ABSTRACT
In the early 1970s, federal agencies had no option but to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) as many actions could not be immediately excluded as being clearly nonsignificant. Consequently, EISs were frequently prepared only to reach the conclusion that no significant impacts existed. In 1978, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) responded to this problem by creating an environmental assessment (EA), the third level of National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) compliance designed to provide an efficient mechanism for bridging the gap between the categorical exclusion (CATX) and EIS.
