On November 3, 2012, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) published its new Permit Decision Guarantee for activities subject to environmental permitting. With the Permit Decision Guarantee, which replaces the DEP’s Money-Back Guarantee policy, the DEP intends to prioritize high-quality applications for projects with demonstrative positive economic impacts. At the same time, to combat what DEP Secretary Michael Krancer described as a widespread problem of the DEP fixing subpar permit applications during the review process, the new policy indicates that the DEP will have less tolerance for initial applications that fail to meet what the DEP believes are established legal and technical standards. As will be discussed in greater detail below, by placing greater emphasis on the initial application, the Permit Decision Guarantee may alter the way businesses approach the environmental permitting process and position applications going forward.
The Permit Decision Guarantee applies to 244 types of environmental permits issued by the DEP across the department’s four major program offices, including surface mining permits, natural gas well permits, permits for activities resulting in air emissions, National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits and stream crossing permits, among others. The policy provides a timeframe for each applicable permit, listed in Appendix A, by which the DEP is supposed to complete its review. If the DEP fails to meet the Permit Decision Guarantee timeframe, then a decision on the application must be made within five business days by the appropriate program manager and regional director. If that five-day timeframe is not met, then a meeting with the secretary is scheduled to determine why the deadline was missed.
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