NEPA – A Comprehensive Guide and Resource

Successfully navigating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process has never been more important. Implementation of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, permitting of 25,000 MW of renewable energy on public lands, critical mineral mining, LNG terminals, and pipeline and transmission corridors each will implicate NEPA. NEPA is a concise statute whose parameters courts and Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and federal agency rules and guidance define. Understanding the requirements, opportunities, and pitfalls of the NEPA process is a challenge for new and experienced lawyers.

This new, practitioner-focused electronic publication is a compilation of over 200 articles and materials on NEPA organized within the structure of an intuitive and user-friendly outline. An experienced NEPA practitioner and former Interior official and a University of Wyoming law professor created the outline and selected the articles. The product was peer-reviewed by Foundation NEPA experts.

The electronic format offers the user the option to view, download, and print the materials needed for their project. It is an updatable format. Sourced from Foundation articles, law review articles, book chapters, and executive branch materials, this essential resource is a single source of materials that cover the critical NEPA subjects that arise in a natural resources practice.

Topics include:

• Introduction: NEPA big picture; scope and thresholds of NEPA; CEQ and federal land management NEPA regulations and guidance; 2020 Update to NEPA regulations and 2022 revisions
• NEPA Compliance Documents: categorical exclusions; environmental assessments, FONSIs, and decision records; EISs and records of decision; supplemental and programmatic NEPA reviews 
• NEPA Document Components: scoping; purpose and need statement; alternatives analysis; direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts; climate change; environmental justice 
• Working with NEPA: tiering and adoption; mitigation and adaptive management; EPA’s role; public’s role; cooperating agencies
• Applicants and NEPA Consultants: project applicant’s role; working with consultants; conflicts of interest
• Federal Land Development Considerations: federal land management planning and NEPA processes; linear ROWs/renewable energy; coordination with NHPA and ESA; tribal lands; water; livestock grazing; recreation
• Building the Administrative Record/Administrative Review: administrative record; using FOIA; administrative review
• The Court’s Role in NEPA: litigation; remedies; reform and streamlining the NEPA process

Purchase the compilation and receive a complimentary copy of the course materials from the National Environmental Policy Act Special Institute. (March 2023)