Plans to build new manufacturing plant, processing facility or critical-minerals mine can take years, even decades, to go through the approval process at multiple levels of goverment. It vitally important to ensure projects are safe, protect quality of life and the environment and efficienctly use resources, yet there are some redundant steps and bureaucratic bottlenecks along the way that unnecessarily delay approvals.
The National Association of Manufacturers trade and lobbying organization has made permitting reform a signature piece of its policy platform, calling the permitting system "broken" and fixing it essential to Made in America manufacturing growth. The system "treats routine industrial upgrades like brand-new developments and leaves manufacturers unable to forecast if or when approval will come," states NAM on its website. "The result is years of delay and billions in lost investment."
The Fast 41 program address permitting reform on a large scale, with a focus on critical minerals and raw materials that the US is dependent on other nations to produce, a matter of national security. Emily Domenech, who leads the program and the Federal Permitting Council, talks about fast-tracking those permits.
Particularly of interest to manufacturers: Project Crucible, a zinc smelter being construction in partnership with Korea Zinc in South Carolina, and the Riverview Stack Extension Project, a fertilizer waste storage facility in Florida.
