When Rep. Peter DeFazio, the new House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman, opened his panel’s first infrastructure hearing in the new Congress, he tapped some buttons on his phone and, on purpose, set off what sounded like a warning klaxon.
In the wake of Democrats' House takeover and Republicans widening their Senate majority in the midterm elections, talk has quickly revived about taking on infrastructure legislation in the new Congress.
A bill to speed approval of advanced nuclear technologies and another to change the way the Dept. of Energy’s national laboratories are managed are among a handful of energy measures the House has passed in the first weeks of its new session.
Final approval of hundreds of interstate pipelines, transmission lines and
liquefied-natural-gas projects will be delayed for months because the Trump administration has changed leadership at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
House-passed legislation could make it easier for contracting firms and “good Samaritans” to clean up abandoned hard-rock and coal mines as well as sites of orphan oil and gas wells.
Some of President Obama’s earlier State of the Union addresses had meaty sections about improving U.S. infrastructure, creating jobs and accelerating project reviews. But his final State of the Union speech, delivered on Jan. 12, didn’t mention infrastructure or construction at all.