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The purpose of Executive Order (EO) 13807 “Establishing Discipline and Accountability in the Environmental Review and Permitting Process for Infrastructure” is to support the timely processing of f...

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 requires federal agencies to analyze the environmental impacts of proposed actions that could impact the human environment, as well as c...

The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) considers a comparison of alternatives to be the heart of any environmental impact statement (EIS). However, a question arises as to whether the real valu...

Impact assessment (IA) has become one of the most prevalent environmental policy instruments today. Its introduction under the National Environmental Policy Act (US) in 1969 was revolutionary. Perh...

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) became the first major environmental policy in the United States (US) in 1970. NEPA requires federal agencies to determine significant environmental impacts of their actions to the fullest extent possible. Each agency is given flexibility in their compliance (Congress, 1970).This study determines implementation methods employed by NEPA practitioners to integrate the Act and Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) regulations into their agency decision-making and action planning processes. Twelve federal agencies were examined for this study, and 15 interviews were conducted with federal government employees working within the US Executive Branch.This study identified four methods used by agencies to implement the NEPA process into federal decision-making. NEPA training allows decision-makers to initiate the NEPA process when an action is proposed. Programmatic environmental documents review any cumulative environmental impacts from geographical locations...

Developing efficient and effective tools for navigating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process is becoming increasingly important as Federal and State agencies have limited re...

This article proposes using an updated concept of sustainability that includes throughput, identifies tenets of sustainability already existing in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, and calls for the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Council on Environmental Quality to promulgate jointly new regulations. These regulations would make the quantitative analysis of NEPA alternatives mandatory in an attempt to attain sustainability. Also discussed are the US EPA’s efforts at incorporating sustainability into decision making.

Cultural impact assessments (CIAs) are rare in environmental practice in the United States. This paper explores the use and integration of CIAs into environmental assessments with respect to cultural resources of communities and American Indian tribes. It notes the shortcomings of consultation under Section 106 of National Historic Preservation Act and public comment under the National Environmental Policy Act and recommends employing CIAs to fill the gaps, decrease time and costs, and possibly limit lawsuits. Environmental Practice 18: 222–226 (2016)

The Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency (CREATE) Program is a nationally prominent rail-infrastructure program. It is managed by the unique partnership of the United States Department of Transportation (DOT), the State of Illinois, the City of Chicago, Metra, Amtrak, Association of American Railroads, and six of the nation’s Class I freight railroads. The CREATE 75 th Street Corridor Improvement Project (CIP) received a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) Record of Decision in September 2014. As a result of 75 th Street CIP and other completed preliminary engineering and project environmental reviews within the 70 rail-improvements program, CREATE has set a national-policy example with regard to mitigation under the environmental justice Executive Order (EO) 12898. This article provides some background on the CREATE Program and examines the development of the CREATE Environmental Justice Policy. It describes the impetus for creating the policy, namely noise impacts on low-income and minority populations resulting from the 75 th Street CIP and other CREATE Program rail projects. This article also discusses the extensive coordination among Federal and State agencies, among the public and private CREATE partners, and among Community Advisory Groups and residents, all of which led to the specific mitigations addressed in the CREATE environmental justice policy. The result of these encompassing efforts, led by Federal Highway Administration and the Illinois Department of Transportation’s Division of Public and Intermodal Transportation, is a precedent-setting framework for analyzing and, when necessary, mitigating the potential environmental justice impacts of the CREATE Program rail projects. The CREATE Environmental Justice Policy is precedent setting in a few ways: (a) it establishes policy where none currently exists and where existing highway-oriented policies do not seem appropriate or applicable; (b) it provides greater specificity with regard to what mitigation measures are “practicable” to address predicted noise impacts of CREATE Program rail projects on low-income and minority populations; (c) it clarifies the lead agencies’ intent to maintain the transportation linkage and focus when developing and evaluating practicable mitigation measures for other (i.e., non-noise) impacts; and (d) it helps assure the equity of the transportation investment by better balancing the distribution of burdens and benefits at the project level. This article identifies the steps, when considering disproportionately high and adverse impacts to low-income and/or minority populations, on how to evaluate other practicable mitigation measures with merit under EO 12898. This article also describes the lessons learned and the dialogue necessary to receive broad support from the CREATE partners for both needed rail improvements and additional mitigations to provide offsetting benefits and opportunities to enhance Chicago-area communities, neighborhoods, and residents’ quality of life. Environmental Practice 17: 256–269 (2015)

