Trump's order includes revoking an earlier executive order signed by President Barack Obama concerning projects built in flood plains, White House officials said yesterday.
The Obama order required that such projects built with federal aid take rising sea levels into account. Trump has suggested the predicted risks from sea level rise driven by climate change are overblown.
A copy of Trump's executive order wasn't immediately available. Describing his action, Trump said projects will still be subjected to environmental safeguards.
Building trade groups had urged Trump to revoke the flood plain order, saying it was overly bureaucratic and increased the cost of projects.
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The Obama order was especially unwieldy because it didn't standardize across the government how sea level rise was to be taken into account, which left each federal agency to come up with its own standards, said Jimmy Christianson, an attorney with the Associated General Contractors.
A projected increase in the intensity of hurricanes in the North Atlantic will increase the probability of "extreme coastal flooding."
Environmentalists said yesterday that ignoring the reality of the Earth's changing climate is shortsighted.
"What this order will do is ensure that we will waste more taxpayer money because federal agencies will no longer have to consider long-term flood risks to federally funded infrastructure projects," said Jessica Grannis, who manages the adaptation program at the Georgetown Climate Center.
Under Trump's order, agencies must complete environmental reviews of projects within two years on average. Trump signed another executive order on streamlining environmental and public reviews of infrastructure projects his first week in office.
"We used to have the greatest infrastructure anywhere in the world. And today we're like a third-world country," Trump said, using a term referring to the economically developing nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
But a Treasury Department report released earlier this year found that "a lack of public funding is by far the most common factor hindering completion" of major transportation and water infrastructure projects."
Democrats have said the administration would be better off implementing streamlining provisions already in law than attempting new streamlining efforts. Congress passed transportation funding laws in 2012 and 2015 with dozens of streamlining provisions.
A report by the Transportation Department's inspector general this spring found that although the department had completed work necessary to implement a majority of the 42 streamlining provisions in the 2012 law, they had still not been implemented because regulators had to make changes to comply with the requirements of the 2015 law.