Russell Train, EPA Administrator, told the Senate Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution on April 10, 1974, that the Agency he heads will henceforth prepare full-fledged impact statements on its major actions.¹ Since January 1 of this year, EPA had been issuing "environmental explanations," designed to serve the function of an impact statement without seeming to concede that NEPA obligated EPA to prepare statements.² In his testimony, Train held to the position that impact statement preparation was not required by law, and said that the decision might be reversed if the Agency found that the new policy was interfering with its operations.

Almost from the day of NEPA's enactment, the question of its applicability to environmental agencies has been in dispute. The Environmental Protection Agency has consistently taken the position that it is not required by law to prepare impact statements on its major actions, and that to impose such a duty on EPA would only interfere with its efforts to preserve the environment. Many environmentalists have argued that although the impact statement process might be used by polluters to delay or obstruct necessary Agency action, the long-range advantages of EPA compliance with NEPA outweight the drawbacks: administrations, administrators, and policies are all subject to change, and it would be imprudent to assume that the Agency's commitment to the cause of environmental protection will necessarily always be beyond reproach. They contend, moreover, that it is anomalous for EPA to be assisting in the impact statement review process while itself remaining exempt, and that Congress could have written a specific exemption for environmental agencies into the law if it had wished to do so. The Courts of Appeals that have considered the issue have so far sustained EPA's position in each case, although the D.C. Circuit in a 1973 decision³ ruled that the EPA Administrator's written explanation of the action in question was the "functional equivalent" of an impact statement; the court indicated strongly that on different facts, it might well have found an impact statement to be required.