Today, the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources is set to vote on the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act (H.R. 4776). The Western Environmental Law Center urges members of the committee to vote no on this deceptively titled bill that was crafted solely to hamstring the nation’s bedrock environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
The bill, accounting for last-minute proposed changes that make it far worse, adds sweeping new exemptions, restricts input from experts in other agencies, and puts private interests in the driver’s seat of environmental reviews, disregarding the federal government’s role to protect the public interest. Yesterday, 100+ groups signed a letter opposing the SPEED Act, alongside another letter from western organizations condemning the bill’s total capitulation to extractive industries.
The bill’s attack on NEPA is built on the myth that this bedrock environmental law slows project approval. In fact, new evidence-based research available upon request (see contacts section) concludes:
- Permitting delays are not caused by NEPA but, instead, by insufficient agency capacity, compliance requirements imposed by other laws, and external factors, such as delays attributable to permit applicants.
- The median time to complete a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) fell steeply from 3.6 years in 2019 to 2.2 years in 2024.
- Comprehensive EISs comprise a small and falling fraction of agency environmental reviews. For example, between 2010 and 2021, the principal public lands management agencies–the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management–prepared far fewer EIS (85% and 74% less, respectively).
- Relative to utility-scale renewable energy projects constructed between 2010 and 2021, the vast majority–96.1% of wind projects and 96.8% of solar projects–employed streamlined environmental review procedures or avoided federal oversight entirely with very few projects–only 2.8% of wind projects and 0.7% of solar projects–challenged in federal court.
“Congress, with the SPEED Act, isn’t interested in true reform that revitalizes bedrock environmental laws in service of climate action and protection of the West’s public lands, wildlife and waters, and communities,” said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center. “They are, instead, recklessly careening off the road, drunk on bad facts and worse ideas and bullied by the fossil fuel and Big Tech industries’ money and influence.”
“Democrats must not—especially with the Trump administration in power for three more years—surrender America’s bedrock community and environmental protections to the fossil fuel and extractive industries, intent on looting public resources for profit without regard for the consequences to people, their communities, and our world,” said Marlyn Twitchell, senior attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center. “Put simply, the SPEED Act would create new uncertainty and complication without improving decision making. In fact, we believe it would exacerbate the climate crisis and the fires, floods, droughts, hurricanes, and oppressive heat that have already killed so many Americans and so severely damaged our homes, public lands, and economy.”
Background:
Deregulation interests have peddled myths that NEPA is impeding construction of roads, housing, and other infrastructure, yet data shows the law leads to better decisions and ultimately better projects. Instead of taking a reasoned approach to identifying and addressing specific permitting needs, this SPEED Act would open the door to plundering our nation’s resources on public lands and dramatically cut back the public’s ability to be heard during project development or to seek redress for violations of law in court. Yesterday’s letter builds on a prior letter submitted to Congress this summer and signed by 27 organizations advising extreme caution on NEPA rollbacks such as this.
The SPEED Act sponsors bemoan NEPA’s “cumbersome and lengthy process,” which experts agree is rooted in chronic underfunding and under-staffing federal agencies—a problem created by Congress and the Trump White House. The sponsors complain that NEPA “is currently the most litigated environmental statute,” but the fact is less than a quarter of a percent of NEPA decisions end up in court annually.
Congress has passed numerous updates to NEPA that are meaningfully reducing permitting times, such as FAST-41, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Fiscal Responsibility Act, and others. Before eviscerating our nation’s bedrock environmental law, we should allow these changes to play out. The prior administration also made substantial improvements to permitting that accelerated permitting timelines and respected, rather than undermined, the public interest abandoned by the current administration that should serve as a starting point for any congressional action.
Significantly, by defining the law as purely procedural, the bill guts NEPA’s central purpose to ensure that all federal agencies consider the environmental impacts of their actions. For 50 years the law has directed agencies to consider environmental consequences of proposed actions, engaging the public and communities in that process to ensure that “to the fullest extent possible,” they “look before they leap” and make well-informed decisions that encourage balance between human beings and the environment for present and future generations.
The bill also limits the types of projects subject to environmental review and eliminates an agency’s ability to consider the combined impacts of other projects, meaning environmental reviews will no longer adequately inform the public. In addition, it takes away standard judicial remedies by eliminating courts’ ability to set aside agency actions that violate NEPA, eliminating the incentive for agencies to comply with the law. Moreover, projects would be able to proceed while any violations are corrected—tantamount to “bulldoze first, consider impacts later.”
We can improve the speed of permitting, and we already are. We must, because the climate and biodiversity crises demand swift and powerful responses. But we must not erode community and environmental protections to achieve this goal.
Contacts:
Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, Western Environmental Law Center, 575-751-0351, eriksg@westernlaw.org
Marlyn Twitchell, Western Environmental Law Center, 541-485-2471, ext. 144, twitchell@westernlaw.org
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