White House Proposes Changes To Permitting Rules

On October 6, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) proposed to roll back Trump administration efforts to update the federal governmental review and permitting process for infrastructure projects under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Before the Trump administration issued its regulation, NEPA rules had not been updated in more than 40 years. Specifically, the Biden administration CEQ proposal would:

• Restore the requirement that federal agencies evaluate all the relevant environmental impacts of the decisions they are making;
• Restore the full authority of agencies to work with communities to develop and analyze alternative approaches that could minimize environmental and public health costs; and
• Establish CEQ’s NEPA regulations as a floor, rather than a ceiling, for the environmental review standards that federal agencies should be meeting.

According to MSCI’s partners at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (USCC), these changes would likely slow down the federal permitting process and increase the cost of infrastructure projects. That is because the new rules would greatly expand the time it takes to complete environmental impact analysis, shift the focus away from meeting the project developer’s goals, and promote “government agency freelancing on NEPA permitting requirements that may delay or block projects.”

The outcome, the USCC said, would be “construction delays and delays in the creation of good paying jobs and the benefits associated with modern, resilient infrastructure.” According to USCC, it already takes nearly 4.5 years to receive government authorizations or permits for major infrastructure projects like bridges and electric transmission lines.