Toward a Better NEPA Process for Decisionmakers

摘要

Some extraordinary government officials have used the implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) as a national charter to structure decisions that promote sustainable development and agency governance for protection of the environment. They appreciated that NEPA establishes policy, sets goals (§101), and provides means (§102) and authority (§105) for carrying out the policy. The testimony of Adm. James Watkins, while Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, is illustrative: "thank God for NEPA because there were so many pressures to make a selection for a technology that might have been forced upon us and that would have been wrong for the country...." Admiral Watkins and his successor, Hazel O'Leary, used reform of the NEPA process to move that department toward a more transparent problem-solvingrnapproach to decisionmaking.