and built a bit of a background and understanding of it and perspective now that I've, you know, this is 26, 27 years in, that I can kind of see all the things that we've been trying to do.

And they keep coming up, and, you know, you talk to folks who are older than me and with more experience than me, they have the same experience. We've been trying to crack this nut for decades, and the same questions, the same opportunities keep emerging, and then it always fails for one reason or another.

And I think, not to get ahead of where we may be going with the conversation, but I think we are now at a point where that's no longer acceptable, and there seems to be bipartisan agreement that something has to change, and, you know, that's an exciting, exciting place to be in.

It genuinely is, and I appreciate you kind of walking us through some things. It sounded like you had an experience when you first started, like calling people cold to say, hey, I have bad news is terrible. That is hard for anyone to do. And I would say that you're not a shy person, if I could say so, but that's still gotta be pretty challenging.

Like it kind of informs you on if I can do that, I can do anything. Was that kind of the mentality you had after that?

It was, I mean, I will say I'm not shy now, but I probably was not as outgoing or as comfortable in public back then, you know, calling people cold, like, I don't know who you are. I don't know what your interests may be, and I don't know how you're gonna react to the fact that I'm telling you your beach volleyball court is gonna be destroyed.

You know, the first few calls were pretty easy, but once you get that first person who's not happy about it, then your attitude changes and the dread for the next call starts to build.

But yeah, it was, all of it is learning, and I think that's probably what has been most valuable for me throughout my career trajectory is just to take the setbacks. It's just like, OK, well, that didn't work, or that's something that I could probably do differently and apply that and not feel defeated because we're all doing the best we can and in the grand scheme of things, that conversation is not going to matter.

Right, exactly. It is hard to say. I always say like your worst moments end. So when you're in them, it's terrible, but they will end. It's just you gotta get through it. That's all you gotta do, whether it's a conversation or whatever it is. So, I love hearing that.

So, let's do it. Let's talk about change, right? Change is something I think most people are afraid of most of the time, right? It's just, it's just, why would I want things to change if I know how they're working? Even if they could be better, sometimes it's like, well, I know how this works.

So, we're in a spot now, like you said, that's not the case anymore. Things are changing. So, maybe we can start by talking about what was working, what wasn't working with permitting, and where we're starting to see those changes come.

One of my biggest complaints about our permitting system is that we, I talked about this at NAP conferences of, like, we don't do a very good job of expressing what is working. We don't quantify the benefits of the permitting process.

There was an effort that I was a part of during the Obama years where we were going to try to track the outcomes of the alternatives analysis and the NEPA process to inform the preferred alternative. You know, what did you start with and what terrible idea did you have in the beginning that through the process was informed by all this input and all the permitting requirements that you had to comply with that shaped that project into what it was when you finally delivered it.

And we never got there. So it's hard to say what was working with a quantifiable number or figure or stat, but I think qualitatively, it was the process worked when you treated it like a process and an information gathering exercise to inform a project.

It didn't work when you came with a fully baked idea and the NEPA review was just a checkbox to complete, and it wasn't actually going to be taken for the intent that it was originally intended for.

And permitting also, you know, the outcomes are important, but the process is equally as important because even if you get to a great outcome, if the process itself is terrible, then nobody's going to want to do that, even if it does preserve wetlands or it does protect species.

If you have to jump through so many hoops to get there, that valuable outcome starts to lose its shine because of all the work that you did leading up to it.

We are crumbling a little bit under the weight of the bureaucracy that we've built around the permitting structures. As a Democrat and as a progressive, I have fully aligned with a lot of the ideas of needing input and making sure that we consider those perspectives of the folks who may not have the opportunity to engage as effectively as others who might be more well funded or just have more free time.

And so, like, we have to figure out a way to reach those people and understand their concerns, but it also has to be done in a way that doesn't stop the process. Like there has to be a balance there.

And we've not really been able to express what that balance is because we're afraid. Generally speaking, I think there's so many different constituencies that have an outsized voice in the policymaking that many on the left have been afraid to offend, and many on the right have just dismissed.

And that's a very general, very large generalization, and I don't think that that's true of all people, obviously, but generally speaking, the left has been trying very hard not to offend all of the various constituencies that make up their base, and the right has been like, look, this isn't working, like, let's just get rid of it.

