ABSTRACT
The US was the first country to introduce environmental impact assessment (EIA) as a part of the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). 1 NEPA includes provision for applying this process to major actions at the strategic or non-project level, commonly termed programmatic EIA by US federal agencies. Yet traditionally this form of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) has been underused in NEPA applications. Since 1987, less than 100 programmatic environmental impact statements (PEIS) have been filed with the US Environmental Protection Agency. This trend still continues with only a handful of the 500 draft, final and supplemental environmental impact statements filed each year described as ‘programmatic’.
