Studying NEPA’s Impact on Projects Act

This bill, titled the "Studying NEPA's Impact on Projects Act," amends the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) to mandate that the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) publish an annual report. Beginning July 1, 2025, this report must be made publicly available on the CEQ website and submitted to the House Committee on Natural Resources and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. The annual report will provide detailed information across four key areas. First, it will cover all causes of action (lawsuits) based on alleged non-compliance with NEPA that were active in the preceding year. For each lawsuit, the report must identify the defendant agency, lead plaintiff, court, alleged basis, and the status or outcome, including whether the federal action was reversed, allowed to proceed, or if a settlement occurred. Second, the report will analyze the length of environmental impact statements (EIS) and environmental assessments (EA) prepared over the past five years. This includes average and median page counts for both draft and final documents, disaggregated by agency, and trends in these page counts compared to prior reports. Third, the CEQ must report on the total cost to prepare EIS and EA documents . This includes full-time equivalent personnel hours, contractor costs, and other direct costs incurred by the lead agency, and, where practicable, costs incurred by cooperating agencies, applicants, and other contractors. Finally, the report will detail the timelines to complete environmental reviews for major federal actions over the past ten years. It will track specific dates from application submission to project approval, providing average and median completion times and trends. All reported information must be disaggregated by project type and specific "covered sectors" such as energy, transportation, and manufacturing, with the underlying data made publicly available.