The National Environmental Policy Act, which requires
the federal government to assess the environmental impacts of its
actions, has become synonymous with contentious public hearings and
cumbersome environmental impact statements. But it shouldn’t be,
argues Daniel Kemmis, director of the O’Connor Center for the Rocky
Mountain West in Missoula, Mont. “(NEPA) represents a national
recognition of the importance of protecting the environment … but
part of the problem with NEPA is that it has been applied to small
slivers of management,” Kemmis says. In March 1999, Kemmis and 35
other participants, including conservationists, industry
representatives, agency officials and congressional staff, explored
ways to make the NEPA process less adversarial and more
collaborative. Reclaiming NEPA’s Potential is a compilation of the
proceedings of the workshop, sponsored by the O’Connor Center and
the Institute for Environment and Natural Resources in Laramie,
Wyo. Since the workshop, participants have been drafting
legislation that would allow experimentation within the NEPA
process.
To order a $12 copy of Reclaiming
NEPA’s Potential: Can Collaborative Processes Improve Environmental
Decision Making?, write the O’Connor Center at Milwaukee Station,
University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812; call 406/243-7700 or
e-mail rocky@crmw.org. – Beth Wohlberg
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline From cumbersome to collaborative.
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