In the first significant judicial reaction¹ to last year's amendment² to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has repudiated its earlier "hard line" view³ that NEPA prohibits delegation of environmental impact statement preparation to state agencies. The court also responded to the Supreme Court's 1975 decision in the SCRAP case⁴ by reversing its prior holding that preparation of a NEPA impact statement on transportation systems within the entire Route 7 corridor in New England must procede federal funding of a reconstruction project for a 20-mile segment of the highway. This second ruling suggests that the federal courts may choose to read SCRAP II as giving federal agencies considerable leeway in narrowing the scope of the NEPA review associated with a particular project. It thus casts a shadow over the developing use of programmatic impact statements, one of the most promising developments in recent NEPA law.

The piecemeal reconstruction of Route 7 into a limited access expressway has spawned a number of lawsuits. In 1973, Second Circuit Judge James Oakes, sitting by designation as the Federal District Court in Vermont, granted a permanent injunction in Conservation Society of Southern Vermont v. Secretary of Transportation⁵ against further work on a 20-mile segment of the highway between Bennington and Manchester, Vermont.