“Little NEPAs”: State Equivalents to the National Environmental Policy Act in Indiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin
Abstract
Enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1969 and signed into law by President Richard Nixon
in 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) is the United States’
flagship environmental law. Unlike, for example, the Endangered Species Act, another
one of the many major environmental laws passed around the same time as NEPA, NEPA
is a procedural law, requiring that all Federal actions be examined for their impacts
on the natural and human environment. NEPA is often known best for the environmental
assessments (EA) and environmental impact statements (EIS) that often require tremendous
resources in the form of time, money, and technical expertise to complete, despite
NEPA’s intent to ensure that potential impacts on the natural and human environments
are taken into account in decision making.
Since the enactment of NEPA, sixteen states, New York City, Puerto Rico, and the District
of Columbia have enacted procedural laws similar to NEPA in their intent to require
activities at a state level to document their impacts on the natural and human environment
and to include environmental considerations in decision-making . These “little NEPAs”
vary widely in their requirements, impact, and effectiveness in encouraging state
decision makers to take into account impacts on the natural environment. This paper
will examine three little NEPAs of three Midwestern states – Indiana’s Indiana Environmental
Policy Act (IEPA), Minnesota’s Minnesota Environmental Policy Act (MEPA), and Wisconsin’s
Wisconsin Environmental Policy Act (WEPA). These three laws, while all having common
roots in the explosion of environmental laws promulgated in the late 1960s and early
1970s and sharing the basic goal of NEPA to integrate environmental considerations
into governmental decision making, have developed in different ways in response to
different pressures and legislative environments.
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Marchman, Patrick (2012). “Little NEPAs”: State Equivalents to the National Environmental Policy Act in Indiana,
Minnesota and Wisconsin. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/5891.Collections
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