Methods federal government agencies implement to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act: Part 1 of 3

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) became the first major environmental policy in the United States (US) in 1970. NEPA requires federal agencies to determine significant environmental impacts of their actions to the fullest extent possible. Each agency is given flexibility in their compliance (Congress, 1970).This study determines implementation methods employed by NEPA practitioners to integrate the Act and Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) regulations into their agency decision-making and action planning processes. Twelve federal agencies were examined for this study, and 15 interviews were conducted with federal government employees working within the US Executive Branch.This study identified four methods used by agencies to implement the NEPA process into federal decision-making. NEPA training allows decision-makers to initiate the NEPA process when an action is proposed. Programmatic environmental documents review any cumulative environmental impacts from geographical locations, projects, and cumulative actions. Master plans integrate NEPA into agency budget and project planning processes. Information Technology (IT) systems allow for institutional knowledge and historic NEPA reviews to be archived in IT Decision Support Systems (DSS) to create more effective NEPA reviews. IT Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are prevalent in federal agency decision-making to efficiently locate environmental attributes near potential action sites. Information- and knowledge-sharing, informed decisions, and archived NEPA documents are realized benefits of using IT systems for NEPA.