The House of Representatives cleared the way for a massive overhaul of the federal environmental review process last Thursday, despite last-minute changes that led clean energy groups and moderate Democrats to pull their support.
The Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act, or SPEED Act, overcame opposition from environmentalists and many Democrats who oppose the bill’s sweeping changes to a bedrock environmental law.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) and backed by Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), passed the House Thursday in a 221-196 vote, in which 11 Democrats joined Republican lawmakers to back the reform effort. It now heads to the Senate, where it has critics and proponents on both sides of the aisle, making its prospects uncertain.
The bill seeks to reform foundational environmental regulations that govern how major government projects are assessed and approved by amending the landmark 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), signed into law under the Nixon administration. NEPA requires federal agencies to review and disclose the environmental impacts of major projects before permitting or funding them. Although NEPA reviews are only one component of the federal permitting process, advocates argue that they serve a crucial role by providing both the government and the public the chance to examine the knock-on effects that major projects could have on the environment.
Critics of the law have argued for years that increasingly complex reviews—along with legal wrangling over the findings of those reviews—have turned NEPA into a source of significant, burdensome delays that threaten the feasibility of major projects, such as power plants, transmission lines, and wind and solar projects on federal land.
Speaking on the floor of the House Thursday before the vote, Westerman described the SPEED Act as a way to “restore common sense and accountability to federal permitting.” Westerman praised the original intent of NEPA but said the law’s intended environmental protections had been overshadowed by NEPA becoming “more synonymous with red tape and waste.