(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump signed an executiveorder Tuesday that’s designed to streamline the approvalprocess for building roads, bridges and other infrastructure byestablishing “one federal decision’’ for major projects and settingan average two-year goal for permitting.

“This over-regulated permitting process is a massiveself-inflicted wound on our country,” Trump said in a pressconference at Trump Tower in New York. “It’s disgraceful.”

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Flood risk & climate change decree rescinded

Among other things, the president’s order will rescind a previousdecree signed by former President Barack Obama that requiredfederal agencies to account for flood risk and climate change when paying for roads, bridgesor other structures.

It also allows the Office of Management and Budget to establishgoals for environmental reviews and permitting of infrastructureprojects and then track their progress — with automaticelevation to senior agency officials when deadlines are missed orextended, according to the order.

The order calls for tracking the time and costs of conductingenvironmental reviews and making permitting decisions, and itallows the budget office to consider penalties for agencies thatfail to meet established milestones.

Critics say there’s danger in streamlining the reviews. “This isyet another outrageous example of Trump’s insistence on puttingcorporate interests ahead of people’s health and safety,” said AlexTaurel, deputy legislative director with the League of ConservationVoters, a political advocacy group.

“This order will put people throughout the country at risk byallowing developers to ignore potential hazards while muzzling thepublic’s ability to weigh in on potentially harmful projects neartheir homes,” Taurel said. Others said environmental groups mightbring legal challenges if the order leads to approvals withoutmeaningful scrutiny.

New York meeting

Trump said that if projects are deemed to create environmentalproblems, they won’t be approved. The president took part in aninfrastructure discussion during his visit to New YorkCity Tuesday, joined by officials including TransportationSecretary Elaine Chao and Gary Cohn, director of the NationalEconomic Council.

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Because the federal government owns less than 10% of U.S.infrastructure, the Trump administration has focused on efforts toaccelerate environmental reviews and permitting for projects thatcan take years and create unpredictability for investors.

Chao said Tuesday that it can take decades to get afew miles of highway or a bridge built because projects can besubject to as many as 65 requirements and permits.

“For far too long, critical projects have been delayed byduplicative permitting and environmental requirements which addedtime and unnecessary expenses to much needed projects,” Chao saidin a statement.

Flood-risk provision

Tuesday’s order revokes a previous one that Obama signed inJanuary 2015, requiring federal agencies to account for futureflood risk when spending money on infrastructure projects, arestriction that would extend to homes with federally backedmortgages as well. That order, which was still being implementedthrough regulations, would have caused some federal projects to bemoved to different areas, built to higher standards or canceledaltogether.

Rolling back that provision won’t prohibit state and localagencies from using more stringent standards if they choose, theWhite House said.

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Opponents of Obama’s order, including the National Associationof Home Builders, had argued that by requiring homes in floodplains to be built higher than before, it would increaseconstruction costs.

“This action by President Trump will provide much-neededregulatory relief for the housing community and help American homebuyers,” association Chairman Granger MacDonald said in astatement.

Supporters, such as insurers and consumer-safety advocates, saidit would protect lives and reduce federal spending after floods andother natural disasters.

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Revoking the 2015 order “is a fiscally irresponsible decisionthat is a disaster for taxpayers,” said Eli Lehrer, president ofthe R Street Institute, which advocates for free-market solutionsto climate change. “We are going to be spending and wastingtaxpayer dollars to build stuff in areas where it simply shouldn’tbe built.”

Package planned

The Trump administration has said it plans to release a legislativepackage by this fall to meet the president’s pledge to invest $1trillion to upgrade U.S. infrastructure. The White House signaledit wants to allocate $200 billion in federal dollars over 10 yearsto pay for large-scale and rural projects and to induce states,localities and the private sector to spend $800 billion.

The administration hopes to get a tax overhaul through Congressby Thanksgiving and plans to put an infrastructure bill in theHouse as soon as a tax measure moves from the House to the Senate,Cohn told reporters in New York on Tuesday. Asked whetherinfrastructure could be done this year given the items ahead of it,Cohn said, “We hope it’s this year.”

Trump approved an earlier executive order just four days aftertaking office to expedite environmental reviews and approvals forhigh-priority infrastructure projects, and White House officials inMarch convened a working group of federal agencies to identifypolicies, regulations and statutes that hinder projectapprovals.

The president also announced on June 9 during theWhite House’s “infrastructure week’’ that he was creating a councilthat already exists, the Federal Permitting Improvement SteeringCouncil. It was authorized by Congress in 2015 and implementedby Obama. The council is not meeting its potential, the White Housesaid at the time.

The executive order Trump signed on Tuesday calls forusing the dashboard that Congress created under Obama to track theprogress of major projects.

The Business Roundtable sent Cohn a letter on April7 reiterating that “existing law already provides a mechanismfor comprehensive reform” of the permitting process for majorprojects.

Streamlining provisions

A fact sheet the administration released with its budgeton May 23 calls for designating a single federal entityto shepherd each project through the review and permitting processinstead of navigating multiple agencies, as well as shiftinginfrastructure permitting to state and local officials whereappropriate.

That’s particularly important for private-sector investors, whohave capital available but lack enough projects and certainty aboutdeals, Chao has said.

Democrats have urged the administration to focus on thestreamlining provisions that have already been approved but not yetfully implemented and said the problem is really a lack of directfederal spending for projects.

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Some experts have said that while existing procedures can bestreamlined and made more efficient, most delays are caused by theneed for state and local approvals and other factors includingavailable funding. Other observers say the process raises concernsabout the quality of reviews.

“We don’t trust that this will be a good thing,” said ScottEdwards, co-director of the justice project at Food & Water Watch, a Washington-basedenvironmental group. The organization has filed a federal lawsuitagainst the Trump administration alleging, among other things, thatan infrastructure advisory committee Trump created has helddiscussions in private without meeting federal disclosurerequirements.

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