And let's do what we can and let the chips fall where they may, and if we screw something up, then maybe we go back and fix it. But why are we spinning our wheels with all this process when we know that we need to deliver these projects?

And I think that where we are now is the recognition on both sides that that example on the right where we just steamroll everything is not necessarily the right answer. And the considerations on the left where we have to have every voice heard all the time, and we can't move forward until we hear that voice... that's not the answer either.

So we have to find this middle ground, and I think that we're getting there.

Yeah, it's a great, great point, because I think there are many examples where that process has failed, and I’m trying to use that word carefully, but there's a frustration, no matter what, when it doesn't go through the way it's supposed to go through, the way we, if we don't get to an outcome.

And I think even when, even if you're trying to do the right thing and you still can't get to the outcome, I think that's where we start to see that frustration really shine and really show.

And so it's interesting because, you know, you had, you worked on the permitting council and I mean like that had to be quite an interesting experience where that's pretty much that was coming to a head while you were there. How did doing that job kind of affect where we are now?

I will use offshore wind as a very, I think, classic example of the failures of kind of the interagency process. Offshore wind, by and large, everyone agrees, is a clean source of energy, and it's minimally disruptive, and it is very valuable for where it can be constructed and where we can connect it.

The power it generates is essentially nonstop. It has the ability to supplement our energy generation in a way that allows us to transition away from more fossil fuel heavy sources. Everybody sees the value in that. It's essential for us to have more renewable energy deployed to combat the effects of climate change and transition. Fine.

But to a project, there are all these other considerations. I don't disagree with the premise of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and all of the Section 7 or ESA requirements for listed species. The North Atlantic right whale is a great example.

It is on a downward trajectory. We are trying everything we can to keep that population in existence, basically. It is trending towards extirpation.

And offshore wind had, you know, we have to go out and you drill piles into the ocean floor to build the foundations for these large turbines. And the North Atlantic right whale was, you know, NOAA Fisheries was very concerned about the effects of the construction — like, is that going to mess up their migration patterns, mess up their feeding patterns?

We had an instance where because of climate change, the ocean currents had warmed, and so the traditional feeding zone that they had had moved north into a lease area that one of the offshore wind developers had purchased and was planning to develop. And so it created all these conflicts.

And I was so frustrated by the fact that there's not an ability across all of our environmental statutes to think about the overall outcome. Each environmental statute has its own very specific resource that it is trying to protect, independent of all the other considerations.

And this was especially frustrating with offshore wind where climate change is clearly damaging the whales' habitat. They're threatened for any number of reasons, and if we were to build these turbines, we could effectually improve their outlook.

Sure, we may have some disruption for the whale population as it currently exists, but maybe that's OK for the greater good. But there's not an opportunity for us to take that calculus because NOAA Fisheries has a very specific mandate.

And this is not to denigrate their mission — I fully support it — but how do we find that balance? Where is that trade-off that we allow? Maybe we don't do everything that MMPA says we have to do because it's gonna produce this much better outcome overall?

And I think that is, that's just one example of many, where you just have this conflicting agency mission that doesn't allow freedom or the discretion to the staff to say, yes, but… if we allow it here for just this minor, like a de minimis action or whatever it might be, to allow for this bigger, better thing to occur, we're all gonna be better off.

We just don't have that discretion and that flexibility right now.

I know, and it's almost like the structure is kind of almost designed against that. It's like, well, you have to follow the rules. I'm like, yeah, but the, you know, you, you follow the rules, you don't have to follow the rules like to a T because then we can't do anything and it's like, yeah, that sounds great, but legally, that's where the fears always come.

And so it's like, if you're doing something because you're afraid, you're not going to do your best job. That's kind of how I think of it, you know, it's like, oh, we're afraid we're going to get sued, so we have to do this. It's like, OK, do you though?

That is, um, I delivered remarks at a NEPA symposium at University of Utah Law School for the Natural Resources Law Foundation. And one of my points in those remarks was like, we need to change the way we think about permitting.

Like right now, we are asking permission to do a thing. And what if we flip this on its head and we made the regulatory agencies more helpers?

