Sponsors (3)
The bill increases transparency and data-driven oversight of NEPA reviews—helping governments, developers, and the public plan and identify reforms—but at the cost of added administrative burden, privacy and litigation risks, and a risk that metrics-driven pressure could weaken environmental review quality.
State and local governments, federal agencies, developers, and utilities gain standardized, transparent NEPA data (timelines, costs, litigation outcomes) that improves planning, budgeting, and helps identify bottlenecks to target reforms that can speed reviews and reduce costs.
Taxpayers and the public get access to underlying NEPA data and litigation citations, improving oversight and enabling independent analysis of federal environmental review performance.
Public disclosure of categorical exclusions created or changed reduces uncertainty about which projects may bypass longer NEPA documents, clarifying rights and expectations for communities and stakeholders.
Preparing, maintaining, and publishing the detailed annual dataset will increase CEQ and agency administrative costs and staff time, potentially diverting resources from other duties or requiring additional taxpayer funding.
Agencies may shift effort toward recordkeeping and defensive litigation tracking, raising project overhead and potentially slowing project delivery in the short term.
Publishing detailed litigation records and party names could raise privacy and litigation-management concerns for agencies, contractors, and private applicants named in suits.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires CEQ to produce an annual, public report (starting July 1, 2025) detailing NEPA litigation, document metrics, costs, timelines, categorical exclusions, and underlying data.
Requires the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to publish and submit an annual, data-driven report beginning July 1, 2025, that documents how NEPA reviews affect Federal projects over a defined 12-month "covered year." The report must collect and publish detailed litigation records, counts and lengths of environmental documents, preparation costs, project timelines with milestone dates, and lists of categorical exclusions, disaggregated by agency, project type, and covered sector. The law adds this reporting duty into CEQ’s statutory responsibilities and requires publication of the underlying data and litigation citations to increase transparency about NEPA process timing, costs, and legal outcomes for projects across many sectors (energy, transportation, broadband, water resources, forestry, etc.).
Introduced March 27, 2025 by John R. Curtis · Last progress March 27, 2025