Defense Department simplifies NEPA reviews

Dive Brief:

• The Department of Defense has streamlined its National Environmental Policy Act implementing procedures, the agency said in a Monday news release. It’s part of a government-wide effort to ensure consistent and timely environmental reviews for infrastructure projects.
• The changes will slash the time and cost associated with the NEPA process, enabling faster construction in the defense industrial base and of military construction projects, according to the release. 
• The updated procedures align with recent amendments to NEPA in President Donald Trump’s January Unleashing American Energy executive order, in the BUILDER Act provisions within the 2023 debt ceiling deal and with the Supreme Court’s October 2024 decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, per the release.

Dive Insight:

In addition to the DOD, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, the Interior, Energy and Transportation have all updated their respective NEPA implementing procedures, the White House said in a news release Monday.

The updates will ensure “that burdensome Federal environmental reviews cannot be weaponized to stall the growth of the American economy or halt energy infrastructure construction,” according to the White House.

Here’s what the changes will do for all agencies, per the White House:

• Implement deadlines and page limits on environmental reviews required under recent amendments to NEPA, in order to expedite infrastructure development and reduce costs.
• Provide clarification that NEPA does not apply to every action that a federal agency takes, but only to federal actions where the agency has sufficient control and discretion to take environmental effects into account.
• Ensure simple and expeditious processes to create categorical exclusions and adopt other agencies’ categorical exclusions to minimize repetitive NEPA analyses.

Since resuming office, the president has taken a series of steps to overhaul the federal permit process and speed up construction projects.

On the day of his inauguration in January, Trump signed executive orders that cut back the White House’s NEPA rulemaking powers and declared a “national energy emergency” in order to accelerate permits for oil, gas, nuclear, coal, hydropower and biofuel projects, along with mines that gather critical materials.

In April, Trump signed a memo requiring federal agencies to integrate technology into their review workflows in order to accelerate the processing time for infrastructure projects. It requires the Council on Environmental Quality to issue a Permitting Technology Action Plan, with the goal of eliminating the paper-based application and review process and reducing project delays.