ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENTS       

The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 requires every agency responsible for a project funded with Federal funds to create an assessment of the project's potential impact on the environment. The agency that produces the environmental impact statement (EIS) is also required to hold public hearings and submit a draft of the EIS for public review and cannot proceed with the project until a final version of the EIS is put together. However, final EIS do not supersede draft EIS because the final version will often cite information in the draft without actually including it. Comparison of final versions to drafts is also often important for litigation.

The EPA Office of Compliance and Enforcement is responsible for filing environmental impact statements for Federal departments. This agency's website has links to EIS information including current (1995 to present) EIS documents for review. Announcements of environmental impact statements are also published in the Federal Register from 1994 to the present and are browsable by year.

Finding Environmental Impact Statements

Environmental impact statements owned by University Libraries can be found be doing a keyword search in the online catalog.  Use the terms: “environmental impact statement” or “eis”.  You may narrow your search by adding a place or state name.

University Libraries also has access to several databases that can help identify environmental impact statements:

Current Environmental Impact Statements (EPA) - All Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) prepared by federal agencies are filed with EPA. Each week, EPA publishes in the Federal Register a Notice of Availability for all of the EISs filed the previous week.

EIS Digests of Environmental Impact Statements - The federal government issues hundreds of environmental impact statements each year - and this one resource provides detailed abstracts of all of those statements, also indexing them for easy reference.  Coverage is from 1985 to the present.

ENVIROnetBASE – Full text links to over 100 books published by CRC Press dealing with aspects of the environment.

Environmental Issues & Policy Index - Provides researchers with abstract/index information to over 1000 titles covering Environmental policy and studies. There is ongoing coverage for over 500 of those titles. An Environment Thesaurus is available to assist with advanced searching.

Federal Register Environmental Impact Statements - The website contains the full-text of Federal Register documents that deal with all aspects of EISs being prepared by all federal agencies, and is published on a daily basis.

National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) website – Provides information on where and how to file an environmental impact statement.  Also includes links to other environmental organizations and case law.

Web site content: Lorna Newman