ISSUE BRIEF: Making NEPA Work Better
Support reform of this burdensome and unwieldy law!
The Issue:
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is the umbrella statute covering all other environmental laws of the United States. Over the past 35 years, through litigation and expanding regulations, it has become a cumbersome and unwieldy law routinely used by those opposed to economic growth and prosperity to frustrate all kinds of activities.
The statute is in serious need of reform. Lack of coordination among federal entities has made NEPA a major hurdle impeding various economic activities on non-park federal lands. No single federal agency “owns” the process. Opponents to development routinely use this lack of coordination to stimulate delay and expand the scope of environmental inquiry, all with an eye toward rendering proposed activities uneconomic.
Impacts on the West:
The expansive and open-ended nature of the NEPA process can add millions of dollars to the start-up costs of development projects. As a result, it can and does render many such projects uneconomic.
Status of the Issue:
In 2002, the White House's Council on Environmental Quality established a NEPA Task Force tasked with evaluating the NEPA process and making common-sense recommendations to reform and improve how it works. All of the Task Force members were federal employees, and their report makes a number of very positive recommendations that, if implemented, would mark major improvements in how the program is run.
Solutions:
- Take 60 seconds to tell Congress that you support reform of NEPA and that you agree with the findings of 2002’sNEPA task force.
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