By Congressman Garret Graves

When the National Environmental Policy Act was first enacted more than fifty years ago, it was designed to guard communities and the environment from the unintended consequences of major construction projects. Instead, aside from inflation, NEPA has become the single biggest obstacle to project development, like a new bridge or major flood control project.

Today, we see an average of about five to seven years – sometimes ten – just for environmental clearance. That’s before construction even begins.

 Unfortunately, our permitting processes have become obstacles to protecting the people and resources they are meant to serve. We’ve spent countless hours drafting bipartisan legislative solutions to fix this problem – and we believed we were on the way to fixing it. But instead of implementing the first bipartisan reform to NEPA in decades, the Biden Administration has once again missed the chance to implement lasting, meaningful change.

Across the nation and right here in our backyard, vital infrastructure projects are delayed for years due to the bureaucratic red tape intertwined with regulatory review. Mid-Barataria Diversion. Comite Flood Control Project. A new Mississippi River Bridge. We could add these to our list of NEPA-delayed projects that have languished a combined 100 years in NEPA purgatory. It’s unacceptable that the NEPA review process often outlasts the projects it’s meant to evaluate, leading to missed opportunities and inflated costs.

When we negotiated the first changes to NEPA in forty years as part of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, the goal was to improve efficiency, expedite project review, reduce project costs, spur economic recovery, and rebuild America. That agreement with the White House was the first step in implementing a bipartisan approach to reform, striking the right balance between environmental protection and economic progress. 

Instead of implementing the law we passed, the Biden White House chose to roll back consequential progress in permitting reform. The administration’s NEPA Phase 2 Rule actively undermines the bipartisan consensus the President signed into law just a year ago. By adding layers of complexity and uncertainty outside of the direction of Congress, the Biden Administration’s actions on NEPA reform amount to nothing less than NEPA revenge.

Thanks to the Biden Administration, we are diverting hardworking taxpayer dollars from solutions that could help restore our wetlands or improve our roadways to federal bureaucracies. The current regulation doesn’t work for the environment and it doesn’t work for the people, so adding more red tape is absolutely a move in the wrong direction.

We can’t let this rule derail our efforts to modernize permitting laws, and I am committed to righting this wrong. Although this rule is another setback that threatens good-faith negotiations with this Administration, our bipartisan, bicameral efforts to rationalize NEPA has momentum, and we’re determined to see it through. We must ensure that our nation’s economic development can progress responsibly while safeguarding our environment for future generations.

Congressman Garret Graves represents Louisiana’s 6th District in the U.S. House of Representatives.