United States

From SEA.unu.edu/wiki

The US government NEPAnet Website is the prime site for information on SEA in the United States. Addition information is given below.

Andres Cabesaz, Abdou Dembele, Jens Rupp

Contents 1 Regulations and guidelines 2 Case Studies United States 3 Stages of SEA 3.1 Screening 3.2 Scoping and techniques 3.3 Public participation 4 Evaluation 5 Further reading

Regulations and guidelines

The US National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) says that

"... all agencies of the Federal Government shall include in every recommendation or report on proposals for legislation and other major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment, a detailed statement by the responsible official on the environmental impact of the proposed action..." [42 USC § 4332].

One of the intentions of NEPA was to reform federal policy-making byintroducing environmental considerations at the earliest phase of the agency planning and at the highest levels of agency decision making.

During the early 1970s, agencies and courts fought to develop an understanding of the concepts of NEPA. Some court cases helped to define a better framework for SEA preparation. Early cases considered the need for analysis of related actions and cumulative impacts for the SEAs.

On 30 July 1979, the CEQ's (Council on Environmental Quality) NEPA regulations, linking all federal agencies, became effective. A great part of these new regulations were a codification of the existing case law and the CEQ NEPA guidelines of 1976.

There are no specific guidelines for SEAs per se. Agencies must use good judgement and make responsible and intelligent decisions on scope and timing in applying CEQ's general procedural requisites to their projects, programs, and policies.

The NEPA process is intended to help public employees to take decisions based on a comprehension of environmental consequences, and to take actions that protect, restore and ameliorate the environment. The preparation of NEPA documents must be made before the formal proposals of the agencies, so that environmental considerations are incorporated into the decision process.

The CEQ regulations apply to SEAs of any scope, whether programmatic or individual. The emphasis is on the proper evaluation of the environmental impacts. The agency takes the decision to prepare, or not, a SEA and it should be the result of a conversation between the environmental and policy-making personnel. SEAs are prepared for groups of federal actions that are mutually related in one of the following ways:

   * geographically, including actions occurring in the same general location.
   * generically, including actions which have relevant similarities.
   * by stage of technological development, including federal or federally-assisted research, development or demonstration.

The individual States are not required to carry out SEAs, but some States such as California already require their State agencies to use SEAs.

Case Studies United States

General information:

   * List of SEA reports prepared, with contacts
   * Government agency NEPA sites (some also include SEA reports)
   * California

Country contacts MANY SEA REPORTS WHICH WERE AVAILABLE IN 2001 WERE UNAVAILABLE IN SUMMER 2003 WHEN THIS LIST WAS CHECKED. THEY ARE IN WHITE UNDERLINED: THEY MAY BE ACTIVE AGAIN BY THE TIME YOU TRY THEM.

Stages of SEA

Screening

Federal and State agencies must carry out SEAs for the following types of actions if they have potential impacts on the environment:

• Agency proposals for legislation
• Adoption of rules, regulations, treaties, conventions or formal policy documents
• Adoption of formal plans which guide or prescribe alternative uses of federal resources
• Adoption of programmes which implement a specific policy

Consequently, many types of actions require an SEA. For example, SEAs were prepared for the following programmes and plans in 1994:

Type of policy, programme or plan	Number of SEAs done
Military base reuse plans	25
River basin plans	19
Public Land management plans	17
National Parks management plans	15
National Forest management plans	13
Fishery management plans	10
Energy-related management plans	9
Wildlife habitat management plans	7
others	13
TOTAL	128

Scoping and techniques

NEPA does not provide a strict legal framework on how SEAs should be carried out. It only offers suggestions. For instance, an SEA should include all elements of a project-level EIS:

   * Description of the present state
   * Identification of alternatives
   * Evaluation of environmental consequences
   * Mitigation measures 

The limits of an SEA can be:

   * Geographical (catchment basin, metropolitan area, etc.)
   * Sectoral (forests, transport system, etc.) 

Thanks to this lack of legal constraints, the different agencies have developed their own original and innovative procedures for carrying out SEAs.

Public participation

Public input is desired and required notably at early stages of the process. It helps to identify and balance potential problems and avoids later problems in the implementation. Even though the participation of the general public is important, the most useful input is provided by personnel of various agencies and representatives of associations because these have access to detailed and precious information. Public meetings are also important in evaluation opinions and values.

Evaluation

The overall efficiency at the national level is rather high because NEPA requires SEAs for all major decisions and plans. However, a standard procedures is not required, so that agencies develop their own different procedures. Therefore, it is hard to evaluate the general effectiveness of the system. This is more practical and original for each separate agency, but makes it difficult to compare and understand for those outside the particular agency. It might be useful to identify the best, most common methods used by each agency and consider whether they could be used by other agencies as well.

The public participation is not continuous but the public has access to the relevant information (internet, local meetings,...). This seems to be a good compromise between the need to inform and the need to work efficiently, i.e. without excessive public interference.

Further reading

• Bass, R. and Herson, A. Strategic environmental assessment in the United States: Policy and practice under the National Environmental Policy Act and the California Environmental Quality Act. Jones & Stokes Associates, Inc.
• Webb, J. W. and Sigal, L. L. 1992. Strategic environmental assessment in the United States. Project appraisal, Sept. 1992, pp 137-141.
• National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) : http://ceq.eh.doe.gov/nepa/nepanet.htm
• Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ) : http://www.whitehouse.gov/CEQ/