House Approves Sweeping Clean Water Act Reforms

On December 11, 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would make substantial reforms across multiple aspects of the Clean Water Act (CWA). Titled the ''Promoting Efficient Review for Modern Infrastructure Today Act (the "PERMIT Act" (H.R. 3898)), the bill would address multiple hot-button issues surrounding the CWA's implementation, including the consideration of technological feasibility for pollutant controls, permitting delays, and state overreach in water quality certifications issued under Section 401 of the CWA.

After passing in the House by a 221-205 vote (with six Democrats voting for the bill), the PERMIT Act will require Senate passage and President Trump's signature to become law. If that happens, the PERMIT Act's reforms would usher in an array of changes beneficial to both the public and private sectors. The Senate received the bill and referred it to the Committee on Environment and Public Works on December 15, 2025. Highlights of the bill include:

• Consideration of cost-effectiveness and technology availability in standards setting. The CWA has historically allowed little room for considering costs and the availability of treatment technologies when setting water quality standards, creating the risk that permits could impose requirements that cannot be feasibly or cost-effectively met. The PERMIT Act would alter course by directing states' review of their standards to account for (a) the cost-effectiveness of controls for combined sewer overflows and (b) the cost and commercial availability of treatment technologies that would be required to meet water quality standards. These technology evaluations, moreover, must account for "whether the technology has been demonstrated at an applicable scale."
• NPDES permit reforms. The PERMIT Act includes a spate of reforms to NPDES permits designed by the bill's sponsors to promote regulatory certainty and decrease burdens on permittees. Specifically, the bill would:
  • Increase the maximum permit term from five to ten years;
  • Clarify the scope of the CWA's "permit shield" provision, 33 U.S.C. § 1342(k), which protects permittees from enforcement if they comply with their permits;
  • Require the expression of water quality-based effluent limitations using concrete numeric or narrative requirements by requiring the Administrator to specify the applicable pollutant and either a numerical limit on the discharge of said pollutant, required actions to be applied to such discharge, or a narrative description of the level of control to be applied to a pollutant; and,
  • Clarify the general permit process by allowing the Administrator to issue general permits on a state, regional, or nationwide basis, for discharges associated with any category of activities.
• Establishment of permitting exemptions. The PERMIT Act exempts from the CWA's requirement to obtain an NPDES permit both (a) discharges of stormwater from agricultural lands and (b) discharges resulting from the application of a pesticide product conducted in compliance with the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. Further, the bill would add defined exclusions to the definition of "navigable waters," excluding any component of a waste treatment system, ephemeral features that flow only in response to precipitation, agricultural land, groundwater, and a catch-all provision for any additional features that EPA or the Army Corps of Engineers determines should be excluded.
• Improving water quality certifications. State water quality certifications issued under Section 401 of the CWA often pose major obstacles to projects that require federal permits issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, FERC, and other agencies. The certification process routinely results in delays, and states often attempt to impose requirements beyond regulating discharges from a project. The bill seeks to address these issues by, among other things:
  • Requiring states to identify in writing all materials needed to act on a request for certification within 90 days of receipt of the request;
  • Revising the statute to clarify that certifications may only address and impose requirements on the actual discharge resulting from the project, effectively overturning PUD No. 1 of Jefferson County v. Washington Department of Ecology, 511 U.S. 700 (1994); and,
  • Specifying that CWA citizen suits cannot enforce the conditions of a certification.
• Nationwide permit reform. The bill presents various reforms intended to harmonize nationwide permitting and approvals. For example, under the PERMIT Act:
  • Permitting for linear infrastructure projects resulting in dredged or fill material and linear pipeline projects would be maintained on a nationwide basis;
  • Permits would run for ten years, rather than the current five-year limitation;
  • Reissuance of these nationwide permits would not require consultation with state or other federal agency authorities under the Endangered Species Act;
  • The secretary of the Army's ability to modify certain permit terms and conditions in the future would be more limited; and
  • In approving a state permit application for dredged or fill material specifically, EPA would be required to request any additional information within 45 days.
• Setting judicial review deadlines for Section 404 permits. Under the PERMIT ACT, judicial review would be limited to 60 days for any action seeking review of a state permit program, an individual or general permit, or verification of dredging activities.
  • Only parties that submitted a comment during the public comment period would be permitted to commence such action.
  • If a court does determine that EPA or a state did not comply with the PERMIT Act in approving or issuing a permit, the court would be required to remand the matter for further proceedings but would not have the power to vacate, revoke, enjoin, or limit the permit without a finding that the activities under the permit present an imminent and substantial danger to human health or the environment.
• SPCC reform. The bill would also modify the Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasure Rule to increase threshold values for certification of aboveground storage tanks on farms from 20,000 gallons to 42,000 gallons. This would allow farms to self-certify if their aggregate storage capacity is below 42,000 gallons, requiring professional engineer certification only if above that value.

Bottom Line

Passage of the PERMIT Act would signal a sea change in the Clean Water Act's permitting and water quality standards programs, but the bill faces a long road to becoming law. The bill would provide relief from overly stringent water quality targets, streamline permitting, and impose deadlines to improve judicial review and project timelines. Although passage in the House with six Democrats voting in favor is promising, the bill faces a steeper climb in the Senate. B&D's Water team will continue tracking the bill as it makes its way through the Senate.

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