By Jeffrey Karp, Senior Counsel, and Edward Mahaffey, Legal Research and Writing Attorney
The procedures associated with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), particularly Environmental Impact Statements (EISs), are undergoing change.[1] On one hand, the Executive Branch under the Biden administration, including the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ),[2] is moving towards holistically addressing environmental reforms to the NEPA process, such as greater consideration of climate change impacts. On the other hand, the bipartisan Congressional infrastructure bill in its current form, which seeks to speed up the timing for evaluating projects with a federal government overlay, may have a countervailing effect of undermining NEPA’s environmental objectives in the process.