S. 1191 — Studying NEPA’s Impact on Projects Act

This section requires the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to annually publish on its website, and submit to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and the House Committee on Natural Resources, beginning July 1, 2025, a report covering the period from June 1 of the preceding year to June 1 of the current year (covered year) on NEPA implementation. (NEPA generally requires federal agencies to assess environmental effects of major federal actions through environmental impact statements (EIS), environmental assessments (EA), or categorical exclusions.) The report must include (1) details on each active NEPA noncompliance lawsuit during the covered year, identifying lead agencies and plaintiffs, courts, numbers by agency, alleged bases, outcomes (e.g., reversal of action, agency allowed to proceed, additional compliance measures, settlements, ongoing cases, or plaintiff awards including under 28 U.S.C. 2412), disaggregated by project type and covered sectors (e.g., aviation, broadband, carbon capture, energy production, manufacturing, mining, pipelines, transportation, water resources, forestry); (2) EIS and EA lengths, including average/median page counts (with quartiles) of draft/final versions published in the Federal Register, numbers by lead agency/subagency, and trends versus prior reports; (3) total preparation costs for those EIS and EAs, covering agency full-time equivalent hours, contractors, other direct costs, and (if practicable) cooperating agency/applicant costs; (4) EIS timelines for actions commenced in the covered year, including milestone dates (e.g., application submission, scoping, notices of intent/draft/final EIS and record of decision in Federal Register, notice to proceed), average/median times, trends versus prior reports, and actions per document; and (5) agency lists of categorical exclusions in NEPA regulations, with totals and any established/adopted/revised in the covered year. CEQ must publish underlying data and record citations with each report, disaggregating all information by project type and covered sector.