A SPEEDy Demise for NEPA?

The Washington Examiner reports that Congress is considering something called the SPEED Act, the acronym coming from Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development.

The proposed legislation is supposed to address the absurd delays and insane legal barriers to construction projects brought about by a Nixon-era environmental regulation known as NEPA.

The proposal doesn't repeal NEPA, but it sounds like it would do a lot of good:

The SPEED Act tackles this problem in a number of ways. First, it untriggers NEPA if the agency action is only financial. Loan guarantees or program grants no longer need to comply with NEPA. It also limits who can sue under NEPA to those who both participated in the public comment process, made a specific substantive claim, and can show direct harm to them from the agency action. This is a huge limitation compared to the old regime.

Most importantly, however, the SPEED Act allows projects to continue while the agency addresses NEPA noncompliance. No more project delays! Even if a plaintiff shows that an agency abused its discretion in the NEPA process, a project can continue while the agency rectifies the error.

Since anti-development actors frequently weaponize lawsuits under NEPA, that part alone would probably do lots of good, but I'd expect it to draw lots of lobbying against passage.

Nevertheless, the bill has a Democrat sponsor, and so many people have been asking Why can't we build anything in America? for so long, that I am cautiously optimistic that the time has come for a small step in the right direction like this towards fixing the problem.

-- CAV