First off, NEPA is a fine piece of legislation. If anyone has read it, and very few have, they will find it has well thought out processes and criteria for making sound environmental/geopolitical decisions. I strongly suggest that anyone who responds to this request, take the time to read it through a couple of times – it is only 7 pages long. NEPA does not need any improvements, however, the system that grew up around it does. That system includes the myriad of contradictory and overlapping federal and state environmental laws developed to implement the NEPA.
A sustainable ecology is tremendously discouraged by the wasted time, high costs, frustration and confused goals put forth by the immense bureaucracy that legislates, regulates, administers, and enforces the environmental process minefields. 25 years ago, I went on an executive management training rotational assignment to an EPA region. My assignment was in enforcement. While I was there I wrote the attached document on Compliance Incentives as an editorial feeler to see if there might be a hope for beneficial conversion of the agency into one that would promote sustainable environmental practices. I believe it was quickly filed and forgotten.
From my experience over the last 50 years, I can see that there is no hope to get environmental agencies to properly implement Environmental Management Systems, because even a viable EMS will always be quickly "dilbertized" by the powerbrokers that exist in every government bureaucracy. I know this, because I championed one such system in a large government bureaucracy that grew to a world-wide system which is now completely useless – in fact, a detractor to productivity. The EMS as a solution is out for now. Our government, at every level, is simply not ready for such a commitment. However, if goals could be established such that establishment of EMS or Business management systems could be implemented within the government, then the door would be open to my second recommendation detailed below.
Back to NEPA. The root cause problem with all environmental regulations, including those for NEPA processes, is that science is being misapplied to the challenges presented. Now, this is a very large topic, and I have studied and tried to improve this idea over the last 50 years, and my efforts were successful for the very small sphere of influence that I have had. I am going to present an example of how science has been misapplied to the detriment of our global ecosystems and pocketbooks – this is an example in a different program, but it applies directly to the way science is implemented under NEPA.
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act or CERCLA (1980) and many follow-on legislative acts and implementing regulations, emulate NEPA for a different sort of environmental problem – i.e. contaminated sites. In 1989, I and my family moved to the Northwest so that I could take over the Navy's Clean-up program, the Defense Environmental Restoration Program, in the Northwest Region. Being both a chemist and a civil engineer, I had the benefit of looking at this program in a unique way. After two years of spending many millions of our tax dollars "studying" our highest priority sites in many states, I came to realize that we still knew almost nothing about the risks these sites posed, in fact, our application of the scientific processes was leading us in the wrong direction. Even worse, I could see that it was obvious (looking backward) what we needed to do to bring these sites into compliance, and it would have been far better to take those actions two years prior rather than doing all the studying. In many cases the clean-up "removal actions" would have cost less than the studies. So, not only did I start running the program that way and training my organization to do it that way, but I also published a detailed article on the subject and began presenting it all over the world at conferences. It is in the Streamlining Remediation attachment.
A very similar revamping of the application of science in the NEPA process is called for. It is the size and complexity of scientific and engineering output of the EIS process that drives the enormous cost, large amounts of time and inadequacy of the size and expertise of the staffs of the regulatory agencies to deal with the output in a timely fashion. It is like a tail wagging the dog. And, at the end of the day, do we definitively know anything more than we did at the very start of the process? The uncertainties are still there, and all we have at the end of the day is a decision to carry out environmental damage with a whole lot of unknowns in front of us. Carrying out the science in this topsy turvy manner, only benefits those who have lots of money and are willing to take enormous risks. It is impossible for a small business or an entrepreneur to make beneficial changes to our quality of life because of this barrier. And, NEPA is all about improving the quality of life now and for the future. I do not claim to have the detailed answer of how to improve the application of science to the NEPA process, but I do know that this must happen to make it work to our country's and our population's advantage. The "Observational Approach" could be applied to this program.
The second solution involves a compliance incentives approach as detailed in the Compliance Incentives attachment. The details of this program are too much for this forum – I do suggest that folks read and improve the document as it is over 25 years old, but, even today, it still presents some ideas for logical action. I believe if we could enable the regulatory agencies to see their roles as facilitators of environmental sustainability, instead of as a reactionary review resource, it would do wonders for our economy and for the state of the ecosystems of America. This would also improve morale and effectiveness in the regulatory community, and encourage innovation of the part of those who want to carry out some project or action which has environmental/geopolitical impacts to do some forward thinking of ways to improve the ecosystems now and in the future.
And, if we could implement the above two ideas, there would be no need for laws like CERCLA, and many of the other environmental laws, because then NEPA would be sufficient. I strongly recommend that the CEQ consider this.
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Patrick Vasicek P.E., M.ASCE
Senior Civil Engineer
Art Anderson Associates
Bremerton WA
(360)479-5600
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