American Energy and Mineral Infrastructure Act of 2026

Key Points

• The bill makes the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission the single lead agency for natural gas pipeline reviews. Other agencies must defer to FERC's environmental review scope, follow its schedule, and lose participant status if they miss tight deadlines. This is meant to stop duplicate reviews from slowing projects.
• It rewrites water quality rules under Clean Water Act Section 401. States and tribes must act on a certification within one year or it is automatically waived, and that clock cannot be paused. Conditions or denials now require clear and convincing evidence, a much higher bar for regulators.
• The bill sharply limits court challenges. Lawsuits face 60 to 150 day deadlines, standing is narrowed to those with direct economic harm, and courts generally cannot vacate permits or halt projects while an agency fixes review errors.
• For mining, it lets operators locate as many 5-acre mill sites as reasonably necessary on public land for waste rock and tailings, and creates an Abandoned Hardrock Mine Fund from mill site fees to clean up old mines.
• It narrows NEPA environmental reviews to effects with a close causal link that are proximately caused by the project. Agencies may not consider speculative, distant, or separate future effects, and NEPA is declared purely procedural with no substantive rights.
• General permits for water discharges and dredge-or-fill get longer terms, extended from five to ten years, and discharges into less than 3 acres of navigable waters are automatically treated as minimal environmental effects.