Congressman Mike Collins’ (R-GA-10) Promoting Efficient Review for Modern Infrastructure Today Act (“PERMIT Act,” H.R. 3898) reforms the Clean Water Act’s permitting process to reduce delays while still ensuring adequate impact analyses are performed. This bill aims to restore predictability, timeliness, and accountability to a permitting system that has become ineffective and lead to reduced energy supply and higher costs for Americans.
Ending Permitting Legal Limbo
One of the core problems with the Clean Water Act permitting structure is that agencies face few meaningful deadlines and projects can be stuck in the courts for prolonged periods of time. Energy pipelines, power plants, transmission lines, ports, and manufacturing facilities can stall in agency review for years with no final decision. Even when permits are issued, litigation often resets the process entirely.
The PERMIT Act addresses this by setting clear limits on when and how court challenges may be brought. It requires any lawsuit to be filed within 60 days of the approval, permit issuance, or verification for approvals of state permit programs, for individual or general permits, and for verifications that an activity is covered by a general permit. Only parties that submit sufficiently detailed comments during the public comment period may sue, and the suit must relate to those comments. In response to a successful lawsuit, courts may not vacate a permit unless there is an imminent and substantial danger to human health or the environment, and no other equitable remedy is available.
By providing certainty to the timelines in permitting, the bill reduces the financial risk of infrastructure investment and lowers the cost of capital for building new projects. These lower financing costs on projects can be passed along to consumers through lower utility bills and lower prices for goods produced using that energy. In other words, the PERMIT Act would make basic needs more affordable for Americans.
Restoring Proper Scope
The PERMIT Act reforms section 401 of the Clean Water Act, which governs state water quality certifications for federally permitted projects. This section has been used to halt projects such as natural gas pipelines or power plants due to the overly broad application of water quality standards. The PERMIT Act keeps the existing outside limit that a certification decision may not take more than one year, but it breaks that period into concrete steps so developers can track where their project is in the pipeline and ensure it is not sitting idle.
Further restoring the scope of the federal government to a more reasonable level, the PERMIT Act also reforms how federal jurisdiction over water is defined. Interpretations of “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) by the Biden and Obama Administrations enabled expansive federal control over isolated wetlands, seasonal streams, roadside ditches, farmland drainage ponds, and dry land that may only hold water part of the year. This overreach forces otherwise local projects into years of federal review, even when environmental impacts are minimal.
The PERMIT Act narrows that authority to its proper scope by restoring clearer limits on federal jurisdiction. This prevents the federal government from federalizing nearly every construction or infrastructure project in the country as impacting “navigable waters.” When fewer projects are dragged into onerous federal review, infrastructure moves faster and costs fall.
Demolishing Duplicative Processes
The PERMIT Act streamlines duplication between state and federal regulators. When a state assumes authority under section 404 of the Clean Water Act, the bill requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to act on that request within fixed timelines. The bill also requires the EPA to revise its regulations to encourage more state assumption. This reduces the problem of applicants being forced through layered permitting systems where multiple agencies review the same environmental impacts under different frameworks. Reducing bureaucracy improves private sector efficiency, boosts innovation, and increases affordability.
By limiting the ability of agencies to run endless studies , bureaucrats cannot keep resetting the process with new demands later. By instituting these commonsense reforms, the PERMIT Act reduces regulatory burdens without eliminating environmental protections.
Congressional Focus on Affordability
The PERMIT Act restores balance, predictability, and accountability to a system that has drifted far from its original mission. H.R. 3898 would break the government-imposed logjam on energy and infrastructure development.
Congress is highly focused on improving affordability right now. The PERMIT Act does just that by helping unlock America’s energy supply, lowering prices, and reducing common costs for American families.
