Environmental Impact Assessments

Gary Blank
North Carolina State University

Definition of Environmental Impact Assessment

As typically understood, environmental impact assessment refers to systematic processes for examining the potential results of proposed actions as they can affect all conditions of an existing landscape, including natural, social, and economic resources.

Development of Environmental Impact Assessment

 
In the United States, environmental impact assessment arose from a process created after the U.S. Congress passed and President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in 1969. Its passage was part of broader awareness of environmental changes and the need to reconsider human interactions with the natural world. This globally emulated legislative act started a worldwide revolution in how people and their governments think about and implement development projects.  

 
Amid the general awakening of environmental concerns in the United States in the 1960s, NEPA emerged from dissatisfaction with the standard practice of relying on Cost/Benefit (C/B) analysis (i.e., economic considerations) to determine the efficacy of U.S. federal projects. Many people in the 1960s in the United States began to believe that other values in addition to economics were important when changes in the environment would result from projects like damming rivers, harvesting large tracts of virgin national forest, and building highways.

 
Other concerns centered on rapidly changing technologies that posed unanswered questions about human health and social relationships related to changes. The pervasive threat of nuclear holocaust during the Cold War and suspicions about the safety of nuclear power plants fueled anxiety about runaway technology. Evidence of chemical pollution in surface waters, possible contamination in groundwater, and quite visible air pollution over industrial zones and areas with heavy traffic congestion all contributed to the sense that we needed to pay broader attention to impacts generated by human induced change. Just considering economic justifications and technical feasibility issues seemed to leave out a lot of important considerations.

 
A few voices in Washington, D.C. began calling for Congressional attention to environmental conditions related to projects promoted by federal agencies. Increasing public involvement in project planning by opening federal agency planning processes up to wider scrutiny became a major goal. Requiring all agencies of the federal government to examine their planning efforts and coordinate with other federal agencies to determine environmental impacts of projects was central to the policy enacted. Thus, as other environmental legislation, such as the Endangered Species Act of 1973, was passed and existing legislation, such as the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, was amended, responsible agencies became involved in each other’s planning and decision making. Simply put, the twin aims of NEPA were to consider impacts and inform the public.

Implementation

Even after passage of NEPA, immediate change did not occur. For one reason, NEPA only requires studies of projects using federal resources. Thus, only projects using funds collected and allocated by the federal government or projects occurring on federal properties or sponsored by federal agencies require NEPA studies. The NEPA process does not involve state projects not using federal monies. Nor does NEPA affect privately funded projects or projects occurring on private land. Many people do not realize this limitation on which projects require environmental impact statements.

 
A second reason for delayed implementation was that the regulations about how NEPA could be implemented by federal agencies were not promulgated until 1978. Because every federal agency has a unique mission, determining how NEPA applied to the actions proposed by each agency was not an easy task. So after NEPA was enacted, complicated discussions ensued and painstaking work to create workable guidance had to be accomplished.

 
Certain federal agencies were leaders in implementing NEPA. The USDA Forest Service, for example, already had a planning process evolving because of other legislation. Subjecting its national forest management plans to NEPA examination was a logical progression from steps already being taken to implement Multiple Use and Sustained Yield Act of 1960 objectives and the goals of the National Forest Management Act of 1976.  Moreover, the Forest Service had an extensive research capability that could be enlisted to generate answers to questions about impacts expected from proposed actions. Meanwhile, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) found itself needing to coordinate with many other agencies to complete its environmental studies under NEPA. For example, to address construction of highways in wetlands, in 1985 it “formed a workgroup to identify methods for improving interagency coordination,” and with a number of agencies “prepared the Red Book, [titled] Applying the Section 404 Process to Federal-Aid Highway Projects” (CEQ 1997). The Department of Transportation signed a Memorandum of Understanding with EPA and the Department of the Army in 1992 to make the Red Book official policy.  

Other Government Environmental Assessments

 
A number of states developed their own environmental policy acts (SEPA). While most of these nineteen state acts emulate NEPA, they vary in their demands for implementation. Other effects of NEPA on the states came from the indirect mandates for the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to report environmental conditions to the President annually. As ramifications of NEPA requirements at the federal level began to affect the states, reporting requirements for various environmental characteristics were mandated, so funds were channeled to state agencies for data collection and monitoring efforts. Agencies like the US Department of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service began to work with state agencies to develop their Natural Heritage Programs to track the status of protected species. 

 
By 1992, more than 83 countries had adopted NEPA-like legislation (Caldwell 1998). Global treaties and agreements have gained traction, sometimes without United States acceptance. In 1991, 30 nations including the U.S. signed a Convention of Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context. The 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) strongly recommended impact assessment in its Agenda 21. The European Union has directives to be followed by member states, and even the newest member countries, like The Czech Republic, have clearly articulated policies and regulations for implementation.

Outcomes

 
NEPA and its requirement for environmental impact assessment have profoundly affected the way U.S. federal agencies conduct their planning and implementation of programs and projects. To a lesser extent, environmental impact assessment has been applied in the development of policies. Advocates of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) see the need to examine every government policy for impacts to the natural social and economic environment but the record of doing so is not clear. Costs for doing SEA cannot be clearly assigned, in contrast to project specific EIS, in which the planning process encompasses environmental assessment. Thus when a national forest management plan is developed its budget incorporates the cost of the EIS.

 
Almost 40 years after NEPA was passed, a wealth of environmental data is generated by agencies at local, state, and federal levels. Those data are used in examining the status of project impact areas and all sorts of planning questions. This data legacy of NEPA and the planning processes developed by federal agencies and their clients at state and local levels have created a discrete economic sector. However, within federal agencies the significant costs associated with environmental assessment practices have raised objections. Subsequent litigation directed at the planning processes by persons and organizations outside certain agencies, especially the USDA Forest Service, have added to planning costs and encumbered EIA processes to the point of paralysis. Attempts to streamline processes USDA Forest Service planning processes have met with more litigation and conflict.

 
So the grand vision associated with the passage of NEPA has resulted in mixed results. In part that may result from the inevitable pragmatism and economic or temporal realities of U.S. democracy. For example, the CEQ was intended to “monitor, stimulate, sponsor, and assist advancement in environmental science.” However, the pivotal role envisioned for the CEQ has never been realized because it has never received appropriate funding levels or “a clear signal of congressional or presidential approval” (Caldwell 1998). 

 
Overall, environmental impact statements have greatly improved our abilities to evaluate and assess the impacts of federal projects and federally funded projects on the environment.  The success of NEPA, state, and other countries’ state EIS processes is tempered by costs and probably influenced by economic interests.  But environmental assessment remains a useful tool to prevent egregious environmental destruction and to enhance development projects to minimize their adverse impacts.