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) have used Every Day Counts tools and other strategies to accelerate the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process for projects intended to relieve congestion and improve safety in the Twin Tunnels area of Colorado’s Interstate 70 (I-70) Mountain Corridor. These Tier 2 projects follow the I-70 Mountain Corridor Tier 1 Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS). The Tier 2 Twin Tunnels projects incorporated tools from the FHWA Every Day Counts Shortening Project Delivery Toolkit, including the Planning and Environmental Linkages concept, legal sufficiency enhancements, and programmatic agreements; the Construction Manager/ General Contractor (CM/GC) alternative delivery method; and a unique stakeholder engagement approach. These tools were effective in reducing the Tier 2 NEPA process to half its normal duration, thereby accelerating overall project delivery. The Tier 2 process was easier to implement because of the scaffolding developed during the Tier 1 process. Establishing an early involvement agreement related to legal reviews allowed FHWA attorneys to work with the project team at early decision points. Using the CM/GC alternative delivery method allowed for early input from the contractor on the preliminary design, avoided the need for NEPA re-evaluations during the final design or construction process, and led to new ideas for avoiding or minimizing impacts to environmental resources. Early and continuous engagement with partner agencies and other stakeholders allowed for quick feedback and provided the necessary support to move the project forward quickly.Environmental Practice 17: 278–290 (2015)

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process and NEPA documents are constantly being assaulted as being too long, too cumbersome, too expensive, taking too long to accomplish, and not successfully accomplishing the goals of NEPA. Over the years, numerous efforts have attempted to reduce the overall cost, time, and size of NEPA documents. Unfortunately, most of these efforts have failed and, in many cases, actually have made things worse.Lean process management is a tool that can be used to effectively identify opportunities to improve the NEPA process and NEPA documentation in a manner that does not compromise the principles and requirements of NEPA, but allows for more effective and efficient development of NEPA documents. The result can be NEPA documents that are shorter, but overall documentation that is more complete than what is being developed today. The simplified environmental assessment/categorical exclusion template developed for the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is an example of what this process can accomplish when Lean is applied to NEPA, and the results are staggering. In the pilot, CDOT achieved a 75% reduction in the size of the document and a 50% reduction in review time. The second project to use the template saw even better results.Environmental Practice 17: 302–307 (2015)

Upon its enactment, the United States's National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) established a national policy for promoting the protection and enhancement of the human environment. NEPA sets forth...

This article presents the findings of an online survey and interviews with National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) professionals on their opinion on the essential and most important components of ...

Businesses ask for regulatory certainty and stability. Environmentalists want protections to stay in place without backsliding. Government agency staff want standardized procedures that give them s...

To a new National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) practitioner, there is first the process. NEPA is more than a document, although that seems to be the focus. There is the decision on what type of ...

The smallest possible National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) document is one that cannot be made more streamlined. A NEPA document could not be more streamlined than to present eight elements of essential information as outlined in this article. Neither an environmental assessment nor an environmental impact statement would include a distinct, separate no-action alternative. Instead, today's situation would be extended to the same point in the future, for purposes of comparison, as are the action alternatives. NEPA documents for projects would not develop alternatives to the proposal. Instead, NEPA documents would only develop alternatives that accomplish the same thing as intended by the proposed alternative. An environmental assessment would have no alternatives except for mitigating actions not already included in the proposed action. NEPA documents would not include exhaustive lists of possible environmental and other social and cultural consequences. Instead, relevance would determine which of thes...

Precisely what is the relationship between the developing jurisprudence of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the most renowned “baby” NEPA? What is the societal and environmental value of the current legal structure of these two statutory behemoths both individually and conjunctionally considered? Endeavoring to answer these questions, this study analyzes all published opinions from the First, Ninth, and Eleventh United States Circuit Courts of Appeals during a fifteen year study period (1997 to 2012), where plaintiffs challenged the validity of a federal agency’s compliance with NEPA. It reveals not only that CEQA jurisprudence has strayed from that of NEPA, despite being modeled after it, but, even more astounding, that NEPA jurisprudence of the Ninth Circuit, the federal appellate court that includes California, is following CEQA’s blatant divergence from NEPA as practiced in the rest of the country, creating a fundamentally different version of NEPA applicable only to the Western states. The study concludes by calling on the Council on Environmental Quality to update its NEPA regulations to provide a more clear explanation of the statute’s mandates, including clear direction on how federal agencies should accomplish these mandates.Environmental Practice 16: 329–334 (2014)

The article offers an examination of recent efforts to streamline the NEPA process. Proposed streamlining methods are evaluated to answer whether streamlining initiatives would either improve NEPA ...

Many environmental impact analyses, including those pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, as amended, do not identify the spatial and temporal scales used in the analysis. With...

