Comment Submitted by Anonymous

Introduction. For reasons described below, this commenter is opposed to the interim final rule that would eliminate the 24 CFR Part 50.32 requirement that Environmental Assessments (EA) for projects over 200 dwelling units or beds be sent to the Environmental Clearance Officer (ECO) for review and comment. Commenter has thirty-year’s experience with HUD environmental regulations, including program oversight, monitoring, guidance and technical assistance as a former regional environmental officer. Background. The Federal Register notice for this interim final rule calls the 24 CFR Part 50.32 ECO review “an extraneous step” that “adds a third or fourth [sic] review to the environmental process,” and an “extra step in the review process [that] requires duplicative technical assistance” for “projects that often have tight closing deadlines.” Analysis. Commenter notes the following: (1)ECO review is an important and necessary quality control for large-scale projects. By definition (i.e., projects of 200 or more dwelling units or beds), these substantial rehabilitation and new construction projects are the most expensive and impactful HUD-assisted housing projects, each one costing tens of millions and, collectively, billions of dollars per year. These are precisely the projects for which ECO review is needed, where the size of the public investment is the highest, the scale of physical impact is the largest, and the greatest number of people are exposed to potential risk. (2)The ECO’s review and comment allows for errors in the preparation of the EA to be detected and corrected before costly or irreversible actions are committed to or executed. (3)The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review process runs concurrent with other HUD program office processing, such as sponsor application and HUD underwriting. For a properly managed NEPA review, ample time already exists for ECO review and comment. A project facing a tight closing deadline for which the EA has not been completed is invariably a project for which program office processing has not been well-managed. (4)Few, if any, HUD program staff who prepare EAs are tasked in their jobs with the primary responsibility of fully evaluating and preparing an EA. This extends to their supervisors. In contrast, the ECO’s main responsibility is preparing NEPA reviews and providing training, monitoring and technical assistance to those lacking the knowledge and skills required to conduct NEPA reviews. It is unwise to eliminate HUD’s most experienced environmental staff from the review of HUD’s largest housing projects. (5)Under both the current and interim rule, HUD program staff who prepare EAs and their supervisors may seek technical assistance from an ECO during preparation of the review—but this is discretionary. Because technical assistance is discretionary, without ECO review the largest and most expensive housing projects could elude the opportunity to correct deficiencies, resulting in harmful impacts to human safety and the environment. For those program staff who do seek guidance from the ECO during preparation of the EA, the ECO’s review is accelerated because of the ECO’s familiarity with the project. (6)Most federal agencies have trained NEPA staff in-house who prepare the EA and, where needed, engage consultants to provide component elements (e.g., biological opinions, archeological investigations). Conversely, at HUD the project sponsor is tasked to retain a consultant to provide an environmental report to HUD program staff; this creates an obvious conflict of interest between the sponsor and its chosen environmental consultant. A skilled and experienced ECO is able to detect shortcomings in a consultant’s report that, if left unaddressed, could result in statutory or regulatory violations. Recommendation. In lieu of eliminating the ECO’s review role, a more appropriate action is to establish a time limit for the ECO’s response, for which the lack of a response would presume concurrence. Conclusion. The NEPA review process materially enables HUD to meet its statutory responsibility under the Housing Act of 1949, to wit, to provide all Americans with safe, sanitary and decent housing. HUD’s elimination of the ECO review and comment for its largest and most-impactful projects is short-sighted, unwise, unsafe and a false economy. As such, the quality of EAs will be lower, avoidable harms will be missed, the Department’s reputational risk will be higher, and financial risk to the FHA portfolio and other asset groups will be greater.