The Trump administration on Wednesday finalized a plan to rescind federal regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act, the 56-year-old law requiring federal agencies to assess a project’s environmental impacts before granting approval. The White House Council on Environmental Quality, led by Katherine Scarlett, said the action eliminates bureaucratic delays that have slowed energy and infrastructure projects for years.
Scarlett said in a statement that the directive will “slash needless layering of bureaucratic burden and restore common sense to the environmental review and permitting process.” Under Trump, she added, “NEPA’s regulatory reign of terror has ended.”
The move strips away a regulatory framework that has governed federal environmental reviews for decades, and arrives as Congress separately debates legislation to cap permitting timelines and restrict judicial oversight under the same law — a debate complicated by the administration’s recent suspension of offshore wind projects on national security grounds.
Congressional permitting debate
Republicans and many Democrats say the 56-year-old law has become mired in red tape that routinely produces yearslong delays for major energy and infrastructure projects. The law requires detailed environmental analysis and allows for public comment before agencies issue approvals.
A bill approved by the Republican-controlled House would place statutory limits on environmental reviews, broaden the scope of actions that do not require review, set clear deadlines, and restrict both who can bring legal challenges and the remedies courts can impose.
Democrats agree the permitting process has become unwieldy, but say the House bill undercuts public input and participation while overly restricting judicial review.
Offshore wind suspension clouds bipartisan prospects
Efforts to advance permitting changes were complicated last month when the administration suspended five major offshore wind projects on the East Coast, citing unspecified national security concerns.
Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said the administration’s “reckless and vindictive assault on wind energy” destroyed the trust needed to enact a bipartisan overhaul of the law.