Counties make their cases for permitting reform

Key Takeaways

Land ownership maps in Duchesne County, Utah look like a checkerboard, and Commissioner Greg Miles is done playing games.

The mixture of state, federal, tribal and private lands — and the way they wound up like that — may be noteworthy for their complexity, but the complications that the situation poses has put his county at a disadvantage for years. 

“In the checkerboard, we have some agencies that are state and some that are federal, because the Ute tribe wants the federal government to be in charge on EPA issues on their lands, and the state wants primacy on their state-owned lands,” Miles said during an April 20 Capitol Hill briefing. “We have this battle of ‘does Utah EPA have regulation, or does federal air quality?’ It’s very complex.”

Those exotic maps look a lot uglier when trying to obtain permits for a range of projects.

“When you look at all these different landowners, permitting becomes a nightmare,” Miles said. 

Which makes it harder for counties to budget.

“Counties are expected to plan responsibly for infrastructure, budgets, community impacts, but long and unpredictable federal timelines make that plan far more challenging than it needs to be,” said Triston Rice, Natural Resource policy analyst for the Wyoming County Commissioners Association.

“Even after years of study and a formal decision, a project’s future remains unclear and making it difficult for local governments to plan with confidence. It’s not just about how long it takes to complete a review, but whether the review is durable enough to withstand legal scrutiny and provide certainty once a decision is made.”

Custer County, Mont. Commissioner Jason Strouf and Yavapai County, Ariz. Supervisor Nikki Check joined Miles and Rice to share their counties’ experiences, illustrating how legislation like the SPEED Act, which the House passed last year, could simplify infrastructure projects, saving time and money, by reforming permitting laws. 

Although Miles took some solace in a recent U.S. Supreme Court victory for the Rural Utah Infrastructure Coalition, of which Duchesne County is a member, he noted that counties, particularly rural counties, are fighting asymmetric battles all the time. In that case, the court found that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) only requires the environmental impact statements of government agencies to consider impacts that they have regulatory power over, limiting NEPA’s scope. The coalition was seeking a permit to build a rail line to ports and refineries to transport oil out of a remote basin.

“I think for counties with limited budget money, it’s really tough,” Miles said. “We don’t have the resources, we don’t have experts at our fingertips like federal agencies do. For us to be able to tackle something like that, to that magnitude, it’s tough.”

Strouf decried the permitting required to repair infrastructure that is already in place. A culvert recently collapsed under a Custer County road, requiring a partial repair on land that abuts federal territory, requiring a federal permit.

“Literally feet is what we’re talking about,” Strouf said. “And that difference in feet means the difference of our road crew being able to go down there within two to three days and fixing that culvert and keeping that road open versus potentially having to shut that road down or having another water event that completely washes out that 70-foot culvert where now we don’t have an option but to shut the road down.”

Essentially, the county must pursue federal approval to replace existing infrastructure. 

The SPEED Act would allow counties to become cooperating agencies, which could allow them to better serve the public as an ancillary to the lead agency offering technical support, expertise and local input when federal agencies are in charge. 

“We know what’s best for our constituents, because our constituents tell us what is best for them,” Strouf said about the prospect of participating agency authority.

Check noted that a new transmission line in the Coconino National Forest will be limited to federal land, but the project has become one of the most commented-upon topics in Yavapai County, and she and her colleagues are left in the dark about it.

“The county wasn’t at the table, but my constituents were asking me to interject and to try to navigate some of these conversations,” she said. “Had I been there from the beginning of that process, it would have been much easier to identify community concerns, challenges and opportunities as far as the best end results there.” 

Miles agrees that cooperating agency capability will be particularly useful given various functions counties fulfill. 

“Counties are unique in the country because often you have an executive and legislative function in one body,” he said. “We represent the people, citizens of our cities and so we have an obligation to speak for them, too.”

That’s not to say that local coordination with the federal government is doomed. Following floods that wiped out roads near Yellowstone National Park in 2022, the National Park Service and Federal Highway Administration worked smoothly with state and local governments to rebuild the roads, improving them in the process.

“Rather than simply rebuilding the road in place, which in many areas was no longer viable, they identified and constructed a new alignment, a higher ground, in some cases relocating the road entirely away from the river corridor. It required engineering, environmental review and real time decision-making across the agencies. Despite that complexity, the process moved quickly,” Rice said. “From a county perspective, what stands out is not just the speed, but the clarity and coordination. There was a fine path forward, consistent communication and alignment across agencies. Local communities knew what to expect and could plan accordingly. And importantly, decisions proved durable. The project moved from analysis to implementation without being stalled in prolonged uncertainty.”