National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations stipulate that when an agency opts to have a private contractor prepare an environmental impact statement, contractor selection should be conducted in such a way as to avoid conflicts of interest (COIs) that might adversely affect the integrity of the NEPA process. The goal is to ensure an unbiased, credible, and defensible environmental impact statement that supports public and transparent decision making. The contractor is responsible for executing a COI disclosure statement prepared by the agency, stating that the contractor has “no financial or other interest” in the outcome of the project. Because determining freedom from COIs after the fact may be difficult, private NEPA contractors should proactively collect information that supports a broad COI analysis of all aspects of their business models, taking into consideration requirements from other regulations that may govern a specific contractor/agency relationship.

Environmental Practice 12:168–174 (2010)

Although the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided $8 billion in federal grants for passenger rail development, no national policy framework yet exists to guide this investment. Integrating new high-speed rail lines with existing railroad infrastructure and connecting them with air, road, and transit systems will be of utmost importance. As most of the world's cheap and accessible oil has already been consumed, transportation modes that depend exclusively on oil can be expected to decline, while energy-efficient, low-impact modes such as passenger trains will advance. A new model railroad that shifts more passenger travel to rail will develop through an incremental adaptation of current passenger services, a comprehensive transformation using high-speed train technology, or a combination of these two trajectories. North American designs for high-speed rail will need to incorporate the European innovation of providing multiple air, auto, and rail connections in the form of four station types: the city-center and airport stations seen in Europe, as well as suburban stations at business parks and at suburban commercial centers. To create an effective synergy between transportation and local land use, three broad categories of policy tools will need to be deployed.

Environmental Practice 13:47–57 (2011)

Seventh Generation Thinking is attributed to Native American lore. Specifically, the Six Nations of the Iroquois (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, Cayuga, and Tuscarora) are given the most credit for developing and codifying the idea here in the North American continent. The idea is that we do not inherit the land from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.

In December of 2009, the nations of the world who contribute much of the greenhouse gas (GHG) that is emitted into the atmosphere will gather in Copenhagen to work collectively on a treaty to succeed the Kyoto pact. The last time they gathered was in Amsterdam in December of 2000 to put the final touches on what became the Kyoto Treaty. The United States (US) was something of an outlier in the drawn-out discussion that had preceded the meeting in Amsterdam. But the differences between the US and the vast majority of other nations were being worked out. At the end of the conference, the US delegation returned to Washington, DC, with a sprinkling of optimism. It reported to the president that a couple of more months of negotiations in the new year could lead to a document that the US could sign.

Public participation can not only contribute to improvement of decisions, but can also help in enhancing the capability of communities to solve problems and pursue common concerns. Arguably, a strong public participation in environmental governance could increase the commitment among stakeholders, which strengthens the compliance and enforcement of policies. Nevertheless, despite the critical importance of public participation in policy making, such involvements are not as effective as may be desired for logical conclusion and efficient implementation of policies. The near nonexistence of visualization tools at the disposal of the general public to aid in visual understanding of the problem is the major cause factor for the non-involvement and negligible influence of the populace in policy making. One such facility is being established at Wildlife Institute of India for visualizing the impacts of climate change on biodiversity of Indian Himalayan Region (IHR).

Environmental Practice 18: 129–131 (2016)

Environmental impact statements (EISs) and environmental assessments (EAs) are optimally authored by interdisciplinary teams comprised of specialists assigned to each environmental resource that is potentially subject to significant impacts. A typical team might include a biologist for addressing wildlife and threatened and endangered species, an economist for addressing employment and social services, a hydrologist or geo-hydrologist for addressing water resources, an archaeologist or historian for addressing cultural resources, and an urban planner for addressing land use and transportation. From its inception, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has directed agencies to use a “systematic, interdisciplinary approach” to ensure the “integrated use of the natural and social sciences and the environmental design arts” [42 USC 4322(2)]. The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) has stated that the disciplines of EIS preparers should “be appropriate to the scope and issues identified in the scoping process” (40 CFR 1502.6).

