The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed revisions to its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process that officials say will speed up reviews and make them clearer and more predictable.
“NEPA was never a weapon to kill projects. It was to protect the environment we all share,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement. “For decades, it has done the opposite: drowning critical projects in red tape and lawsuits.” The reforms would set hard deadlines, cut red tape and allow more construction without weakening environmental protections, he said.
If approved in their current form, the changes would streamline the review process without overturning any environmental laws, such as the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, according to the EPA.
The proposal calls for limiting environmental impact statements (EIAs) to 150 pages, or 300 pages if the actions are extraordinarily complex, and would require the EPA to complete an EIA within two years and certify that it has met statutory deadlines.
The NEPA analysis would be clarified to cover the proposed actions and their reasonably foreseeable environmental effects. It would create a fast-track process to establish new categorical exclusions, actions already determined by an agency that do not have a significant impact on the human environment. Existing categorical exclusions from other agencies would be adopted to reduce duplicative analyses.
These actions would be aligned with the NEPA procedures of other agencies, including the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Interior, and Transportation, as well as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Builders groups welcomed the proposal. AGC supports streamlining measures that advance the permitting of infrastructure projects in a timely manner without compromising environmental protections, Alex Etchen, AGC’s vice president of construction advocacy and risk management, told ENR. “This memorandum does just that and, without excluding EPA, refocuses the agency on its expert advisory role in this process rather than picking winners and losers.”
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The National Utility Contractors Association (NUCA) referenced ENR in its November 2025 statement in support of the Permit Standardization and Acceleration of Economic Development (SPEED) Act, which aims to speed up the NEPA review process. Introduced in the House last July, the bill remains under committee review.
“Our contractors are working hard to rebuild America’s decaying water and wastewater systems and to modernize our electric and broadband networks, but they are routinely delayed by an existing NEPA permitting process that has drifted away from its original procedural intent into an endless cycle of delays, duplication and abusive litigation,” said Zack Perconti, NUCA’s office chief. “Projects that should take months to afford routinely drag on for years driving up costs, killing jobs and leaving critical infrastructure unbuilt.”
The EPA pointed to a number of federal actions in its statement that align with the proposed changes, including last year’s unanimous Supreme Court decision in Seven Country Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, which limited the scope of NEPA reviews, as well as President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order “Unleashing American Energy” to speed up permitting and bolster energy production.
The executive order directed the White House Council on Environmental Quality to rescind existing NEPA regulations and issue guidance to federal agencies to speed up and simplify the permitting process. In January 2026, CEQ rescinded these regulations, clearing the way for agencies to quickly update their own NEPA procedures.
