New Reporting Mandate: Federal Watchdog to Track Environmental Review Time and Costs Annually, Starting 2025

The "Studying NEPA's Impact on Projects Act" mandates the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to publish an annual report, starting July 1, 2025, detailing the impact of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on a wide range of projects. This isn't about changing environmental rules themselves, but about tracking how the existing review process affects project timelines and costs.

Drilling Down into the Data

The core of the bill (SEC. 2) is all about data collection. The CEQ will now be required to gather and publish a lot of information about NEPA's impact, including:

• Lawsuits: Every legal challenge related to alleged NEPA non-compliance will be tracked. This includes who's suing who, why, where the case is filed, and the outcome (SEC. 2(1)). Imagine a construction company suing a federal agency over a delayed highway project due to environmental concerns – that's the kind of case that would be detailed.
• Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) Length: The report will analyze the page counts of draft and final EIS documents over the past five years (SEC. 2(2)). This is meant to see if these reports are getting longer (and potentially more complex) over time.
• Preparation Costs: The CEQ must report the total cost of preparing EIS and environmental assessments. This includes staff hours, contractor fees, and other direct expenses for the lead agency. They'll also try to capture costs for cooperating agencies and even project applicants (SEC. 2(3)). Think about the expenses a mining company might incur to conduct environmental studies – this section aims to quantify those.
• Completion Timelines: The bill requires a ten-year lookback at how long it takes to complete environmental reviews. Key milestones, from initial application to final approval, will be tracked, and average/median timelines will be calculated (SEC. 2(4)). For example, it will show how long it typically takes from the moment a company applies to build a new wind farm to when they get the green light (or not).

Real-World Radar: Who Might Care, and Why?

All this data will be broken down by project type – everything from aviation and broadband to mining and water resources (SEC. 2). This level of detail could be useful for various groups. A renewable energy developer, for instance, could see how long it typically takes for similar projects to get through the NEPA process. Government agencies might use the data to identify bottlenecks and streamline their procedures. The underlying data, including citations and information needed to find records related to court proceedings, will also be published (SEC. 2).

Potential Challenges

While transparency is generally good, there are potential downsides. Gathering all this data could create a significant administrative burden for the CEQ and other agencies. And, depending on how the data is presented and interpreted, it could be used to argue for either strengthening or weakening NEPA regulations in the future. The bill doesn't change NEPA itself – it just shines a brighter light on how it's working (or not working) in practice.