Foreword

• Author: Environmental Law Institute
• Pages: 3-4

NEPA SUCCESS STORIES 3

It is not often that one has the opportunity to review

an experiment in governance with the perspective of

40 years of experience. e National Environmental

Policy Act (NEPA), signed into law by President

Nixon on January 1, 1970, brought about, I think, a

revolutionary change in governmental decisionmak-

ing that is important to this day.

As President of e Conservation Foundation in

1968, I was involved in discussions with Senator

Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Chair of the Senate Com-

mittee on Interior and Insular Aairs. ese dis-

cussions led, among other things, to helping that

Committee hire Lynton Keith Caldwell to assist

in developing the legislation that became NEPA.

Professor Caldwell’s contribution was as the princi-

pal originator of the concept of the Environmental

Impact Statement, which very soon became central to

NEPA and its eect on governmental decisions. After

NEPA’s enactment, President Nixon asked me to be

the rst chairman of the Council on Environmental

Quality. We at CEQ soon set about familiarizing

federal agencies with their new responsibilities—to

identify environmental impacts of their actions and

to consider reasonable alternatives to their proposals.

It is fair to say that NEPA brought the environment

front and center to federal agencies, and that this can

be deemed a success brought about, in no small part,

by the many federal employees and citizens who have

applied the law over these decades. It also opened

up the federal decision making process. No longer

could federal agencies say “we know best” and make

decisions without taking environmental consequenc-

es into account. Nor could they simply pick one

outcome or project and deem all others unworthy of

consideration. NEPA democratized decisionmaking.

It recognized that citizens, local and state govern-

ments, Indian tribes, corporations, and other federal

agencies have a stake in government actions—and

often unique knowledge of hazards, consequences,

and alternatives that can produce better decisions.

During CEQ’s early days, there were two particularly

dramatic examples of the eectiveness of the environ-

mental analysis process—the Tocks Island Dam and

the Cross-Florida Barge Canal.

Tocks Island was an Army Corps of Engineers project

that involved damming the Delaware River at the

Delaware Water Gap, creating a 37-mile long lake. In

April 1971, we returned its EIS for the project to the

Corps stating that it had inadequately addressed the

problem of rapid eutrophication of the lake resulting

from the runo of agricultural wastes from the four

neighboring states. e Corps’ reply was totally inad-

equate, simply assuring CEQ that the states involved

would address the problem. Finally, the Corps with-

drew the project, the Congress removed the money

for the project and it was dead. Never once did the

White House interfere in the slightest with CEQ’s

management of the process.

e Cross-Florida Barge Canal was also an Army

Corps of Engineers project. Construction had gotten

underway in 1964 with the approval of President

Kennedy. CEQ studied the project and concluded

that the potential damage to the ecology of northern

Florida far outweighed any potential benets. e

White House gave us full support and, based on our

recommendation, President Nixon on January 19,

1971, ordered a halt to further construction on the

project, eectively killing it—all of this despite the

unanimous opposition of the entire Florida congres-

sional delegation. While the Cross-Florida Bridge

Canal project did not technically involve the EIS

process, it demonstrated most eectively the potential

power of environmental analysis in decisionmaking.1

is brief publication by the Environmental Law In-

stitute, the Grand Canyon Trust, and the Partnership

Project shows just how this transformation in govern-

ment decisionmaking has aected governance for

1 For a more detailed discussion of both the Tocks Island and Cross-Florida Barge

Canal projects, see Russell E. Train, Politics, Pollution, and Pandas, an Environmental

Memoir, pp. 88-93 (2003).

FOREWORD