Necessary Environmental Exemptions for Defense Act

This bill, the Necessary Environmental Exemptions for Defense Act, would shield the Department of Defense (DoD) from several major environmental laws—namely the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA, i.e., the Clean Water Act)—for a broad set of DoD activities. Certification from the President or the Secretary of Defense would allow exemptions for activities directly related to countering threats from the Chinese Communist Party, including readiness and training, construction and maintenance of DoD facilities, and development, testing, or deployment of technologies and equipment (including some commercially developed technologies tied to DoD contracts). The act also bars environmental reviews and evaluations as substitutes for these exempted actions, requires periodic review of environmental mitigations, precludes judicial review of exempted actions, and provides retroactive protection to ongoing projects and pending actions as of enactment. In short, the bill would allow the DoD to proceed with a wide range of operations and projects necessary for national defense without mandatory environmental reviews or oversight under the four listed laws, provided a certification is issued tying the activity to countering CCP threats. It would also shield such activities from legal challenges and require a scheduled review of mitigation practices every five years.