And that was one of my underlying themes at the Permitting Council — to be, let's not be a gatekeeper or like a cudgel to demand schedule adherence. Let's facilitate these conversations and facilitate the process so we get the better outcomes that we want.

And so, framing it as I'm asking your permission to allow me to do this thing — which is how it's always been — it already sets up a bit of an adversarial relationship.

And if we were able to turn that on its head to be like, all right, Army Corps, your job now is to protect wetlands and to ensure that development… I mean, maybe Army Corps is not a good example right now with WOTUS changing, but bear with me.

You know, Army Corps, your job is to protect wetlands and protect the nation's waters, but it's also to enable construction where it makes sense. So instead of saying your application's incomplete, your mitigation ratio is off, we need X, Y, Z, but we're not gonna help you find it or help you accomplish or provide us the information…

What if we pivot that a little bit? Be like, yes, I understand what you're trying to do. If you do this, that, and the other thing — we give you a roadmap — and you negotiate some of those outcomes… then everybody's happy.

The Corps is able to say we’ve achieved our mission, the developer's able to say, yes, and I preserved these wetlands, but I'm also able to deliver this project.

I think the mindset has to shift to where we are all in this together. There's always going to be development projects that don't have a lot of support, and that's going to be the tricky situations to work through.

But I think by and large, most projects get permitted. Most projects get moved to completion. So why are we slowing this down with all of this bureaucratic mumbo jumbo, and why can't we just say, yes, I understand what you want to do. I'm not here to say you can or can't. I'm here to make sure that you do what you're supposed to do to ensure that the outcomes are as good as they can be.

Yeah, honestly, I do hope that that is where we get to be. I don't know if that's where we are right now.

I don't think—

Yeah, so where are we now? What, you know, like I said, we have Sackett, we have Seven County, we've got changes to ESA, changes to Cultural Resources or Section 106. There's all kinds of things that are being updated, reviewed. It's enough to make your head spin.

I'm not even sure honestly where to start. So it's kind of like from a permitting standpoint, I feel overwhelmed as a practitioner, right? Like someone's asking me what are we supposed to do here, and you're like, well, I could have told you pretty definitively a few months ago, now I'm kind of like, hm, I don't know. Let me talk to my friends — you know, that's kind of where I am right now.

So where are we right now?

We are definitely in the middle of significant change, but I do think that there is a tendency to react to proposed rules and proposed legislation as though it were already in place, and people are starting to prepare for that inevitability.

And it may be inevitable, maybe it's not. But while there is change that's underway, the projects that are going through the process now are going through the process as it currently exists.

So, like WOTUS has not been redefined yet. The 401 cert process has not been redefined. We have nationwide permits that have been updated, but that change was pretty minimal.

NEPA is definitely in new territory, and I think we can unpack that one separately, but all of the other things, it's signaling change, but it hasn't fully been in effect.

And so it's hard to be able to advise a client, you need to prepare for this outcome, because we don't know for sure what that outcome is, and they're not subject to those requirements just yet.

We're still working under the existing permitting rubric, even though we can see the writing on the wall and the changes that are on the horizon.

The difference here is, I think, everybody sees what's happening and they just internalize it like, well, that's—

All right, well, I guess, you know, unless I'm abutting a jurisdictional wetland now, I don't have to get a permit.

Well, that's not the case now. Like today you still do. Today. You may not in a week or two, but today you do.

Right, and it does make it challenging, but I would say from NEPA, right, you can see this happening in some ways like, oh, you know, a species is going to be listed. You're aware that it's going to be listed, so you might as well do impacts now just in case it gets listed during your project.

That's kind of what it feels like to me with some of this permitting. It's like, yeah, we, we, you know, we might have to do our due diligence here. That's not a bad thing. It may change. Just be prepared that it could change.

We're talking NEPA. Seven counties is a big deal, and it's a big change, giving agencies authority to basically say no, this is what we can do. We're doing this. And that's the process moving forward.

I feel like when Seven County came out, not everybody was like, oh, this is going to be huge, and then it came out and I was like, oh no, this is way, way bigger than maybe, you know, what the casual observer would say.

So how does that impact? How are you seeing NEPA change?

With Seven County, it is a big deal for sure. It has changed a lot of the way that we do NEPA, but if you take a step back, it does effectively return the implementation to the statutory intent.

