By Ali Budner
“There is such a backlog that very little of this is ‘oh additional money we can do all these amazing additional things,’” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School.
Wagner says the new funds could be used to pay for what the EPA should already be doing “and simply can’t because of lack of staff and lack of resources.”
President Joe Biden has said the agency needs more funds in part to help implement recent legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which pushes federal money to the local level.
“And in order to spend the money we need the regulatory capacity to do so,” Wagner said. “EPA is the lead agency for these environmental reviews and it takes money and staff to speed up that process.”
Quoted in: “After Norfolk derailment, Biden wants more funding for the EPA” by Ali Budner, NPR Marketplace (16 March 2023)