By Hope-Elena Sardella, May, 2019
When the Nation Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was ratified on January, 1st 1970, the policy was underestimated in how revolutionary this policy would be to the United States, by way of creating the Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ), and more importantly the creation of environmental impact reports (Alm, A., 1988). To understand the framing of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), we must look at the ratification and revisions that president carter implemented in 1970 to the Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ). In 1970, and 1973 President Carter achieved in enacting Section 102(2)(C); which required extensive environmental documentation necessary for a public inquiry on all matters about environmental compliance (Marriott, B., 1997). Author Marriott (1997) affirms that measures were intended to be “nondiscretionary,” in layman’s terms – these laws were not an option for law enforcement to use their “own discretion,” but like so many big buissness continued to do so perpetuating nonenvironmental compliance through a loophole in the law (pg. 7, para. 1). Whether subjects wanted to implement the law or not it was quite clear that these were not President Carter’s true intentions and in 1978, the president made additional changes implementing the law 40 CFR PARTS 1500 – 1508, changing the loose set of principalities into stone cold regulations that corporations would have to adhere to. These reforms were very positive by the removal of 70 different regulation standards and also implementing equal measures across all federal entities. Although, many would like to villainize NEPA for it’s dramatic rehaul of direct and indirect effects on the way the federal government and big buissness conducts environmental reports; it is because they are hated by many which have made NEPA so crucial to the success of the now presiding authority EPA (Environmental Protection Agency).
So the big question here; is do I think NEPA should be expanded. It is in my opinion that NEPA should be broadened to commercial and federal projects. I have made this conclusion because if we were more to be more lenient to one side than the other than the environmental negligence switches sides every time. A hypothetical example: big buissness has more regulations that the federal government in 2019, then the federal government will take on the responsibility of doing the environmental damage that year vs. big buissness and Vise-Versa. I say this because in NEPA early stages many federal government agencies were blind-sighted by their ability to halt projects such as the cease of AEC’s (atomic licensing commission) nuclear license (Alm, A., 1988, pg. 2, para. 3)). I would imagine that the federal government has found ways to get around this, such as having other countries conduct the environmental damage for them; hence why the Paris Accord is so important.
References
Alm, A. (1988). NEPA: Past, present, and future (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. EPA Journal. Retrieved from https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/1988-article-nepa-past-present-and-future.html
Marriott, B. (1997). Environmental impact assessment: A practical guide. Retrieved from https://redshelf.com/
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