I think what is a bigger deal is the rescission of the CEQ regs and the updates of all the other agency regs as a result. Seven County just says, look. You are not required to do these things. We're limiting what the statute requires you to do. Agencies then have the discretion to do more or less. Well, not less, but do more than that if they want to.

And we always had the CEQ regulations to fall back on that provided a lot more explicit instruction than what the statute says. I mean, the statute's only a few pages long, and it's not super detailed and not super directive. And there was always the assumption that there was going to be some sort of implementing procedure here.

Now, you know, that question of whether or not CEQ had the authority to issue regulations and all of that is still actually undetermined. I don't think it's been settled. But as a result of them rescinding those regs, you don't have the very specific agency procedures.

Like the Department of Ag is a great example. The Forest Service had very specific procedures for the types of work that the Forest Service does. Those all went away, and it all rolls up now into the broader Department of Ag procedures.

Department of Interior, similarly, you know, you had BLM, you had BOR, you had BOEM, you had all the other bureaus, and what they did for NEPA… that is gone.

And it all rolls up into the departmental handbook and a little bit that's in the regs now.

That is much more disruptive, I think, than the Seven County decision on its face, because Seven County kind of said, you're no longer required to do these things. Let's really focus on what is in front of us.

The regs then took the next step, and I was reading the DOI handbook the other day about public involvement because we had a question about whether or not we're gonna need to circulate a DEIS.

And the public involvement mentions in the NEPA handbook for DOI are like, NEPA only requires that you do public involvement around an NOI, not necessarily as part of scoping.

And to me, that's a difference without a distinction — or a distinction without… whatever the phrase is. But it's telling the way that this administration and how they're approaching NEPA is like, look, it says specifically here, and we're not going to put anything in regulation or even guidance that goes beyond that.

And so the warm fuzzy blanket that we had of CEQ's regulations that provided that broader perspective is gone, and the agencies have really dialed back.

And so we are in a very strange place. I think what I'm most concerned with is everybody recognizes public involvement is good.

It's good to get input. It's good to get community buy-in. Developers want it because they want to have community support for their project. They want to have… they don't want to be bad neighbors to their development.

And now we're actually at a point where the agencies are precluding or restricting the ability of that sort of… so now it's on the sponsor to go out and do their own public meetings, separate from the NEPA process, and that's not how this should go.

Yeah, and at the same time, I think it's also fair to say that it's frustrating when you're at a public meeting and someone is asking you questions about the project like, oh, what’s your interest?

I'm like, oh, we just, we're just looking forward to suing you.

Cool. OK, thank you. That's nice.

So I know that exists as well, but yeah, but even to me, like that doesn't mean you don't do it and you don't have people that are good at doing it do it because it's almost like agencies last, you know, through administrations.

They live in the communities that they represent a lot of the times, not always, but most of the time. They're there, they're involved, they're engaged, and they stay involved and engaged regardless of who's in charge.

And I think that's something that we kind of forget sometimes, which can be kind of frustrating.

But it kind of also reminds me — I know another thing that I keep hearing about more and more is NEPA assignment.

And I don't know if that's part of this change that we're seeing, the federal government saying to states, hey, why don't you do this? Why don't you do more and we'll do less.

I'm not saying it's good or bad, it just seems to be that that's the way we're going. So are you seeing that also shift in a way with more authority, I guess, than it had before?

I don't think it's more authority, but there's a greater emphasis. So Secretary Buttigieg did send a letter out to all the state DOTs within a few months of him coming on board, saying, hey, we've got this great program, you guys should really think about it.

Because up till that point, I mean, California was the first one under SAFETEA-LU — there was a pilot. It became permanent in MAP-21, and after that, we had Ohio, Texas, Utah, Arizona, Alaska. Florida — they all came in a rush for NEPA assignment, and then it kind of petered off a little bit.

Recently, we've had Nebraska and Maine come in and we've had multiple applications. Georgia, where I am, they've applied for NEPA assignment, and there's a lot of other states who are interested.

NEPA assignment is an extremely valuable tool specifically for transportation, because it is a federally funded, state-administered program for highways, so the states are the ones doing the work anyway.

