Legislative proposals in response to Hurricane Katrina : hearing before the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House of Representatives, One Hundred Ninth Congress, first session, November 3, 2005.

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As state, local, and federal officials respond to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, there has been discussion regarding whether environmental regulations might slow or impede response efforts, and whether Congress needs to provide authority to waive environmental regulations in order to speed response to and recovery from the hurricane and subsequent flooding. This report reviews some of the environmental laws that could affect response and recovery actions, discusses existing waiver authority, and identifies issues raised by proposals to grant new waiver authority. The focus is on regulatory programs administered by EPA, including the Clean Water Act, Superfund, and the Clean Air Act. In the short term, in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, environmental regulations do not appear to have posed an obstacle to local, state, federal, or private response efforts, in part because existing waiver or flexibility provisions were used in certain cases. For the longer term, the report raises questions concerning the waiver authority that new legislation might grant, including what its scope (both geographic and regulatory) would be, how facilities granted waivers would be regulated after the expiration of the waiver period, the effect of such legislation on state and local requirements, and whether substantive as well as procedural requirements should be waived, if waivers are to be granted.