Environmental Impact Statement

Environmental Impact Statement



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The environmental impact statement

The environmental impact statement (EIS) is a device that allows study, contemplation, and commentary by a broad spectrum of interested parties before commencing with a project or activity that might threaten the environment or cultural assets. A relatively new legal mechanism, EIS requirements recognize that such engineering works like road building, dam construction, and port channelization can have far-reaching and often unexpected ecological and cultural impacts, and before the bulldozers and drag lines go to work, these impacts must be identified and responded to. Communication is a key component; the EIS process involves the use of communication by whatever means are available and appropriate to reach and involve interested parties.

Origins

Following an exceptionally gradual awakening of public interest and concern for the environment, enlightenment encouraged by such U.S. figures as John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and Aldo Leopold, the EIS became a significant instrument in the U.S. environmental movement in 1970. Most observers agree that the breakthrough was precipitated by yet another U.S. writer, Rachel Carson, and her book Silent Spring, published in 1962. The EIS was devised as a legally binding way to pause the developmental process and to enrich it with insights from the biological and social sciences and numerous other disciplines, combined with broad public input. An EIS might be required by any level of government. A municipality, for example, might call for an EIS before proceeding with a new parking garage (Bregman, 1992).

The state might develop an EIS prior to introducing new timber harvest rules for forests on state lands. Considered by scholars to be a remarkably straightforward, efficiently worded piece of environmental legislation, the introductory paragraphs of NEPA begin to articulate environmental policy for the nation and are ...