Summary of the National Environmental Policy Act and Implementing Regulations - Environmental Impact Analysis: Process and Methods - page 17

a platform and infrastructure for development and administration of new
environmental protection regulations and procedures. It also provided an
open and transparent venue for public debate and implementation of envi-
ronmental protection measures at the level of individual projects, agency-
wide programs, and national policy. Also, NEPA is considered by many as
the “grandfather” of environmental legislation and regulations internation-
ally and in individual states. With this pedigree and breadth of scope, under-
standing NEPA, how it was developed, judged, implemented, and successful
is important background for anyone wishing to practice or review environ-
mental analysis in any arena. Thus this topic devotes two chapters to NEPA,
not so much for readers to become NEPA experts but so that they fully appre-
ciate the starting point of environmental analysis, generally understand
NEPA requirements, and take home the lessons learned from 40 years of
NEPA implementation.
This chapter and the next summarize NEPA scope and procedures so that
a practitioner planning and implementing an environmental analysis can
conduct the process in compliance with requirements. Also as discussed
above, NEPA began the evolution of environmental analysis and these
chapters track that process and present the analysis guidance provided by
the Act. This summary covers the basic scope and procedures that apply to
all proposed federal actions. However, every project, plan, and/or policy
is unique and there are details in NEPA policy and procedures that come
into play only in certain cases. This topic does not cover each and every
NEPA detail, and at some point during the planning and implementation
of an action subject to NEPA, the practitioner is strongly advised to con-
sult and review the Act and its regulations, which are summarized below.
These documents can be found at the CEQ website (www.whitehouse.gov/
administration/eop/ceq) and are also presented in several NEPA-specific
reference topics:
r NEPA Effectiveness, Mastering the Process (March 1998)
r Mastering NEPA: A Step-by-Step Approach (Bass and Herson 1993)
r The NEPA Reference Guide (Reinke and Swartz 1999)
There are also several reference topics that not only address all the spe-
cifics of NEPA but examine the subtleties, present case studies, and dis-
cuss implications. NEPA and Environmental Planning: Tools, Techniques, and
Approaches for Practitioners (Eccleston 2008) is one such text. The same author
and publisher published another useful NEPA reference topic on environ-
mental assessments (EAs) (Eccleston and Doub 2012), which covers aspects
of NEPA-mandated analyses for actions with only minor environmental
consequences.
In addition to the CEQ NEPA Regulations (40 CFR 1500 et seq.; see Section
2.3 of the topic for a full discussion of the CEQ Regulations), each federal