By Marc Campopiano, Andrea Hogan and Joshua Marnitz

On September 22, 2015, the White House, through the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), issued guidance to the heads of certain federal departments and agencies[1] (the Agencies) establishing metrics for the permitting and environmental review of infrastructure projects in the United States (the Guidance). The Guidance is intended to expand the use and reframe the purpose of the publicly accessible online Federal Infrastructure Permitting Dashboard (the Dashboard). To that end, the Guidance establishes a set of metrics to track permit and review timelines for certain infrastructure projects, and sets a schedule for collecting and posting that data to the Dashboard. It then outlines an approach for capturing and reporting the environmental and community impacts resulting from the federal permitting and review process.

The infrastructure projects covered by the Guidance include those projects in the following sectors: surface transportation (including all highway, rail, and transit projects); airport capital improvement projects; ports and waterways; water resource projects; renewable energy generation; electricity transmission; storm-water infrastructure; broadband internet; and pipelines (except those subject to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission oversight). The Guidance also provides that the Agencies can include other sectors, as appropriate.