Fish and Wildlife Service seeks $5M to cut energy permit times in half

A proposed change at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to cut endangered species consultation times from 30 to 14 days could affect Alaska resource projects that have been bottlenecked for years by federal review.

The change would cost $5.1 million in additional funding, FWS Director Brian Nesvik told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on June 10.

Alaska officials have long pointed to ESA consultation delays as a primary obstacle to mineral and energy development, with full permitting timelines for major projects running 15 to 18 years. The state has more species listed under the Endangered Species Act with active consultation footprints than most — polar bears on the North Slope, spectacled and Steller's eiders across Western Alaska, Cook Inlet beluga whales, and ringed and bearded seals in the Bering and Beaufort seas, among others.

"With this funding, the service will be able to accelerate the review of priority energy projects, and we anticipate being able to reduce consultation timeframes from 30 to 14 days," Nesvik said. He said 80 percent of projects submitted through the agency's Information for Planning and Consultation system (IPAC) are already approved immediately, and that further system improvements could roughly halve permitting timelines.

Ranking Member Sheldon Whitehouse pressed Nesvik on whether the faster timelines would apply to wind and solar projects. Nesvik confirmed that any project submitted through IPAC — including renewables — would receive the same reduced consultation times.

Committee Chair Shelley Capito raised a recent D.C. District Court decision invalidating a 2020 programmatic biological opinion FWS issued for the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement's mining regulation program. The ruling affects coal-producing states with primacy under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act — a group that includes Alaska. Alaska obtained SMCRA primacy in the 1980s through the Alaska Surface Coal Mining Control and Reclamation Act, and DNR's Division of Mining, Land and Water administers the state's coal regulatory program. The ruling directly affects the framework Alaska uses to permit operations at Usibelli Coal Mine — the state's only operating commercial coal producer — for renewals, amendments, or new activity.

"This is a recent development. This is a pretty recent court decision. We are aware of it in the Department of Interior, and we've already begun looking at what the options may be in order to ensure that this doesn't disrupt our abilities to issue those permits that previously state primacy was able to address," Nesvik told Capito. He did not yet have specific options identified.

The proposed $5.1 million funding change is a request, not an enacted policy. Congress would need to appropriate it for the timeline reduction to take effect. Whether and how it would interact with the larger ESA permitting backlog on major Alaska projects — Willow, Ambler Road, Pebble, Cook Inlet gas operations, and Usibelli's continuing permits under the now-disturbed SMCRA framework — remains an open question.