Arizona Manufacturers Secure Policy Win As U.S. House Passes SPEED Act

Arizona Manufacturers Secure Policy Win As U.S. House Passes SPEED Act

by | Dec 31, 2025 | News

By Matthew Holloway |

Arizona manufacturing and business groups can claim a policy win in Washington, D.C., after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a major federal permitting reform bill they had urged Congress to advance.

On December 18, the House approved the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act, H.R. 4776, in a 221–196 vote. The legislation is designed to streamline environmental reviews and speed federal permitting for large energy infrastructure projects, data centers, factories, and other major developments.

The bill, sponsored by House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman (R–AR) and Rep. Jared Golden (D–ME), amends the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to shorten review timelines, clarify when NEPA applies, and limit how long lawsuits can delay projects. A committee summary says the measure is intended to “modernize NEPA,” reduce permitting backlogs, and curb what supporters describe as “abusive litigation” that has slowed infrastructure and energy projects nationwide.

In a press release on the day of the vote, Westerman called the SPEED Act’s passage “a win for America” and urged the Senate to move quickly. The committee noted that more than 375 organizations nationwide backed the bill.

The House vote followed a coordinated push by national and Arizona manufacturing advocates in early December, when congressional leaders signaled they would take up permitting reform over a two-week stretch.

In a December 10 article, Chamber Business News reported that the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and Arizona business groups were urging Congress to act on what NAM branded the “12 Days of Permitting Reform.” NAM called on lawmakers to move several bills — including the PERMIT Act and the SPEED Act — to simplify federal reviews and shorten timelines for major infrastructure, energy, and industrial projects.

NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons said at the time that Congress had an opportunity “over the next 12 days to demonstrate strong, bipartisan momentum on comprehensive permitting reform,” and encouraged policymakers to make it easier and more cost-efficient for manufacturers to advance job-creating projects.

For Arizona, business leaders framed the debate as directly tied to the state’s ability to keep pace with growth in sectors such as power generation, semiconductor fabrication, aerospace and defense manufacturing, and AI-driven data centers, all of which depend on predictable federal approvals.

Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry President and CEO Danny Seiden said modernizing federal permitting is critical for Arizona’s economic future, arguing that “manufacturers can’t meet demand, onshore supply chains, or power new AI and data-center growth without a permitting system that works.”

 “Arizona’s economy depends on major projects moving on predictable timelines. Congress should advance the PERMIT Act and the SPEED Act so companies can build the infrastructure and capacity our economy requires,” Seiden added.

Grace Appelbe, executive director of the Arizona Manufacturers Council, told Chamber Business News that long, unpredictable federal reviews create significant challenges for small and mid-sized manufacturers trying to expand, upgrade equipment, or bring new technologies online, and said reforms could lower costs and improve Arizona’s competitiveness for new investment.

The House Natural Resources Committee describes the SPEED Act as a structural update to NEPA’s review process. Key provisions include:

  • Shorter, defined timelines for environmental reviews on major federal actions.
  • Clearer triggers for NEPA, by defining “major federal action” more narrowly.
  • Streamlined documentation, intended to reduce the length and complexity of NEPA analysis.
  • Limits on litigation, including a 150-day window for filing NEPA challenges, to reduce long-running court delays.

External reporting has noted that industry groups, such as energy and infrastructure advocates, welcomed the bill as the first significant federal permitting reform effort since NEPA was enacted in 1969, while environmental organizations have urged the Senate to reject or significantly revise the measure, warning that looser standards could weaken environmental protections and public participation.

With House passage secured, the SPEED Act now moves to the U.S. Senate, where lawmakers in both parties are working on broader permitting legislation and have signaled potential changes to the House bill, Axios reports.

Arizona manufacturers and business groups, which spent early December calling for action on the SPEED Act and related measures, are expected to continue pressing for a final package that delivers the permitting certainty they say is needed for long-term investment and for meeting the state’s projected load and infrastructure demands.

Matthew Holloway is a senior reporter for AZ Free News. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@azfreenews.com.

Environmental Reviews May Be Worsening The Wildfire Crisis

Environmental Reviews May Be Worsening The Wildfire Crisis

by | Jun 24, 2022 | News

By Terri Jo Neff |

Wildfires are burning record numbers of acres each year, with the arid climate and vast areas of federal land making the western United States particularly at risk. But one issue not being talked about enough is whether red tape is getting in the way of fire prevention and mitigation professionals doing their jobs.

The Montana-based Property and Environmental Research Center is raising the alarm about wildfire prevention projects being delayed so long due to the National Environmental Policy Act that mitigation efforts for millions of acres of at-risk lands cannot be undertaken in a timely manner.

And some of those lands are going up in smoke in the meantime, according to a recently released policy brief by PERC senior research fellows Eric Edwards and Sara Sutherland.

According to the brief, more than 10 million acres burned nationwide in three of the past seven years, mostly in western states And in California, nine of the 20 largest wildfires in the state’s history have burned in the past two years.

More than half of the land in the 11 contiguous western states is federally owned and managed,” the brief notes. “While multiple federal agencies must deal with wildfires, the largest burden falls on the U.S. Forest Service. Of the 640 million acres of federal land in the United States, the Forest Service manages 193 million.”

Wildland fire management is the top budget item for the U.S. Forest Service, with suppression costs reaching $1.76 billion in 2020. As a result of the greater severity of fires and the high costs of putting them out, Edwards and Sutherland note that more and more legislators, agency officials, and forest science researchers are concluding that additional proactive fire mitigation activities are needed.

The brief notes that forest managers use two common preemptive fuel treatments  to lessen the intensity of wildfires – prescribed burns and mechanical treatments. Yet despite the fact these approaches have proven effective over the years, U.S. Forest Service has been unable to undertake mitigation activities at a meaningful scale, Edwards and Sutherland found.

The culprit, either intended or unintended, is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which the U.S. Forest Service must navigate in order to implement fuel treatment projects.

The PERC brief explains that NEPA is a procedural law which requires federal agencies like the U.S. Forest Service to assess the environmental impacts of proposed actions. Projects determined to have no significant impacts receive categorical exclusion from more stringent review, while projects with uncertain impacts require the agency to conduct an environmental assessment.

And for projects deemed to cause “significant environmental impacts,” federal agencies must complete an environmental impact statement (EIS), which Edwards and Sutherland note is “the most stringent type of review under the law.” It can also take more than five years, and sometimes more than seven, from initiation of the assessment to implementation.

Only some of the U.S. Forest Service’s fuel-reduction activities will require an EIS, but such projects require data gathering about expected impacts to the quality of the human environment. The agency must also solicit public comments and respond to all substantive comments.

Completing an EIS is the most time-consuming and resource-intensive of the NEPA assessments, Edwards and Sutherland found is that even the other two types of assessments can significantly increase the time it takes to implement fuel treatments.

“Advocacy groups, firms, and the general public can file objections to NEPA decisions to the Forest Service and, once that avenue is exhausted, can also file lawsuits to overturn decisions or compel additional analysis,” the brief notes. “Although most projects are not litigated, the depth of analysis and time spent on the NEPA process is commonly based on the threat of litigation, as well as the level of public and political interest and defensibility in court.”

READ MORE: https://www.perc.org/2022/06/14/does-environmental-review-worsen-the-wildfire-crisis/

Edwards is an Assistant Professor in Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University whose research examines environmental and natural resource management institutions across a variety of resources. Sutherland is a lecturer at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and an environmental economist whose research focuses in part on the political economy of natural resource management, with a focus on fisheries and water management.