Most of the time they were drafting the documents, they were co-lead agencies anyway, they were drafting the documents, they would go to the division office or go to headquarters if it was super complex. And so the additive value of federal highways review was questionable oftentimes, particularly for more sophisticated mature transportation programs.

And where we are now with the attrition and forced attrition of the federal workforce, we simply don't have the environmental protection specialists at these division offices who are around even to manage these projects.

And so it makes sense, I think, in a lot of ways for the states to take this on.

And we've seen through all of the years of NEPA assignment and its existence, it does provide time savings. Ohio reports significant time savings from what it was prior to NEPA assignment to post-NEPA assignment. California has stats as well, Texas.

It's not like they're out there just blazing across fields. They're still doing it the way that they've always done it. It's just the states that were involved.

Yeah, sure, there's been a couple of hiccups here or there, but they haven't been significant. It's not to say that it wouldn't have happened if the feds were involved.

So, NEPA assignment I think is fabulous. I wish it were a little bit more accessible beyond just highways. I mean, you have to have highway assignment before you can pursue anything else.

California has rail assignment. I helped them get rail assignment for the high-speed rail program. That's awesome. Without that, that program would have died a very quick death, probably because the Trump administration at the time had the same relationship with California as it does now, and they pretty much shut down all of the reviews for the high-speed rail program, and there were 7 documents that were pending.

I remember that, yeah.

And so, getting NEPA assignment enabled the California High Speed Rail Authority to own their destiny. Great.

Ohio recently got rail assignment as well. We've had talks with some of our airports groups and some of the aviation industry reps — does FAA, is that a thing that FAA should explore?

Right now, it's not eligible because it's only surface transportation, but I think from a departmental perspective, DOT is well suited because of the federally funded, locally administered nature of the programs.

So they've been doing this stuff all along. Not every airport, not every state is prepared or equipped to do it, but the ones who have large programs should, I think.

Yeah, I love that like, really, I've worked with the military a lot and every installation is a little bit different. They all have different sizes, scope, scales, interests, needs and wants, and to kind of say they all would do things the same way… it was silly.

And I think Eglin Air Force Base, for example, has a great relationship with the scientific community doing red-cockaded woodpecker studies, surveys, etc. It's really neat. It's a really unique thing.

And so I feel like NEPA assignment kind of has that same flavor to it where it's like, yeah, it's a little different. Every place is a little bit different, and we treat it a little bit differently, so maybe it works here, maybe it doesn't, but it's, you get to decide.

And I think that’s the… you know, it kind of comes back to what I was saying before, right, that if you remove that fear of litigation and just do what you think is the best thing to do, then more states then would probably say, yeah, that's what we should do.

I will say the Seven County decision does provide a little bit more insulation on the NEPA litigation part because you're not, you don't have to look at all the other stuff. The Supreme Court has said you don't have to look at all these other things.

There's the question about whether or not you remand the whole action or if you — because it's procedural, it's a procedural statute — if you messed up the process, fix that part of the process. The project itself is not dead.

There are other substantive environmental laws to sue under where… if you didn't consider the wetlands or the species effectively, you can sue under those and get remedy that way.

And I think that is shifting a little bit, and that's what a lot of the work in Congress is right now is focusing on litigation reform. What is the appropriate pathway for challenges against NEPA action, because everyone sues under NEPA because it's easiest.

Yes, right, exactly, exactly.

Maybe it shouldn't be. Maybe that's not the right path. I don't know.

Right. Well, it's funny because it feels very much like — I love using the analogy of turning a cruise ship — and it's like, but how stuck was it is the question we've always had, because everyone's known it's been somewhat stuck.

It's not exactly the way we want it to be. So do you go forward or backwards? And that seemed to be what we were doing. I don't know if we'll get out to sea.

But it is interesting — your cruise ship analogy, I think it's… we just kept taking on passengers without building a bigger ship. Or without doing it — like we just keep on adding more things into the mix.

Yeah, sure.

It's so weird, it's so heavy that it's actually stuck in the mud. But more! More.

Exactly, yeah, yeah. I got you.

So yeah, I don't know — you could say it's been a great conversation already. I mean, there's so much I want to keep asking you about.

