National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)

NEPA was passed by Congress with bipartisan support to “promote efforts which will prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere” to “fulfill the responsibility of each generation as trustee of the environment for succeeding generations.”

The three basic principles of NEPA are informed decision-making, transparency, and public input. It requires federal agencies to use rigorous scientific analysis in assessing the environmental impacts of projects—such as new power plants, highways, logging, and oil and gas development—and to explore less environmentally harmful approaches to achieving project objectives. Among the factors considered in NEPA reviews are impacts on threatened and endangered species and habitat, animal welfare, air and water quality, climate change, and environmental justice.

The law also provides opportunities for communities across the country to voice their concerns about how these development proposals may threaten public health and ecosystems. This is especially important for communities of color, which for decades have disproportionately shouldered the burden of toxic pollution in their neighborhoods.

Since 1978, NEPA has been implemented through regulations issued by the Council on Environmental Quality, an arm of the White House that coordinates federal environmental activities and policy development. The regulations have provided direction on NEPA compliance to over 80 federal agencies, project sponsors, environmental consultants, nongovernmental organizations, and communities impacted by projects.

AWI routinely relies on NEPA to contest plans to kill certain wildlife populations in national parks and wildlife refuges, to challenge lethal control activities conducted by the US Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services program, and to protest wild horse and burro roundups. In recent years, rules inconsistent with both the letter and spirit of NEPA have been promulgated by politicians intent on weakening this key environmental law.