NEPA Process and Specific Requirements - Environmental Impact Analysis: Process and Methods - page 59

stakeholders; (2) provide decision makers with a clear understanding of
the environmental implications of their actions; and (3) objectively evaluate
and compare alternatives and potential impact mitigation measures. The
NEPA practitioner must meet the procedural requirements but cannot get
so distracted by procedure that they lose sight of Congress' and CEQ's pri-
mary intent in requiring a “detailed statement.” That intent is to conduct an
unbiased, interdisciplinary, and technically defensible environmental impact
analysis. A well-prepared and useful EIS is more than a disclosure docu-
ment. The EIS and the entire NEPA process should be initiated at the earliest
stage of planning the action, incorporated when making decisions, and inte-
grated throughout the process. Managing the preparation of an environmen-
tal impact analysis, including an EIS is critical to its success and this topic
devotes Chapter 9 to describing management techniques and approaches.
The first step in the EIS preparation (Figure 3.1 for this and subsequent
NEPA steps) is to inform the public, other federal agencies with jurisdiction,
states that could be affected, and other parties potentially affected by the
action (i.e., stakeholders) for which the agency is in the process of planning
an EIS. As discussed in Chapter 2, if the action considered is of national
concern the notice must be posted in the Federal Register . For actions more of
local concern, notice must include direct communication to appropriate state
agencies and through local media.
The agency's notice of starting the EIS process initiates the scoping process,
and more often than not, the notice of intent includes the announcement of a
scoping meeting and a link to a web page where comments can be recorded.
Scoping is not unique to NEPA and is a key element in any environmental
analysis because it establishes what should be covered in the analysis and
frequently the methods that should be used. Because of its importance to any
environmental impact analysis and its application beyond NEPA, scoping is
discussed in detail in Chapter 4 of this topic.
The EIS consists of several basic components: NEPA-specific procedural
requirements, technical impact prediction, development and comparison of
alternatives, and impact mitigation. The NEPA-specific requirements are cov-
ered by the CEQ Regulations and agency-specific guidance. They are also cov-
ered in detail by a number of classic and newer NEPA/EIS reference topics
(Bergman 1999, Hildebrand and Cannon 1993, Eccleston 2008, Bass and Herson
1993, Eccleston and Peyton Daub 2012). The reader is encouraged to consult the
regulations, agency guidance, and appropriate EIS-speciic reference topics
when preparing an environmental impact analysis subject to NEPA because
this topic does not provide the level of detail and nonsubstantive aspects cov-
ered by the other sources. A summary of the basic EIS requirements follows
immediately below and critical EIS topics are addressed in the following sec-
tion. The other aspects of NEPA (i.e., impact prediction, alternatives, and miti-
gation) are all critical aspects of any successful environmental impact analysis
and these are discussed in subsequent chapters: Initiating (Chapter 4) and
Conducting (Chapter 5) the environmental impact analysis and assessment.