But for environmental professionals working on infrastructure projects, what advice do you have for them to make their projects run smoothly in the era that we're in? That actually does change, I think, probably day by day.

But, you know, the old advice would be reach out to your agency partners, like, make friends with them, talk to them about your project. And I think that's still mostly the case, but with the reduction in force that's going… like, there's just less people, and the people who are there are overwhelmed.

And so, I think the best thing you can do is to try to make — recognize they're overworked. Like, they're humans, they're people just like us. Respect them and provide them with all of the information that you think they need and try to mitigate or somehow manage that relationship to recognize the burden that they're under, the stress that they're facing, and try to make their jobs as easy as possible so that they don't…

They're already being attacked from multiple stakeholders. If you're the nice one, you may get a little bit more attention.

I think kindness wins in a lot of instances, and especially now, from a broader evaluation and analytics perspective on what do you study and how do you manage the permitting process — it's gonna be case dependent, but I think honestly, just your regulators are doing the best they can and recognize that and just be nice to them.

Bring them some chocolates, buy them a beer, I don't know, whatever…

Yeah, yeah.

Listen. Listen is a good tip.

Oh my gosh, exactly. Just be an ear for them to vent to and know that it's not personal, but like, what can you do to help to make your project shine that doesn't provide them more headaches, right?

And it's amazing to me — like, I mean, I've had conversations with regulators. I had conversations with two different regulators. They want two different things, right? One's retiring and one is taking over.

And so you listen to how that process is going to go, and they're both saying two different things, right? Give me updates as we go. I will update you. The other person's like, give me everything you got at the end and I'll tell you how wrong you are.

And, you know, OK. But like, that's what they want. And the guy who's, you know, you have to manage that and you have to navigate that. He's like, I got a lot of stuff to review. I don't have time to hold your hand all the way through. So if it's not right, I'll tell you. I expect it to be right, but I will tell you.

And so that's all it is. It's just trying to listen. And I think we're getting more and more of the “it better be right because I got too much other stuff to worry about.”

Yeah, yeah, which is a whole nother rabbit hole we can go down.

But we've got to have some fun with you before you go, and we'd love doing a segment called Field Notes where we ask our guests about memorable moments doing their job.

And for you — you mentioned meeting Secretary LaHood on zero notice without a tie. So tell me that story.

Yeah, that was awesome, and it was very much a learning experience for me. So this was, I don't know, probably 2010, 2009, 2010, somewhere in that neighborhood. I was working in the secretary's office.

The way DOT is structured, the ninth floor is where the secretary's office is, the eighth floor is where the undersecretary and most of the staff are. And I was on the 8th floor.

I was in my office doing whatever it was I was doing. At that point, that was when the TIGER program — the Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery — this is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

So we were just standing up this program, and the secretary was fielding meetings from all kinds of constituents who were essentially lobbying for their projects. Want to get the secretary's ear on this, that or the other project. “You know, it's really important for my community, please give us money.”

And he was meeting with the mayor of… I don't remember where. And the person who was actually responsible for those sorts of outreach meetings was nowhere to be found. He had gone to the gym. DOT has a gym down in the basement in the walkway between the two buildings.

He was there, his cell phone was not with him, whatever. And they were calling him, like frantically, “Where is this guy?” I won't name him and throw him under the bus.

And, you know, I was like, hell, I don't know where he is.

And so they're like, “All right, well, Eric, you know this project. Come upstairs right now to talk with the secretary and the mayor.”

OK. And so I was frantic because this was a day that I didn't have any meetings. And so I was in the office — I don't even think I had a jacket that day. I think I was just in like khakis and a polo or maybe a button down.

And I ran upstairs. The meeting — A, the meeting had already started, so I'm walking in late. So everybody's gonna look at me anyway. And I go in. I had no idea what they were talking about. I had no idea what value I was supposed to be bringing to the meeting.

And so I just came inside, I sat down — there's a couch kind of next to the secretary, and the mayor was over here — and I just sat there.

And I didn't say anything. The secretary, Secretary LaHood, looked over and gave me the stink eye and then went right back to the mayor.

And that was it. There was no interaction. Secretary never said anything to me.

I went back downstairs. We were in a conference room because one of the appointees was testifying on the Hill, and so we all had gathered to watch the hearing.

