Council On Environmental Quality Substantially Rewrites NEPA Regulations

The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) on May 1, 2024, published its Phase II regulations¹ under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).² As part of a multiphase effort to amend the NEPA regulations that straddled the statutory amendments under the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) of 2023,³ the stated goals of the Phase II regulations are to "provide for an effective environmental review process; ensure full and fair public engagement; enhance efficiency and regulatory certainty; and promote sound Federal agency decision making that is grounded in science, including consideration of relevant environmental, climate change, and environmental justice effects."⁴ Though NEPA's statutory and regulatory provisions remained relatively unchanged since the 1970s, recent years have brought numerous changes in rapid succession beginning with a comprehensive revision of the 1978 regulations in 2020, followed closely by the relatively modest Phase I revisions in 2022 that