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) statute and regulations require that documents should be prepared for a wide range of readers. These readers have markedly different and sometimes contradictory information needs and expectations. The process of developing NEPA documents supports good intra-agency and interagency communication but produces lengthy technical documents that are difficult for the general public to understand. Environmental Practice 16: 1–6 (2014)

Programmatic analyses under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) are broadly scoped for assessing the environmental impacts of federal actions across a span of conditions, such as facilitie...

Problem, research strategy, and findings: To address air traffic congestion, airports can manage flight demand or expand capacity; the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires an environmental impact statement (EIS) to evaluate feasible alternatives to capacity expansion. The FAA also funds regional planning agencies to conduct optional regional aviation systems plans (RASPs). We study the extent to which airports investigate demand management in lieu of increasing capacity and if RASPs play a role in doing so. Of the 17 EISs for major airport capacity expansions between 2000 and 2013, only Boston (BOS), as influenced by the local RASP, fully assessed demand management. We find three barriers to airports evaluating demand management in their EISs: narrow project objectives, uncertainty over the FAA's stand on demand management, and economic development concerns. RASPs can help surmount these barriers because they are not constrained by the EIS's narrow objectives and can comprehensively evaluate dem...

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) clearly has a role to play in how projects with a federal nexus prepare for climate change. To help agencies improve their consideration of climate change, the Council on Environmental Quality in February 2010 released the NEPA draft guidance, which addresses both emissions and the effects of climate change on agency actions and the affected environment. We analyzed every available final environmental impact statement (154 total) released in July 2011–April 2012, and found that very few incorporated the climate adaptation elements of the 2010 draft guidance. Even the environmental impact statements with the most attention to climate change adaptation considered the effect of climate change with respect to only a limited number of the elements of the affected environment, failed to fully compare the various alternatives, or used short,qualitative statements rather than full analysis based on the best available science. We explore the possible reasons for this and present recommendations for overcoming these obstacles.Environmental Practice 16: 52–76 (2014)

The Forest Service is mandated to involve the public during agency planning efforts, but involving the public does not necessarily mean the public will gain any influence over the planning decision. An earlier survey revealed that Forest Service team leaders commonly desire greater levels of public influence than they achieve in their planning processes. Informed by interviews with 16 Forest Service employees experienced with leading planning processes, this research explores the constraints to desired public influence. We found that agency personnel serve as key ‘gatekeepers’ to public influence through their decisions and actions during the process. Efforts beyond required procedures appear to often be necessary to translate normative public comments that might otherwise be dismissed into substantive public influence on analyses and subsequent decision making. Key constraints include a lack of perceived self-efficacy and fear associated with conflict, a lack of leadership commitment to public influence,...

Individuals and public groups generally participate in public involvement events in an effort to gain influence over decisions that affect them. However, not much is known about how the process actually results in the public gaining influence over agency decisions. This paper reports the results of an online survey completed by 489 Forest Service National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) team leaders. Respondents reported how much influence they thought the public should have during the NEPA process, how much influence they thought the public generally had, and how much influence the public had on a specific NEPA process at different points in the process. Sixty per cent of the respondents believed the public should have greater influence than they do. Respondents reported that more public influence should and does happen at earlier stages in the process. Early public influence and substantive comments appear to be related to positive perceptions of the public involvement process and public relations outcomes.

In the US, relatively little research has been done in recent years to inform the development and implementation of cumulative impact assessment (CIA) policy. Past studies have primarily focused on the requirements and practices of the National Environmental Policy Act, but little is known about the challenges and opportunities relating to CIA practices at the state level. By analysing data from a national survey of state environmental review programme administrators, this study identified the inability of state programmes to facilitate CIA practices as a major barrier to effective implementation, particularly reflected by the perceived lack of explicit procedures and data for conducting CIA. Important strategies for improvement included adopting detailed guidelines specifying what to include in an assessment and developing institutional mechanisms to encourage state agency co-ordination. Some differences in perception were observed across programmes due to the different types of state-level environmental...

Results from an agency-wide survey of U.S. Forest Service personnel indicate that respondents in our sample engage in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) public involvement processes primarily to accomplish two goals. The most commonly supported goal was to inform and disclose as mandated by the act. The other goal reflected interests in managing agency relationships with various, often adversarial, publics. Respondents expressed variable views about how to conduct public involvement. Most favored informal meetings and/or formal agency-endorsed strategies, though some respondents favored strategies associated with avoiding or containing the public. Qualitative results suggest that variable views concerning how to go about public involvement are related to individual views of planning in general, the public, and administrative structures and processes. The study raises the question of which factors—the beliefs of those conducting public involvement, or the strategies of public involvement employed—mos...