Diffuse anthropogenic pollution (DAP) is derived from human activities, as opposed to those occurring in natural environments without human influences. The term is often used in the context of environmental externalities in the form of chemical or biological wastes that are produced as by-products of otherwise purposeful human activities. For instance, it is widely believed that the production of carbon dioxide is the primary factor driving anthropogenic climate change.

In the fall of 2005 and spring and summer of 2006, The Nature Conservancy, in cooperation with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and Cascadia Research Collective, conducted a mammal inventory on McChord Air Force Base (MAFB). The military has a vested interest in maintaining habitat and species by congressional mandate and the corresponding burden of recovery. Six major habitat types were designated for trap-line transects; additional directed efforts were employed to target specific species. The resulting effort documented the presence of 36 species, eight of which were bats. Documented species of note include the western gray squirrel (Sciurus griseus), a state “threatened” species, detected by hair-snag tubes; long-eared myotis (Myotis evotis); long-legged myotis (Myotis volans); and the Yuma myotis (Myotis yumanensis). Mammalian diversity on MAFB was influenced by three factors: water (either open water or wetland habitat); large, contiguous tracts of undeveloped acreage; and continuity with Fort Lewis, a large military base immediately adjacent to MAFB. Additionally, Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius), an invasive woody shrub, was found to support limited mammalian diversity, with the fewest species documented in this habitat type. Given the impending changes due to development, ownership, and climate, this survey will be useful to managers as a baseline for focused species efforts and future comparisons.

Environmental Practice 10:116–124 (2008)

China has consistently striven toward economic growth at the expense of civil and political rights; however, China faces an impasse as its severe restrictions on civil and political rights threaten to damage its economic growth, a tension that is best illustrated by the environmental movement. With the advent of new technologies, the lack of transparency and public awareness that has allowed corruption to thrive is decreasing. As a result, China is beginning to accept that economic rights may be inextricably linked to environmental rights, and that it must sometimes yield to the latter in order to preserve the former. Specialized environmental courts, created by local courts to manage environmental unrest, are the perfect target for concrete reforms that, if successful, would improve the rule of law in China. Moreover, the centralization of local environmental courts may create the backdoor opportunity that the Central Communist Party needs to pierce local protectionism and advance its sincere interests in both protecting the environment and quelling visible unrest.

Environmental Practice 15:427–440 (2013)

Modern Groundwater Exploration: Discovering New Water Resources in Consolidated Rocks Using Innovative Hydrogeologic Concepts, Exploration, Drilling, Aquifer Testing, and Management Methods. R. A. Bisson and J. H. Lehr, eds. 2004. John Wiley and Sons, New York. 309 pp. $74.95 cloth.

Worldwide, a myriad of reasons prevent adequate water supplies: lack of exploration or employment of modern techniques, bureaucratic and political dysfunctions, poverty, and war. Over one billion people currently lack access to clean water. What will happen as the population increases by adding two billion people over the next forty years (based on current projections)? Locating sustainable reserves of potable groundwater is essential to the survival of all life on earth. Although many books are available that discuss the plight and consequences of water shortages, it's refreshing to find a technically optimistic book that describes success stories for greatly increasing water supplies.

Forest certification has quickly emerged as a prominent non-governmental policy approach to forest management, where market and civic stakeholders play increasingly important roles in new institutional development. In Finland, this development has been characterized by an adversarial and politicized environment between entrenched interest groups competing for decision-making authority in forestry governance. In this article, we discuss key distinctions between the two rival certification schemes, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Finnish Forest Certification System (FFCS), and explain the factors in the development process that led to the domination of the forest landowner- and forest industry-led FFCS. A central finding is that, although an alternative to traditional governmental approaches to forest management, the dominant FFCS adopted and modified traditional rulemaking processes and institutionalized the status quo of rulemaking and rule makers that existed prior to the development of forest certification. This resulted in the elimination of new perspectives in FFCS certification development. An absence of incentives and facilitating mechanisms to build trust between old and new policy participants fostered the collapse of a new integrated policy network in Finland.

