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Multiple federal agencies have rolled out new rules for implementing the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, as the Trump administration aims to expedite environmental reviews.

However, environmental groups warn the changes could erode the act’s intended purpose and safeguards around government decision making.  

NEPA was signed into law in 1970, requiring federal agencies to assess the environmental impacts of proposed actions such as issuing development permits, adopting federal land management actions, building highways and publicly-owned facilities and more. 

The latest agency changes are part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to ensure “environmental reviews cannot be weaponized to stall the growth of the American economy or halt energy infrastructure construction,” according to a . 

These reforms follow a withdrawal of the ߣÏÈÉú on Environmental Quality’s authority, as ordered by the to increase domestic energy production. The council, which was created at the same time as NEPA, historically has created a default set of regulations for agencies to adopt or build upon. In the spring, the council pulled back its authority and rescinded its regulations. While many agencies already had their own NEPA regulations, this wholly shifted the responsibility to individual federal departments.

As of June 30, eight federal agencies published proposed NEPA regulation updates to the Federal Register, opening up a 30-day public comment period for the changes. This includes the U.S. departments of agriculture, commerce, interior, energy, transportation and defense as well as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 

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While there are nuances to the rule changes proposed by each of these federal agencies, there are a few throughlines as the agencies comply with recent executive orders, laws and Supreme Court decisions. 

This includes deadlines and page limits for environmental reviews meant to expedite NEPA processes and reduce costs, some of which were prescribed through the ​​Fiscal Responsibility Act’s BUILDER Act amendments . 

Additional changes around what actions and effects are subject to review lean on the May Supreme Court ruling regarding the proposed 88-mile Uinta Basin Railway narrowed the scope of what environmental impacts an agency is required to analyze under NEPA. 

In the case, the plaintiffs (Eagle County and five environmental groups) argued that the review of the railway failed to study downstream impacts such as how increased rail traffic would affect wildfire risk as well as water resources and other biological resources. The Supreme Court ruled that NEPA was “purely procedural” and agencies don’t have to study these up and downstream impacts and put the onus on agencies to determine the scope of analysis required for projects. 

Both the and ‘s interim final rules indicate the changes will get back to NEPA’s procedural roots and make reviews “faster, more flexible and more efficient” as guided by this court decision and other recent regulations and directives including Trump’s domestic energy executive orders, which gave guidance to expedite and simply NEPA processes.

One thing the Department of Agriculture is proposing to increase efficiency is to issue a uniform set of procedures for all agencies under it, including the U.S. Forest Service, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Farm Service Agency and four more. The interim rule proposes rescinding all the individual regulations previously held by these agencies. 

In a , Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the permitting process “has been abused for decades to block affordable, reliable energy production, delay critical infrastructure projects and stunt America’s economy,” lauding the revised NEPA procedures as a fix of the system. 

Melissa Simpson, president of the Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas trade group that represents Colorado and 12 other Western states, applauded the NEPA changes proposed as a “major step in removing roadblocks and spurring capital investments in American energy and infrastructure.” 

Environmental advocates argue NEPA reforms will diminish act, public input

Ronni Flannery, senior staff attorney with The Wilderness Society, said the national environmental nonprofit is still combing through the various proposals, but sees some concerning themes.

“One thing that sort of strikes us is that there’s likely to be a lot of inconsistency in how these various provisions are applied, which means confusion among the regulated parties and just some challenges there,” Flannery said. “It certainly is a significant departure from what has operated as the rules of the game up till this point.”

While The Wilderness Society was of some of the NEPA permitting reforms passed under Biden, other actions by the Trump administration and Republicans have signaled concerns for what the proposals will actually do. Part of this is that the Biden reforms included resource allocations to help agencies conduct NEPA reviews. 

“Congress has now revoked resources and dollars that were earmarked for helping the agencies staff up and make sure that their environmental review processes and permitting processes are efficient and so that there’s adequate staffing,” Flannery said, adding that this will make it more difficult for agencies to conduct these environmental reviews.  

A analyzed over 41,000 NEPA decisions completed by the U.S. Forest Service — which conducts more environmental impact statements than any other federal agency — between 2004 and 2020. The study concluded that delays in the permitting process were most often attributed to staff turnover, inadequate budgets, delays in receiving information from applications and more. The study noted that these statements represent less than 1% of all NEPA decisions, but that data on other decisions is limited.

In addition to these reforms, Republicans included a “pay-to-play” provision for NEPA in Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which was signed into law last week. This allows for project sponsors, including private entities, to pay for expedited environmental reviews. (A previous provision that would have also allowed entities paying the fee to avoid any judicial review of projects was removed from the final bill.)

These types of expeditious environmental reviews not only follow the administration’s effort to prioritize profit over people and shut out public input, but erode the protections NEPA offers, Flannery argued. 

Already, there have been examples of “projects moving through the process at warp speed,” Flannery said. 

This includes the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to expedite review of a proposal to increase oil transport out of the Uinta Basin in Utah — which Colorado lawmakers criticized — as well as a Bureau-, which was the first project to go forward with Trump’s expedited 14-day environmental review process that excluded public input. 

On the whole, Flannery said that in effect, these reforms and the administration are “shutting the public out of government decision-making on decisions that impact the public and our national lands and waters.”

Public input, Flannery argued, is a key tenant of the environmental policy, also pointing to a , which concluded that public comment on environmental impact statements influences outcomes and often results in substantive changes in federal agency decision making. 

“NEPA was always intended to ensure that the government takes a close look at the health and environmental impacts of their actions and cumulatively,” Flannery said. “What we’re seeing from the administration and from some acts of Congress, is the severe eroding of these protections and the ability of the public to not only understand what the government is doing, but also to weigh in, express concerns and help influence the process to make sure that communities are protected.”