PERSPECTIVES FROM THE FIELD Economic Stimulus and NEPA: Lessons Learned in the First Year

Under Section 1609 of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (hereafter referred to as the Recovery Act) federal agencies are required to devote adequate resources to ensuring that applicable environmental reviews carried out under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) are completed expeditiously by using the shortest existing, applicable process allowed by the law. With this requirement, Congress expressed the clear intent that agencies must still comply with NEPA, but that they should do so in a streamlined fashion within NEPA's existing legal framework. Section 1609 also requires the president to submit quarterly reports to Congress [specifically, the United States (US) Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and the US House of Representative Committee on Natural Resources] on the NEPA compliance status of projects and activities funded by the Recovery Act. The president has delegated this responsibility to the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Remarkably, this is the first time in NEPA's 40-year history that federal agencies are required to account for their progress systematically in complying with NEPA. As of this writing, the CEQ had transmitted four such reports to Congress on May 18, August 3, and November 2, 2009, and January 1, 2010. These reports are based on detailed filings that each federal agency made to the CEQ. This article summarizes and assesses the first year of NEPA compliance for Recovery Act funding. It reveals the number of each type of NEPA document that federal agencies have prepared, highlights examples of what federal agencies are doing to streamline NEPA compliance, and discusses how the Recovery Act reporting may have wider influences on NEPA practices in general. Copyright © National Association of Environmental Professionals 2010.