this is not denying a nepa review. nepa has already been done on every one of these projects. this is saying you don't need to do the same thing a second time, which is simply redundant, it is silly, it's red tape bungling by administrations that need not be there. the choice is very simple in this particular bill. either you can give the administration, the executive branch, the right to make these kinds of decisions on moving us forward, in which case the administration can make and can take away their decision at whim, in which case it invites litigation because of the uncertainty of an administrative policy. and also invites conflict within differented a -- administrative agencies. or we can do what we're supposed -- within different administrative agencies. or we can do what we're supposed to do which is solve problems. mr. tipton's approach is to let the legislature make the decision, to institute what the policy will be and tell the agencies how they will proceed into the future. . . we can have the legislature stand up and do its job or we can pass it up and let the ad

measure that we would support but page 7 details that this bill would allow for the delegation of nepae national, environmental act to caltransto administer for projects but that sounds like a stream lining but we had it approved for state highway programs and local highway programs and we found that the implementation of that was very unworkable, particularly for local projects. the state seemed to spend more energy on accelerating their projects at the expense of local projects and so we recommended and oppose at this point in time, until we can see some improvement in what they plan to put in the legislation. and lastly, on the assembly side, ab842 is a measure that we have seen before, and it is on page 7 of the matrix and it would eliminate all further bond funding for the high speed rail program which will have the effect of initially shutting down the initial construction segment as well as the funding for blended service and connectivity projects that we are dependent upon in the bay area and in san francisco. so we recommended opposed to that measure. the previous measures all

i work with nepa in transit projects and i see it fairly regularly and i don't deal with 6,000 projects or cat x's every year. even in the instances i work with perhaps 10% are appealed after the public comment period, frequently by the owners themselves. so, this isn't an unusual thing to have happen. i think if you restrict the time period for commenting or close the public comment period, it's simply going to create more problems, legal problems later on in the process. so, if you look at the 5 37 natoma example, i had wanted to -- i had asked some questions of planning while the project was still in the planning stage. and i basically asked, is there a pre-app meeting that it happened? and the planner blew me off and waited for the expiration of the comment period and then he sends me a comment, an e-mail saying, well, i commented but you didn't respond back. so, what ended up happening is the developer of that project had to spend a lot of money as it went through subsequent appeals while he's pouring concrete into the ground. so, if you did a better job at planning, you wouldn't p

and it all is redundant since the nepa analysis was done in the first place for the entire canal. this is a second project put in the same canal that has already gone through this process. it's a manmade canal. witnesses have testified this year that despite the bureau of reclamation's claim of

job-creating mechanism rather than creating -- spending time on the floor fighting against rolling back nepa as we're doing this week with h.r. 678. unnecessarily at the expense of supporting hydropower as we should. no, our work's not funnish -- finished. there's a lot more to be done. thank you and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. for what purpose does the gentleman from louisiana rise? without objection. >> mr. speaker, in 2009 the united states surpassed russia in becoming the world's largest producer of natural dwals. due to recent technological advancements, large deposits of natural gas, mainly shale gas, are now being harvested. through the use of hydraulic fracking, previous inaccessible hydrocarbons are now seeing the light of day. mr. boustany: having the henry hub located in the center of the third congressional district, i'm fully aware that the market price of u.s. natural gas is at an all-time low and much lower than asian and european natural gas prices. while this fact presents challenges, it also provides an opportuni