The main concept in this article is that the federal government has fallen behind in implementing its basic law for protecting the environment, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969,...

On December 31, 2009, President Barack Obama proclaimed the 40th anniversary of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), a landmark “conservation” law. During this 40-year period, NEPA has been hailed as a champion of American “environmental rights” and criticized as an obstacle to economic progress. In the view of some critics, NEPA uselessly exploits private and public time and resources. It is remarkable that NEPA, although battered and worn, has survived virtually intact for four decades. This article is not a “how to” dissertation containing new or revised prescriptions for preparing defendable environmental impact statements (EISs), environmental assessments (EAs), and other action-forcing documents prepared by federal agencies. It is not a recitation of main provisions in the NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act of 1969] with which most readers are familiar. Instead, it selects 10 of a plethora of problems blockading responsible NEPA process implementation: seven historic and persistent and three new or emerging. This selection is by no means an all-inclusive list. Finally, the article reviews NEPA's development and looks to some future steps that might be taken to implement NEPA as its founders intended.Environmental Practice 13:235–249 (2011)

Interdisciplinary teamwork has become a foundation of natural resources planning and management in the US. Yet, we know little about the degree of interdisciplinary collaboration of natural resource planning teams. We conducted 10 case studies of Forest Service NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) teams working on projects related to the 2005 Travel Management Rule. Although teams' critical tasks were similar, we found wide variation in interdisciplinary teamwork approaches. We propose three typologies of teamwork processes and discuss relationships between teams' work approaches and process outcomes. Rather than being easily labelled as holistically ‘collaborative’ or ‘non-collaborative’, teams may more typically move in and out of different modes of collaboration (or non-collaboration) throughout the different stages of teamwork processes. Results suggest that greater external pressure may lead teams to adopt a more internally collaborative approach and that empowering leadership styles may enhance ...

In fulfilling its public involvement requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) the US Forest Service sometimes favours scientific, technical or legally-based public input over comments that explicitly express the values or preferences of the public. We trace the roots of this tendency to the Council on Environmental Quality's (CEQ) NEPA regulations and to agency planning guidelines that direct agency employees to address only ‘substantive’ or ‘significant’ comments. We term this guidance and the tendency to favour certain types of public input the ‘substantive sieve’, and show how it may influence agency constructions of the public. We discuss the implications of our findings in the context of agency NEPA public involvement processes.

Defense and the environment is not an either–or proposition. To choose between them is impossible in this real world of serious defense threats and genuine environmental concerns. The real choice i...

Federal agencies involved in response and recovery actions in the aftermath of disasters must comply with the various environmental planning laws, executive orders, and regulations, such as review under the National Environmental Policy Act, National Historic Preservation Act, Endangered Species Act, and Executive Order 11988: Floodplain Management. Many of these have provisions to address exigencies such as emergencies, disaster declarations, and related response and recovery actions. However, a careful reading of over 20 of these environmental planning requirements shows that the emergency provisions are not aligned and some may be very limited in scope. Experience within the Federal Emergency Management Agency shows that this patchwork of provisions can create inconsistencies and frustration during the recovery process of major disasters. This article provides a brief evaluation of these provisions, provides a discussion of the challenges in applying the various provisions, and encourages the start of a dialogue at the federal level by providing strategies to improve consistency among these provisions in light of the various ongoing efforts associated with recovery processes in the aftermath of disasters.Environmental Practice 12:237–246 (2010)

A movement is needed for federal, state, and local agencies to integrate watershed planning into their daily transportation planning activities. The integration will provide a method for collecting, sharing, and analyzing watershed data (science) and provide a framework outlining appropriate strategies (policy) to more effectively balance transportation projects and enhance the environment.Environmental Practice 12:158–167 (2010)

The USDA Forest Service is sued more often than any other federal agency under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). This analysis examines Forest Service land management cases init...

When the National Environmental Policy Act was passed in 1969, it presupposed that there were clear ways to identify and then address environmental impacts from federal actions. Since then, it has ...

The United States courts are increasingly requiring federal decision-makers to assess greenhouse gas emissions of proposed actions in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analyses. With respect...

The courts are increasingly finding that National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) documents need to address climate change impacts—both the impact of the project on climate change and the impacts o...

