This bill requires the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to publish an annual report about how the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) affects projects. The report must start July 1, 2025, be posted on the CEQ website, and be sent to the House Committee on Natural Resources and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. The report must list each active lawsuit alleging NEPA violations during the year and identify the lead defendant agency, lead plaintiff, courts involved, case outcomes or status, and any awards. It must report on environmental impact statements (EIS) and environmental assessments (EA) prepared in the past 5 years, including average and median page counts (with quartiles), number of drafts and finals by lead agency and subagency, and trends compared to earlier CEQ reports. The report must also include the total cost to prepare those EIS and EAs (including full-time equivalent staff hours, contractor costs, and other direct costs) and, where practicable, costs for cooperating agencies, applicants, and contractors. For a 10-year period ending June 1 of the report year, CEQ must list timeline dates for each major federal action (application date, start of scoping, notice of intent, draft EIS publication, final EIS publication, record of decision, and notice to proceed), plus average and median publication timelines and trend descriptions. Information must be disaggregated by project type and covered sector. The bill lists covered sectors such as aviation and space, broadband, carbon capture, conventional and renewable energy, electricity transmission, manufacturing, mining, pipelines, ports and waterways, surface transportation, information technology infrastructure, water resources, forestry, and any other sector CEQ determines. CEQ must also publish the underlying data and citations needed to locate court records for listed lawsuits.
If this becomes law, CEQ must make data about NEPA-related lawsuits, document lengths, costs to prepare EIS/EAs, and review timelines public each year. The report and underlying data will be posted on the CEQ website and sent to two Congressional committees. The information will be organized by project type and sector listed in the bill.
The report must include the total costs to prepare EISs and EAs, including full-time equivalent personnel hour costs, contractor costs, and other direct lead-agency costs, and, if practicable, costs for cooperating agencies, applicants, and contractors. There is no publicly available information in the bill text about additional funding, appropriations, or the federal cost to implement this reporting requirement.
No publicly available information.
No publicly available information.