AGC Supplies Recommendations to Streamline NEPA Procedures
The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) recently requested feedback on ways to update its regulations that implement the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which can be a circuitous, time-intensive, and costly environmental review step for many infrastructure projects. Given the broad range of actions covered by NEPA – including federal funding, federal permit applications, federal land management decisions – AGC has been highly focused on ways to improve the approval process.  Building on its prior extensive recommendations to the federal agencies, Congress, and the current administration; AGC’s August 20th letter to CEQ recommends several key areas for improvement.
AGC urged CEQ to update its NEPA regulations to bring clarity and consistency across agencies on currently ambiguous provisions that seem to invite legal action and delay infrastructure projects.  With this in mind, AGC recommends that CEQ: set a limit on the range of project alternatives to evaluate, determine which types of project changes would prompt a re-evaluation of the NEPA documentation, set an appropriate “shelf-life” for that documentation, identify parameters for “how much is enough” when evaluating potential impacts, and introduce more flexibility into the mitigation process.
For more information, contact Leah Pilconis at [email protected] or (703) 837-5332.