This report presents 13 vignettes of how the National Environmental Policy Act helped improve government decisionmaking through public comment and vetting ideas with other agencies. This is a joint project of the Environmental Law Institute along with the Grand Canyon Trust and the Partnership Project.
As the foreword by Russell Train notes, the real genius behind NEPA is in requiring government to listen to the public and seek comment before acting. The case studies use ordinary government decisions from various federal agencies to show the importance of giving the public a voice in government decisionmaking. These quiet NEPA success stories look not to celebrated environmental litigation collected elsewhere, but more fundamentally examine how public involvement and careful consideration of alternatives has produced better outcomes