The Environmental Law Institute® submitted comments to the House Resources Committee Task Force on Improving/Updating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that warn the Task Force’s draft recommendations could have the unintended consequences of increasing NEPA litigation and cutting the public out of important federal decisionmaking.
“There are good draft recommendations in the Task Force report, including those calling for study of ways to reduce the cost of NEPA proceedings,” said Jim McElfish, ELI Senior Attorney. “But several of them threaten the stability of a well-established regulatory system that has proven itself over the past 35 years. If these were enacted as drafted, NEPA litigation could increase substantially. The draft recommendations also eliminate important opportunities for the public to comment on federal actions, apparently assuming the federal government knows best. This is contrary to the very purpose of NEPA to involve the public in federal decisionmaking.”
The House Task Force is currently reviewing NEPA, the nation’s bedrock environmental statute. After holding hearings across the country, the Task Force invited comment on its initial findings and draft recommendations. ELI does not lobby; the Institute submitted comments because its legal experts have studied NEPA since 1973, authored numerous studies on NEPA, and trained thousands of people about the statute.
Some Task Force draft recommendations that seek to standardize NEPA procedures, such as creating stringent time limits and legislating what methods agencies should use to predict future and cumulative impacts, threaten to introduce a rigidity into the regulatory system that might weaken NEPA reviews.
According to McElfish, “NEPA is a concise statute with a remarkably stable set of procedures. Its strength is its current combination of flexibility to adapt to different situations with accountability to the public — a careful balance that should be maintained.”