Baton Rouge Reporter

U.S. Congressman Garret Graves of South Louisiana has criticized the Biden Administration's implementation of recent law changes intended to streamline permitting for infrastructure projects. During a hearing before the House Committee on Natural Resources, testimony underscored bipartisan and bicameral opposition to the new environmental review rules introduced by the White House.

The Committee heard from Brenda Mallory, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), in an oversight hearing examining CEQ’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget request and related policy matters.

Graves argued that instead of utilizing the streamlining provisions he negotiated to expedite essential traffic, flood protection, ecological resilience, energy, and other infrastructure projects, the White House issued new rules that maintain a bureaucratic and slow permitting process.

“Under the White House’s flawed interpretation of the new law, states, cities and others may be studying how a road project in Baton Rouge affects the people in Shanghai,” said Congressman Graves. “The new rules under the National Environmental Policy Act include identifying the indirect and global effects of a proposed project. Maybe they don’t understand the difference between national and international, but this was not what we agreed to,” continued Graves.

Supporting Graves’ concerns, Chair Mallory acknowledged that the White House substituted “important” for “significant,” which is specified in the law. This change created a lower standard for impacts — or reasons not to build projects.

Graves stated: “Do you understand that the law actually says ‘significant’ and you changed it to ‘important’? Which I think is a distinguishing factor. The law actually says ‘significant’, so that was the standard. It’s concerning to me there was an intentional effort to avoid using the word that was intentionally put in the law to establish a higher standard. That is concerning and I think it was a deviation. In fact, not just a deviation from the four corners of the law but it was a deviation from Congress's clear intent.”

Graves further emphasized that CEQ's overall implementation does not align with what was agreed upon or enacted into law. He mentioned that significant changes made by CEQ have led to bipartisan efforts toward filing a Congressional Review Act resolution aimed at repealing these regulations due to their inconsistency with existing laws.

For context, Congress provided an overhaul to NEPA as part of The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 (FRA; P.L. 118-5). These changes were designed to expedite environmental reviews which currently take over seven years for an average road project.