Environmental Practice 10:4–12 (2008)

Determining if and when a potential accident scenario is subject to requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 has long been an open question. This issue is routinely addressed by some agencies, yet is virtually ignored by others. Certainly, not all federal proposals merit a detailed analysis of accident scenarios. Yet, how does one determine under which circumstances an analysis of accident scenarios should be subject to a NEPA analysis versus those that are not? The implications of this issue are particularly important with respect to low-probability high-consequence events. Beyond the obvious risk of increased exposure to litigation, this question is of interest for other reasons, not the least of which being that such an analysis can substantially increase schedules and cost. This paper examines this question and provides a tool consisting of seven tests for assisting practitioners in reaching a determination.

In the Pacific Northwest, state agencies have adopted definitions of mature and old-growth forest, with minimum size and age criteria for the largest trees, as part of a program to protect rare forest habitats. State wetland rating and priority habitat protection guidelines use these criteria to identify mature and old-growth forested wetlands; however, these definitions are based on the characteristics of upland habitats and may not be applicable to wetlands. In this study, data from forested wetlands in western Washington were analyzed to estimate growth rates for five tree species: western red cedar, Sitka spruce, western hemlock, red alder, and shore pine. Estimated average diameter for mature forest is 46 cm (18 inches) and for old-growth 69 cm (27 inches), significantly smaller than the standard size criteria of 53 cm (21 inches) and 81 cm (32 inches), respectively. These results may be more appropriate as size criteria for these forest stages; however, growth rates varied widely between different wetlands and between trees in the same wetland. The great variation in growth rates calls into question the validity of estimating the age of a stand based on the size of trees. Consideration should be given to applying a higher degree of protection to all forested wetlands dominated by coniferous trees, regardless of the size of the trees.

Environmental Practice 11:68–83 (2009)

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was signed into law by Richard M. Nixon on January 1, 1970; this year marks its 35th birthday. NEPA was the first of the major environmental statutes passed during the Nixon and Ford administrations. Its requirement that the environmental consequences of actions be evaluated before implementation has been copied by a number of states, some municipalities and tribal governments, and over 100 other jurisdictions around the world. We believe this is an appropriate time to look at some of the issues surrounding NEPA and make suggestions regarding future directions.The authors acknowledge the contribution of ideas by Helen Ingram, University of California, Irvine; Jo Ann Beckwith, Michigan State University; and Jon Allan, CMS Energy Corp. The Editorial Staff is grateful to Michael R. Thomas, Environmental Practice Advisory Board, for his role in obtaining this manuscript. A portion of this article first appeared as a letter to the editor in Science 307:674 (February 4, 2005).

This article uses the history of a Superfund site—the Torch Lake site in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan—to suggest that the risk-based decision-making process of Superfund sends mixed messages, frustrating public participation even when some level of involvement is appropriate and desirable. In this case, Superfund-related conflicts in the community remained unresolved even after the USEPA issued its Superfund Record of Decision. Only after a public advisory council reviewed the beneficial uses of the waterway as part of a decision-making process required by the joint US-Canadian Area of Concern program did the community have a mechanism to reach some consensus on these issues. Rather than reducing a complex problem to a set of numbers that discouraged discussion, the review of beneficial uses facilitated discussions that allowed non-experts to place the various impairments in perspective. The implication for regulators who are required to make risk-based decisions is that, where public involvement in the decision-making process is appropriate, indicator-based discussions of beneficial uses are likely to be more productive than discussions centered around risk.

Two-and-a-half thousand years ago, the legendary Chinese General Sun Tzu wrote in his classic book The Art of War: The highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans; the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces; the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field; and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities…

The discovery of contamination on real estate can be the kiss of death for a land acquisition or development project. The label “hazardous waste” can spook buyers, sellers, banks, investors, landlords, tenants, and brokers. Government agencies acquiring property by purchase, eminent domain, condemnation, tax title, gift, or otherwise, get cold feet when waste is found before the purchase and sale. Developers disappear from the landscape when they see signs of hazardous waste. Business expansions are cancelled for the fear of disturbing past contamination. This fear of liability is natural, considering that innocent landowners can be liable for acquiring contaminated land even if they were not aware of the contamination at the time of acquisition. Although recent changes in the law offer help for parties in many regards, issues still need to be addressed.