Imagine waiting 18 years for permission to start a business or complete a project vital to your community’s growth.
Last year, Wyoming finally broke ground on the country’s largest onshore wind farm , a project that could carry 3,000 MW of power across four Western states. The catch? They had to wait 18 years for it to get approved.
This is the harsh reality for many in the energy industry, which has been stifled by an outdated and convoluted federal permitting process. It’s a system that hinders innovation, burdens entrepreneurs, and delays economic development.
Western states, where the federal government owns nearly 50% of the land , especially feel the need for permitting reform every time rural counties carry out the day-to-day functions of government.
Seventy percent of Utah’s land is federally owned, one of the highest percentages in the nation, second only to Nevada . In Oregon, the federal government owns more than half of the land.
As Western Americans, we have spent our careers explaining this burden to our East Coast colleagues. Industries out West are more subject to the whims of the federal permitting process than the rest of the nation. Local governments in rural Western counties have to submit to federal permitting to carry out the basics of day-to-day governance, from road improvements to water treatment. This is just another way the broken federal permitting system is working against ordinary people.