The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969¹ (NEPA) was intended to bring about fundamental reform on all levels of the federal decisionmaking process where the environment was concerned. On its fourth anniversary (the law was signed on New Year's Day, 1970), the Act still has far to go in achieving its ambitious goals. Yet, the progress that it has made has revitalized many of the bureaucratic processes that slight environmental values. Certain changes in its implementation, discussed here, could make the Act go much further toward realization of its innovative mandate.

Before NEPA's passage, Congress gave almost no attention at all to how the revolutionary new legislation would be received by a reluctant bureaucracy. Admittedly, the record discusses the action-forcing procedures that were supposed to ensure that concrete results would flow from the adoption of the more abstract environmental policy. But beyond a few brief remarks indicating that the agencies would police themselves with minimal OMB oversight, Congress said nothing about how the Act would be enforced.