By JOHN BARTLIT
New Mexico Citizens
for Clean Air & Water

Delay Breeds Delay; Problems Fester

Delay festers. Delay often starts from fearing a contest of ideas, which spills into muddling issues far worse. Popular politics thinks that hitting on personalities and mini-messages works faster than questions and answers. So, time passes and problems grow worse. The time and attention given to personal insults and party slogans would better go to urgent work on problems.

Delay has varied shapes and sizes to see. The public forum churns with suspicions as to which sides may deploy delay as a tactical weapon. In my years of concern with the environment, every lobby group in the field has railed against delay at one time or other.

Public matters that often face long delays are infrastructure projects. Both big political parties persistently campaign to rebuild infrastructure. Both parties see the urgent need for renewed infrastructure and for creating good jobs that employ a broad range of crafts. Yet, action is slow.  

On this note, we can zoom in on some errant means of delay, with ideas for cutting them down. 

Infrastructure is complex. Common varieties are bridges, roads, airports, trains and terminals, power lines, and pipelines. Rarer varieties are national parks and their needs. As you scan the list, think of the lobby groups that have a stake in each activity. Such projects require an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and many permits before work can begin. A decent delay for documents would be a few years, which strangely grows to be five or eight years and more. For perspective, remember that eight years is two terms in office for a president. A reasonable step forward would be to set a legal time limit for completing an EIS, say two years, and set provisions for faster permitting. 

The struggle of ideas too easily descends into a swamp of delays. This fate bedevils pipeline projects. The environmental lobby earns its share of the blame for delays. Meanwhile, industries with pipelines work to impede data that define problems and progress. Pipeline data include data on the number of leaks in pipelines, a clear description of the amount of product leaked into the ground from pipelines, the technologies used to detect leaks and corrosion in pipes, and technologies to repair leaks. The latest pipeline data would describe advances in avoiding leaks, in quickly locating leaks, and the automated reporting of leaks to regulators.

New smart tools applied in new ways would speed up many regulatory routines. Engineered remedies can avoid many leaks and shorten the times to find, reach, repair, and report leaks, which further cuts down leakage. 

Healthy public issues involve details that are clearly known plus some details that are partly known. To help, agencies make studies and write reports. Drawing sharp lines between the known and unknown is awkward work that causes delays, sometimes years of delays. Twice, our group had to enlist a U.S. senator to spur results that we needed from a federal agency. Reports slow down further when they go through multiple layers of agency reviews. The reviews aim to clarify the report, but the delay itself looks fishy. These days, people imagine sinister acts that might fill such a long stretch.

The last best crimp on discourse is political sloganeering. In the age of mini-messaging, the political forum that would have focused on pros and cons of issues now dodges debate via surly taglines. A so-called debate begins when one side says “liberty” and the opposing side prefers “justice.” These twin values are prized equally in our nation’s Pledge of Allegiance, “…with liberty and justice for all.” Policy judgments stay out of it. The pretend debate ends when one side says, “band together” and the opposing side prefers, “America.” These twin virtues are equal parts in the well-set motto of the United States, “E pluribus unum” (Out of many, one). Where policy debate is so stunted, ideas wither.  

Democracy struggles.