Electricity Reliability and Forest Protection Act

Electricity Reliability and Forest Protection Act This bill requires the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture (USDA), with respect to lands under their respective jurisdictions, to ensure that all existing and future rights-of-way for electrical transmission and distribution facilities on such lands include requirements for utility vegetation management, facility inspection, and operation and maintenance activities that: are developed in consultation with the holder of the right-of-way; enable the owner or operator of a facility to operate it in good working order and comply with federal, state, and local electric system reliability and fire safety requirements; and minimize the need for case-by-case or annual approvals, and instead provide for expedited review and approval, for routine vegetation management, facility inspection, and operation and maintenance activities within existing electrical transmission and distribution rights-of-way, as well as utility vegetation management activities necessary to control hazard trees within or adjacent to electrical transmission and distribution rights-of-way. Interior and the USDA shall give facility owners and operators the option to submit to the appropriate agency a vegetation management, facility inspection, and operation and maintenance plan. Interior and the USDA shall apply its categorical exclusion process under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) to plans developed under this bill. (A "categorical exclusion" under NEPA is a category of actions which do not individually or cumulatively have a significant effect on the human environment and for which neither an Environmental Assessment nor an Environmental Impact Statement is required.)