Business meeting to consider the nominations of Jeffrey Hall, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Katherine Scarlett, of Ohio, to be a Member of the Council on Environmental Quality, and 10 GSA resolutions; to be immediately followed by an oversight hearing to examine the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Committee on Environment and Public Works
2025-09-03
Source: Congress.gov
Summary
The Environment and Public Works Committee conducted a hearing on nuclear regulatory reform, examining the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) progress under the ADVANCE Act and recent executive orders. Ranking Member Sheldon Whitehouse and Chairman Shelley Moore Capito highlighted concerns about the NRC's independence, workforce losses, and potential political interference. Witnesses including Commissioners Bradley Crowell and Matthew Marzano emphasized the need for transparency, safety, and efficient licensing processes. The hearing focused on the NRC's efforts to modernize its regulatory framework, including expedited pathways for advanced reactors, renewed licenses, and environmental review reforms. Key topics included staff attrition, the role of OIRA in rulemaking, and the risks of politicizing nuclear safety. Commissioners affirmed their commitment to public health and safety as the core of their work, amid growing industry demand for nuclear energy to meet climate and energy needs.
Participants
Transcript
Everybody and welcome back. I note the presence of a quorum and I'm going to call this business meeting to order. Thank you all for being here. For the information of the members of the committee, ranking member Whitehouse and I will deliver our opening statements and once we have sufficient attendance we will vote on the 10 GSA resolutions en bloc and then following that vote we will proceed to the vote on one pending nominee. After the roll call vote, members who wish to be recognized to speak on the nomination may do so. So now I'm going to give my opening statement to welcome and thank my colleagues for attending today, but also to vote on the nomination of Catherine Scarlett to be a member of the Council on Environmental Quality, or CEQ. Catherine is an excellent choice to lead CEQ. As CEQ's current Chief of Staff, she has worked with federal agencies to implement the Bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act, and coordinate updates to agencies' individual NEPA procedures to reflect recent court decisions and executive policies. She's also led the effort in this administration to modernize the NEPA process through the use of technology. Prior to her current position, she worked here for me at the committee at EPW and served at both CEQ and the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council in the previous Trump administration, experiences that make her well qualified to lead the council. I urge my colleagues to support this nomination, and I look forward to her swift consideration on the floor. I also encourage my colleagues to support the 10 GSA resolutions that will authorize important repair and alteration projects across the country. With that, I'll turn to Ranking Member Whitehouse for his opening statement. Thanks very much. I understand we'll take Jeffrey Hall up at some later opportunity, so I'll reserve comment on him other than to let the colleagues on my side know that I vociferously oppose his nomination to the enforcement office, whose policy nowadays seems to be non-enforcement. Basically, the polluter fox is in the hen house, and it's a sad state of affairs.
As to Ms. Scarlett, I support the work that CEQ under her leadership is undertaking to implement eNEPA updates to modernize federal permitting process. I will vote yes on her nomination. This work is long overdue. In November, a DC Circuit panel ruled, without actually any party raising the issue, that CEQ lacked the authority to issue NEPA regulations. That leaves our fractured agencies to develop each their own guidance, creating an inefficient patchwork of divergent rules and inconsistent applications of a law. This makes permitting reform an even greater priority, and I look forward to working with Ms. Scarlett to advance that ball. However, how can we do permitting reform in the face of an administration that seems lawlessly to disrespect the permitting and appropriations process? If we were to work out a deal, and I hope we will, what's the point if the president and his cronies can just simply ignore the law and do whatever it is that they wish based on special interest influence? That seems to be where we are right now. If they're not following well-established laws, why would we trust them to follow a new permitting reform law? So there's going to have to be some clarity about that. as we move towards permitting reform. Two things happened in Rhode Island during the course of the break that I want to flag for my colleagues. One, a grant for the port of Davisville was simply undone by the administration. It's hard to know exactly what was intended. As ranking member, I did not get the courtesy of an advance call saying that this was coming.
It just blew up in the paper suddenly that all of these port dollars were gone. We have seen what I call the heresy hunt. where you have to go through applications and remove heretical language that the far right doesn't like, like equity or climate, that kind of stuff. If this is a heresy hunt and we can keep going with the grant, if we can change the words so that people aren't triggered and offended by language in the original application, Okay, that's one thing. We're trying to get an answer to that. If it's just blown up, that's another thing. If the goal here is to target offshore wind, which I think is an idiotic mistake, well, the Port of Davisville does a lot more than offshore wind. It's the largest car entrant in New England in the Northeast. Huge business there. It's an old facility that needs piers rebuilt just because of age. It's right adjacent to where we build our submarines. And so we can find a lot of uses for that money if the problem is that it's got an offshore wind contingent to it, or we can find Rhode Island uses for that money. But I need to sort that out.
Sign up for free to see the full transcript
Accounts help us prevent bots from abusing our site. Accounts are free and will allow you to access the full transcript.