The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is a United States environmental law that established a U.S. national policy promoting the enhancement of the environment and also established the President's Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Eccleston writes that as one of the most emulated statutes in the world, NEPA has been called the modern day equivalent of an “Environmental Magna Carta.”
NEPA's most significant effect was to set up procedural requirements for all federal government agencies to prepare Environmental Assessments (EAs) and Environmental Impact Statements (EISs). EAs and EISs contain statements of the environmental effects of proposed federal agency actions. NEPA's procedural requirements apply to all federal agencies in the executive branch. NEPA does not apply to the President, to Congress, or to the federal courts.
Read more about National Environmental Policy Act: History, Contents, The NEPA Process, CE (Categorical Exclusion), EA (Environmental Assessment), FONSI (Finding of No Significant Impact), EIS (Environmental Impact Statement), Council On Environmental Quality (CEQ)
Famous quotes containing the words national, policy and/or act:
“[D]rilling and arming, when carried on on a national scale, excite whole populations to frenzies which end in war.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The politician being interviewed clearly takes a great deal of trouble to imagine an ending to his sentence: and if he stopped short? His entire policy would be jeopardized!”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“of artists dying in childbirth, wise-women charred at the stake,
centuries of books unwritten piled behind these shelves;
and we still have to stare into the absence
of men who would not, women who could not, speak
to our life—this still unexcavated hole
called civilization, this act of translation, this half-world.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)