The Biden administration has undone revisions to the regulations governing the National Environmental Policy Act put in place by Donald Trump.

NEPA requires federal agencies to analyze the environmental effects of major actions, such as permitting grazing, rangeland improvements and logging.

In 2020, the Trump administration made revisions, which were intended to streamline decision-making and bar agencies from speculating about climate change. Those rules never really had a chance — Trump lost the election and President Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office calling for a review of those changes.

When the original NEPA rules were implemented in 1981, regulators estimated that even the most demanding analysis could be completed within 12 months. As things turned out, NEPA reviews have taken quite a bit longer.

When the Trump administration proposed the current rules in 2020, the Council on Environmental Quality, the agency in charge of making the rules, said the average time was 4.5 years, and that didn’t count the years of inevitable litigation challenging the validity of the final product.

And the longer reviews produce larger, though not necessarily more useful, records.

Even President Jimmy Carter, who signed NEPA into law, was wary that reports would be too voluminous to be useful. In 1977 he warned that to be useful documents had to be concise and readable.

“We do not want (EISs) that are measured by the inch or weighed by the pound,” he said.

If wishes were horses.

In 1978 regulators contemplated that a thorough Environmental Impact Statement would take 150 pages. Today the average EIS dresses out at 661 pages, not including appendices.

When it worked on the Trump rules, CEQ said agencies were padding the reports in an attempt to avoid the lawsuits that are often filed claiming the documents are not complete. By that measure, the extra verbiage nearly always falls short of its mark.

The original framers of NEPA never intended for the process to produce inertia as the default state of affairs. Or, for that matter, to enrich the trial bar through endless litigation.

The Biden administration repealed what it called “legally questionable” Trump rules and removed obstacles to challenging federal actions in court. The Biden reforms go into effect July 1.

Federal agencies will forecast the future effects of climate change — such as whether more rain will wash more dirt off logging roads into streams — “rather than rely on historical data,” according to the rule.

Federal agencies also will be required to evaluate whether a project can withstand “extreme weather events,” such as the “risk that an industrial facility will experience a catastrophic release.”

Longer reports, more litigation.

Mission accomplished. If only the Biden administration considered its work done.