States Eye Permit Streamlining To Cope With Looming EPA Budget Cuts

State environment officials are considering innovative ways to streamline their air, water and waste permitting processes to help conserve resources in the face of proposed EPA state and local grant funding cuts for fiscal year 2007, state officials say. An official from Iowa, one of the states pursuing these efforts, says streamlining of permits is "going to become one of the major undertakings most states will have to address in the coming years as budgets shrink and the public demands...