National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations stipulate that when an agency opts to have a private contractor prepare an environmental impact statement, contractor selection should be conducted in such a way as to avoid conflicts of interest (COIs) that might adversely affect the integrity of the NEPA process. The goal is to ensure an unbiased, credible, and defensible environmental impact statement that supports public and transparent decision making. The contractor is responsible for executing a COI disclosure statement prepared by the agency, stating that the contractor has “no financial or other interest” in the outcome of the project. Because determining freedom from COIs after the fact may be difficult, private NEPA contractors should proactively collect information that supports a broad COI analysis of all aspects of their business models, taking into consideration requirements from other regulations that may govern a specific contractor/agency relationship.Environmental Practice 12:168–174 (2010)

Following the intent of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, many states have adopted policies and procedures directing state agencies and local government units to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of development projects prior to their undertaking. In contrast to a rich literature on federal requirements, current understanding of state environmental review is narrowly focused and outdated. This paper seeks to provide information on the landscape of state environmental review policy frameworks. The paper identifies 37 states with formal environmental review requirements through a document review of state statutes, administrative rules and agency-prepared materials, and confirms this finding through a survey of state administrators. A two-tier classification is used to distinguish states based on the approach taken to address environmental review needs and the scope and depth of relevant policies and procedures implemented. This paper also provides a discussion of policy and programme...

This paper considers how the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process in Russia (OVOS) could benefit from incorporating some of the process and documentary features of European strategic environmental assessment (SEA) and US Environmental Impact Statements respectively. While the strategic level is addressed in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA, the USA system of Environmental Assessment) and in the European Directive on SEA implemented in 2004, SEA is not currently undertaken in the Russian system in terms of legislation or practice. The first section of the paper describes the present state of the OVOS process, through presentation of the relevant legislation in Russia, taking into account European Union (EIA and SEA Directives) and US (Policy Act EIS/EA) experiences. In the second section, the Irkutsk case study (an OVOS report for the gas exploration and extraction project in the Irkutsk Region of Russia) is compared with the EIA undertaken for the Cook Inlet oil and gas lease sales in ...

Citizen participation and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) both have long and storied histories in environmental practice. Arnstein's ladder for citizen participation depicts a continuu...

From the time it appeared in the 1978 regulations implementing the United States' National Environmental Policy Act, agencies have struggled with the concept of cumulative impacts in their environm...

Focusing on environmental review practice in state departments of transportation in the US, the study examines the practices and effects of stakeholder involvement in scoping processes conducted under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Based on a survey of environmental review staff in 46 of the 50 states, the study finds variation in approaches used by states and relatively high levels of perceived effectiveness. The findings include a number of internal and external factors that contribute to effectiveness and highlight the impacts of participation on the content and outcomes of scoping processes.

Thirty-seven years after the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was passed, it should come as no surprise that the United States Congress, the President, federal agencies, and private industr...

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 implementing regulations require an assessment of cumulative impacts in reaching a determination regarding the potential significance of impacts...

The assessment of cumulative impacts is one of the most difficult tasks a NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) practitioner faces when preparing an Environmental Assessment or Environmental Impact Statement, and it recently has become an increasing focus area of legal challenges. Historically, federal agencies have a very poor track record in this litigation. This research examines 25 recent judicial opinions involving challenges to various NEPA documents' cumulative impact analyses, from the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Challengers were victorious on their claims of inadequate analysis in 60% of the cases decided in the 10-year analysis period. In recent years, the success rate for challengers has risen even higher, to victories in eight of 11 cases (72%). The main reasons federal agencies have lost these court challenges is because they failed to present any cumulative impact analysis whatsoever in their NEPA document; they left out obvious past, present, or reasonably foreseeable future ...

Political scientist Lynton Keith Caldwell, a principal architect of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) who also is recognized as the “inventor” of the Environmental Impact Statement (or EIS, NEPA's “action forcing” provision), is widely regarded to be one of the twentieth century's most influential scholars in the fields of environmental policy, politics, law, and administration. Indeed, because of his groundbreaking work during the 1960s, he has been credited with founding the new subfield of environmental policy, politics, and administration studies within the wider scope of political science and public administration in the United States. In that period, Robert Bartlett and James Gladden believe that Caldwell “proposed the wholly new field of inquiry now known as environmental policy studies” and that he was “alone in focusing on the distinctive, integrative character of the concept ‘environment’ and its implications for politics, public policy, and public administration.” Harold and Margaret Sprout, the only other political scientists then pursuing a path similar to Caldwell's, share this opinion, writing in 1978, “The long neglect of environmental subjects by academic political scientists [has been] verified … The roster of an interdisciplinary conference, ‘Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth’ (1955), sponsored by the Wenner-Gren and National Science Foundations, included no political scientists. Two years later the conference ‘Future Environments of North America’ sponsored by the Conservation Foundation included only one, Professor Caldwell.”