On 16 July, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) published its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) final rule, which largely shadows the proposed NEPA rule that was published in January of this year. As discussed in our previous post on the proposed rule, “CEQ’s NEPA regulatory overhaul: highlights and predictions,” since 1970, NEPA has required environmental review of major federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment. 42 U.S.C. § 4332(2)(C). Among other things, CEQ’s revisions posit a two-year limit on these reviews, a process that often takes considerably longer, and seek to minimize “excessive paperwork, litigation, and delays”
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