Public Comment Periods and Federal Environmental Impact Statements: Potentials and Pitfalls from the American Experience

Abstract

Public comment periods are a primary mechanism for engaging citizens in Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) processes and, in turn, federal decisions with significant environmental, economic and cultural impacts. Yet citizens often feel disenfranchised throughout the five main stages of these comment periods. As a result, when members of the public participate in public comment periods, they are increasingly doing so not only to provide feedback on a given proposed project but to critique the nature of civic engagement and democratic decisionmaking occurring today. EIS public comment periods are thus at times transforming from a means of enhancing the sustainability of federal actions to a civic tool for challenging what are viewed to be exclusive governance practices. Improving the dynamics of public involvement in EIS public comment periods by engaging citizens earlier, developing clearer guidelines for incorporating civic input into decisionmaking, diversifying EIS preparers, and moving public comment periods to a deliberative model can enhance democratic engagement and the environmental, economic and cultural sustainability of future government actions. The National Environmental Policy Act, adopted into law in 1970 and arguably the most comprehensive environmental legislation in the United States to this day, requires federal agencies to consider and generate detailed assessments of the potential environmental, economic and sociocultural impacts of proposed government actions through the preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) prior