The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA): Is it all that it can be? The Case for Evaluating Stigma Effects

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has long been regarded as the"Magna Carta" of environmental policy legislation. The government in implementing its requirements on NEPA is required to evaluate potential environmental impacts from "significant" projects, to examine alternatives to proposed actions, and to enable the public to provide meaningful input to decisionmakers. Despite the significance of NEPA there is evidence to suggest that environmental impact analyses may in fact be understating potential negative effects to citizens and communities. In particular potential impacts associated with stigma have been almost universally ignored in documents prepared under NEPA. The proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada exemplifies how stigma issues if not examined could result in dramatic impacts to the Las Vegas metropolitan area. Analogous impacts could occur from similar projects elsewhere. The paper will examine issues associated with stigma vis-a-vis NEPA.