The U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed the ePermit Act, a bipartisan effort led by Representatives Dusty Johnson of South Dakota and Scott Peters of California. The legislation codifies President Trump’s Action Plan to modernize permitting technology across federal agencies, with the aim of reducing processing times for National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews and accelerating project approvals nationwide. The push comes as communities, businesses, and energy developers continue expressing concern that outdated permitting systems have slowed down essential infrastructure growth.
Johnson emphasizes that the Act represents a pivotal step toward restoring efficiency and predictability, especially for industries that rely heavily on multi-agency environmental reviews.
“Both parties have agreed that our permitting system is too slow. It’s too complicated, and frankly, it’s too stuck in the past. That’s too bad because really the story of America has been, in no small part, a history of big ideas and big projects. It’s time for us to get back to that: for more housing, for more broadband, for more critical infrastructure that’s going to power this American economy for decades to come. Too often in the last few years, our permitting process has stood in the way of that.”
The current permitting framework often struggles to keep pace with modern demands. Review timelines can stretch for years, with root causes tied not to environmental questions but to outdated workflows, extensive paper documentation, limited transparency, and inconsistent interagency coordination.
The ePermit Act aims to resolve these issues by directing federal agencies to adopt a unified digital permitting platform. The approach is designed to improve visibility for applicants, reduce paperwork, improve record management, and support faster, more predictable decision-making across the federal government.
“Here we are, the most technologically advanced nation in the world, arguably, and yet our agencies have been using decades-old, fragmented systems that simply were not built for the kind of scale and complexity that we see with modern projects. This bill addresses those problems. Because of this bill, we will modernize and digitize our permitting process with uniform data standards and a unified permitting portal so that agencies can work together and so that the public and communities can see what is actually happening.”
The legislation now awaits Senate consideration, where supporters hope continued bipartisan momentum will move it closer to final passage.