Essential Elements of Effective Implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)—Agency Decisionmaking and the NEPA Process

This paper presents the findings of an online survey and interviews with National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) professionals on their opinion on the essential and most important components of agency NEPA programs. A list of NEPA program components was developed based on a review of books, articles, and papers on ways to improve the NEPA process. Results of the online survey indicate that all of the listed elements are considered important for an agency NEPA program to be successful. No program element received an average score as high as 3 (somewhat important) and only 2 of the elements received an average score higher than 2 (very important). The highest ranked element (1. critically important) was senior management support for the NEPA process. Interviews with senior NEPA specialists confirmed that senior management support for the NEPA process was critical, and that other critical components flowed from that support. “Senior managers” were interpreted as being the agency’s senior NEPA manager or the senior manager at each facility, installation, or command. Education was most frequently identified as how agency NEPA staff could develop and maintain consistent senior management support for the NEPA process. The interview sample size was small, and further research could be conducted with other agency representatives to identify additional successful methods to develop consistent senior management support for the NEPA process.