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The Committee on Natural Resources will come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare recess of the committee at any time under Committee Rule 4F. Any oral opening statements at hearings are limited to the chairman and the ranking minority member. I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from California, Mr. Peters, be allowed to participate in today's hearing. Without objection, so ordered. You're good now, Scott. I now recognize myself for an opening statement. Good morning. I appreciate all of you being here today to discuss one of the most critical issues I believe that's facing America, and it's our outdated and cumbersome permitting process. The National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, was initially intended to promote informed decisions and assess the environmental impacts of major federal actions. Today, however, NEPA has mutated into a significant roadblock to carrying out the infrastructure and energy projects essential to America's energy and national security needs. To quote the recent Supreme Court decision on NEPA in seven-county infrastructure coalition versus Eagle County, Colorado, Quote, 1970 legislative acorn has grown over the years into a judicial oak that has hindered infrastructure development under the guise of just a little more process, end quote. NEPA reviews have become limitless and excruciating exercises requiring agencies to amass behemoth environmental treaties which increase project costs and create delays for projects ranging from transportation and infrastructure to forestry, conservation, and energy development. In 2020, the average length of a final environmental impact statement or EIS was 661 pages, and the average time to complete an EIS was a whopping four and a half years for all projects and over seven years for federal highway administration projects. Notably, these figures do not include the time spent on pre-NEPA activities, which add even more time to the process. As a project proponent, once your behemoth NEPA document is completed, you're likely to face frivolous litigation from dark money special interest groups that have built business models around litigation to delay and block projects under NEPA.
According to a recent study by the Breakthrough Institute, NEPA is the most frequently litigated environmental statute, and NEPA-related litigation takes an average of over four years to resolve, adding time and increasing costs and increasing uncertainty when you have a project with a federal nexus. These delays have a significant impact on projects cost, some of which are passed along to taxpayers. In fact, an analysis by Common Goods shows that a six year delay in construction on public projects cost the US economy over $3.7 trillion. Let me repeat that. These six-year delays on construction projects cost the U.S. economy on public projects. We're not talking about energy and other projects. We're talking about road construction and those sort of things. $3.7 trillion with no return on it to the American public. For many projects, years of delay and increasing costs are a base case scenario. In many cases, projects are permanently halted by the courts or mired in endless reviews and appeals, prompting project proponents to simply give up. This is especially egregious given that NEPA is purely a procedural statute, a point that the Supreme Court yet again clarified in the seven-county decision. Thankfully, this case has restored some sanity in the NEPA process by limiting reviews and clarifying the lower courts should not use NEPA as a tool to block projects. While the committee was able to secure meaningful changes to NEPA in the Fiscal Responsibility Act, these changes were largely ignored by the previous administration's Council on Environmental Quality, in their Phase 2 NEPA rulemaking, which also added new requirements to NEPA not found in the statute. This initiated a chamber action that began with a lawsuit from 20 states and culminated in a court decision that vacated the Phase 2 rule, finding that the Phase 2 rule exceeded CEQ's authority under NEPA and that CEQ lacked statutory authority to promulgate any rulemaking implementing NEPA.
The Trump administration's CEQ has issued guidance to agencies to follow in their respective NEPA rulemaking efforts. This guidance finally directs agencies to faithfully implement the reforms made in the FRA. While the Trump administration's actions are a positive step forward, Congress must still act to provide long-term certainty for both agencies and the regulated community. I know that some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle may try to portray efforts to amend NEPA as benefiting only a select few. However, the truth is that amending and reforming NEPA will aid all sectors of our economy, creating benefits for all Americans. We have discussed previously energy demand is skyrocketing and the AI arms race is underway. If we want to ensure a future where America remains a beacon of liberty and freedom, we must reform our permitting processes to bolster energy and national security and enhance American economic competitiveness. I look forward to hearing the testimonies from some of today's leading experts on the issue and also I want to say that this should be a bipartisan effort and I think it will be a bipartisan effort because I think Republicans and Democrats alike see that the process needs to be fixed not only to get some certainty in the project investment, but also to protect the environment and to achieve the goals that were put in place many Congresses ago when NEPA was passed and when the underlying statutes like and MMPA and the ones that Energy and Commerce has jurisdiction over. If we really want to implement these statutes and see America grow and also see our economy and our environment thrive, then it's time to do NEPA reform.
With that, I yield back and recognize Ranking Member Huffman for an opening statement. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before I begin my statement, I'd like to, I have a unanimous consent request. Your request? Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
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