The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), now approaching its sixth year as the cornerstone of legal efforts to protect the environment, is still under attack by federal agencies seeking to limit, transfer, or avoid their NEPA workload. In August 1974, the Department of Housing and Urban Development won congressional authorization to transfer the responsibility for impact statement preparation to local and regional applicants for HUD funds under its community development block grant program.¹ A year later, an effort initiated by the Federal Highway Administration (FHwA) led to the passage of Public Law 94-83, which amended NEPA to allow statewide agencies receiving federal funds to play a part in preparing NEPA statements previously required in some judicial circuits to be solely the product of the responsible federal officials.² Both of these acts, however, incorporated elaborate statutory safeguards to protect the effectiveness of NEPA's operative provisions.

Now, other less-cautious proposals to reduce direct agency involvement in NEPA statement preparation are emerging. A number of energy bills have proposed exemptions or moratoria on NEPA requirements as they apply to energy resource development projects. The Office of Management and Budget, responding to a recent district court decision ordering it to promulgate NEPA regulations covering its own actions,³ has not ruled out asking Congress to exempt it and the whole budget process from NEPA. Several other like proposals, some of which are quite dubious, have also been advanced in congressional bills.⁴