Dive Brief:
- The Council on Environmental Quality has issued its Permitting Technology Action Plan, which seeks to modernize federal environmental review and permitting processes for a plethora of infrastructure projects, according to a May 30 news release from the White House.
- The plan fulfills an April 15 memorandum signed by President Donald Trump that directs agencies to make maximum use of technology in federal environmental reviews and permitting processes, according to the CEQ’s Permitting Innovation Center website.
- Thomas Shedd, technology transformation services director at the General Services Administration, vowed that the new plan will speed up the permitting process, saying in the release that his unit will build tools to allow federal agencies “to accelerate their environmental review and permitting processes — with results in weeks or months, not years.”
Dive Insight:
Agencies have 90 days from the plan’s issuance on May 30 to meet its minimum functional requirements, according to the CEQ, which are listed in the administration’s Permitting Innovation Center established on April 30. These requirements include data governance and use standards, automated project screening, automated comment compilation and analysis and automated case management tools.
The permitting action plan focuses on four key areas, according to the White House release:
- Minimum functional requirements for environmental review and permitting systems.
- An initial National Environmental Policy Act and permitting data and technology standard.
- A timeline and implementation roadmap for agencies.
- A governance structure for implementation.
The roadmap comes amid a tumultuous time for environmental regulations. In May, the Supreme Court significantly curbed NEPA, the country’s bedrock environmental law, in a unanimous 8-0 ruling in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, which limits the scope of agencies’ environmental reviews, according to JDSupra.
Trump targeted NEPA upon taking office via executive order, curbing the CEQ’s NEPA rulemaking powers and directing agencies to eliminate delays within their respective permitting processes.
The CEQ established a NEPA and permitting data and technology standard as part of its Permitting Innovation Center in order to streamline the digital language that agencies and the government use for these permitting processes.
“The goal of this data and technology standard is to improve efficiency, transparency and integrity in the NEPA and permitting processes by facilitating data interoperability and enhancing decision-making,” according to the CEQ’s Permitting Innovation Center website.
CEQ is encouraging agencies to adopt this standard in both new or existing software architecture, according to its website.
