The 40th anniversary of the National Environmental Policy Act's (NEPA's) birth calls forth images of a statute, perhaps framed in innocence, that has profound effects on decisionmaking by federal agencies. Though the legislative history is unclear, there is a strong suggestion that the U.S. Congress believed they were enacting a law that would allow agencies to write their own compliance ticket. This changed with a landmark case soon after NEPA was adopted that made the statute enforceable in federal courts. With that decision, the playing field changed and the statute became enforceable in court.

NEPA now is a major environmental statute that requires a freewheeling and extensive analysis of the environmental impacts of agency actions and programs. If the agency makes a mistake by failing to prepare an impact statement when it should, or if the impact statement it prepares is inadequate, it must start over, often at great cost. Because NEPA compliance has become such a major issue, it is useful to examine how the statute works and some of the problems it has created.