And Polly Trottenberg, who was the Assistant Secretary at the time, she got a call from the secretary during that hearing watch party. And then she came in. I was like, “Eric — what the hell are you doing? Why are you going upstairs without a tie?”

And so it became this whole running joke across all of the staff: “You got a tie, Eric? You're wearing a tie today? You're wearing a tie today?”

Yeah. And that was… Secretary LaHood, very sweet man, but also very old school in a lot of ways. And I was dressed down for not being dressed up on that particular occasion. And it was very much a learning experience.

I had a similar sort of experience when I was at the permitting council. I met with Deputy Secretary Graves at the Department of Commerce and walked across the basically the South Lawn area, the South Parkway behind the White House, because I had a meeting at the White House.

And it was July, and I was wearing a wool suit. And when I got over there — people who are deputies take cars, air-conditioned Suburbans, from their offices over to the White House usually.

I was not important enough to have a driver or a Suburban. We didn't even have an office.

And so I walked across, got to the White House, came inside and was like, “Oh, I'm so hot,” and I took off my jacket and I was wearing like a light blue shirt, but at that point, it was navy blue in lots of places.

And so that — all of them, yeah. Yep. So I'm sitting in a meeting in the White House in the Roosevelt Room actually in the West Wing, and like the color is different at the top than it is at the bottom, because I was just so hot.

And… I have lots of clothing stories where it didn't work out well for me.

Yeah, well, you know, it's funny — just for a moment, I'll say the opposite happened to me once where I actually knew the person we were going to meet and I didn't know his team, but I knew him, right?

And I was like, “Hey guys,” — I know the BD folks — “I know you want to wear ties. I am telling you to take them off right now. Please take them off. I promise you it will go well.”

We get in the meeting — everyone's wearing a tie except for us, right?

The guy I know shows up, sits down in a tie, and I'm starting to sweat myself. I'm like, oh no, I've made a huge mistake.

And he goes, “Well, if they’re not gonna wear ties, neither am I.” And he just threw it down.

And he was like, “Thank God. OK, now we can continue.”

It was the luckiest I've ever felt in my life. I was like… so it does happen the other way, I promise.

That’s a much better experience than the two that I shared.

Oh no, I’ve definitely been where you are too. That is absolutely very real, very real.

But it's a great way to segue into the end of the show, and I think my favorite part about you — knowing this already — you are, I don't want to say the king of karaoke, but I mean that pretty much is… that is a title I think I could bestow upon you.

I know you get the cliche, what's your favorite song. I know you're gonna get that. You don't have to tell me that. But just give me a memorable karaoke story, and then I'll let you go.

I think I've been doing karaoke for many years. I started probably when I was in college and just kept on. It's just a fun thing to do with friends.

I do take it potentially a little bit more seriously than others. There was… I guess one hilarious memory about me taking it more seriously — I was in Sacramento, we went to a karaoke bar. It was one of the ones that had the karaoke rooms. So it's a little bit more intimate, and you're not performing for a crowd — you're just with your friends.

And Manisha Patel, who was my deputy director at the Permitting Council — but she and I worked together for many years — she tried to duet on a song that wasn't intended to be a duet with me.

And I was like, “Oh, that's my song,” and I just… hilariously, probably wasn't hilarious at the time, but looking back it was hilarious. I was very possessive of the song. It's like, “You can't do it.”

And she gives me the business to this day about how I would not let her sing. I don't even remember what song it was, unfortunately.

That's the best part.

No, that's great, and honestly — I would say you're committed. That's the word I would use.

There we go.

You're committed to the bit. You are doing it as well as you possibly can, and it is a bit.

It is a bit, yeah, yes. It really is. It's a performance. It's always really fun.

So we are out of time. I hate to say that because it's been a really good conversation.

If people do want to ask you questions, they are curious about anything we talked about today, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you?

I'm happy to connect on LinkedIn. It's very easy to do that. I think, you know, my contact info is with the recording and my email — always reach out, that's fine. It's ebeightel@esassoc.com.

Very good. Thank you, Eric, so much. It's been great to have you.

Thank you for being here.

My pleasure.

And that's our show. Thank you, Eric, for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. See you, everybody.