D.C. is in a titter about permitting reform these days, but what is just as important to most businesses is achieving the permits needed to operate on the state level.
The Minnesota Chamber Foundation partnered with Barr Engineering, the Policy Navigation Group (PNG) and Squire Patton Boggs to examine Minnesota’s state permitting and environmental review programs. The report offers useful data as to how long permitting takes for most businesses — but it also shows that the state falls short of its goals often.
The report evaluated the timelines of air and water permits issued by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) and wetland programs managed by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and local government units. The state aims to issue Tier 1 permits, for projects with less complex and lower emission facilities, within 90 days, and Tier 2 permits, for more complex projects, within 150 days. These timers only start when the agency deems the application “complete,” which can add weeks or months.
Less complex permits are routinely issued “in a consistent and timely manner,” according to the Chamber’s summary report. From 2018 to 2023, 90 percent of all Tier 1 permits were issued within 90 days. However, larger projects needing Tier 2 review “face substantial and persistent delays.” Each year around 20 to 40 companies require a Tier 2 air permit, according to the report.
The average timeframe to issue priority Tier 2 air permits from 2018 to September 2023 was 586 days (or 1 year, 7 months, 1 week, and 4 days). New water permits took an average of 476 days, and major amendments averaged 377 days. Only 15 percent of Tier 2 air permits were issued within the 150-day goal in 2022.
Nonpriority projects that don’t involve construction fare even worse. The average air permit took 1,295 days (or about three and a half years) between 2018 and 2023.
Compared with peer states of Iowa, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Colorado, Tennessee, and North Carolina, Minnesota takes much longer to issue permits — anywhere between one and a half and six times longer than other states.
The Policy Navigation Group, which worked on the report, estimates that Minnesota could gain anywhere between $260 million and $910 million in annual economic output and 960 to 3,400 annual full-time jobs if the state matched peer states in air permitting review times. The report notes that, “This does not include the economic impact of projects that leave Minnesota or never come here at all because of real or perceived permitting challenges.”
Several stakeholders interviewed for the report described that a culture of risk aversion in state regulatory agencies stemming from the “(real or perceived) threat of lawsuits from project opponents, criticism from community members about permit decisions or potential concerns over environmental impacts that went unevaluated during the permitting process.”
The Minnesota Chamber’s summary, including its policy recommendations, are well worth reading, Minnesota Chamber Foundation permitting report.pdf, with the full report for reference: https://www.mnchamber.com/sites/default/files/Benchmarking%20Opportunities%20and%20Economic%20Growth-MN%20Env%20Permitting-main%20text%20only.pdf