Introduction - Environmental Impact Analysis: Process and Methods - page 8

international policies and regulations. To fully understand the current
practice of environmental impact analysis, an appreciation of NEPA and its
underpinnings is essential. Chapter 2 briefly addresses the history and sum-
marizes the Act and its implementing regulations. The chapter also assesses
the quality of analyses performed under NEPA and similar environmental
programs. The NEPA process and a description of each step are presented
in Chapter 3 with a detailed presentation of NEPA-specific requirements,
such as the purpose and need for action and enforcement of NEPA and its
regulations. Chapter 3 focuses on the analysis process as it applies specifi-
cally to NEPA with universal aspects of environmental analysis processes,
such as environmental impact prediction covered in detail in subsequent
chapters. NEPA is given special attention, not because it is a perfect, or even
a near-perfect environmental analysis process, but because it was the first.
An understanding of the steps in the NEPA process provides a better appre-
ciation of other regulations and analysis processes that were developed
based on the NEPA experience.
Chapters 4 and 5 describe the heart of environmental impact analysis: the
steps leading up to and including the prediction of impacts and how the
analysis is integrated into the planning, development, and implementation
of projects, plans, and policies. Multiple approaches to each of the steps are
described by presenting multiple case studies to illustrate how the process
can be adapted to individual cases. The steps required to plan and support
an environmental impact analysis are presented in Chapter 4 and implemen-
tation of the analysis is described in Chapter 5. These chapters are not the
cookbook equivalent of how to prepare an environmental analysis, but they
do describe the process, discuss each step, and present important consider-
ations and potential pitfalls at each step.
One of the historic and continuing criticisms of environmental analy-
ses is that they are long, boring, and repetitive. The boredom criticism is
hard to address but large strides have been made in controlling the length
and repetitiveness. The progress has included numerous approaches to
multilevel environmental impact analyses using information developed,
decisions made, and a better understanding of issues developed in early
stages to streamline subsequent levels of analysis. Chapter 6 presents sev-
eral of these multilevel environmental analysis concepts and illustrative
case studies. The chapter emphasizes the use of multilevel environmental
analysis to achieve better decisions, projects/plans/policies, and maximum
efficiency.
Early in the history of environmental analysis, the goal was well known,
but the path to achievement was uncharted. Since that time numerous
methods and tools have been developed and are continually being perfected
to predict impacts, weigh environmental trade-offs, and provide environ-
mental input effectively and efficiently to projects, plans, and policies. None
of these methods or tools are universally appropriate to all actions, envi-
ronmental resources, or environmental or geographic settings; however,