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Issue Context:

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) (http://www.epa.gov/compliance/nepa/index.html) requires that federal agencies integrate environmental values into their decision making processes by considering possible environmental impacts of their proposed actions and reasonable alternatives to those actions. To meet this requirement, federal agencies prepare a detailed statement known as an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

    Environmental Impact Statements are comprised of a variety of versions- there are Drafts, Finals, Records of Decisions, comment volumes, etc. Generally the most significant aspects of EIS publications are found in the final EIS reports. At each step, the public is appraised of the EIS process via announcements released by the EPA via the Federal Register whether they be public meeting notifications, proposed regulation changes, notices of intent to produce an EIS, or implementation of policy decisions.

If new regulations are proposed by the agency creating the EIS, after the Final Rule and/or Record of Decision has been published in the Federal Register, the updated regulations will then become part of the Code of Federal Regulations (http://www.gpoaccess.gov/cfr/index.html).

To identify Environmental Impact Statement titles, you can:

• Search by keyword via the Environmental Impact Statements Database (http://www.epa.gov/compliance/nepa/eisdata.html)
• Go through the Federal Register by year (http://www.epa.gov/fedrgstr/EPA-IMPACT/) to locate notice of availability for either Draft or Final EIS
• Search the Federal Register ((http://www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/index.html) for notices, announcements regarding Draft or Final EIS
   

To obtain Environmental Impact Statements, you most likely will need to go directly to the agency web site. 

 The federal agency that authors a particular EIS may issue a notice of availability and can include full-text EIS and related information on its own web site.  Many of these can be located through the Agency NEPA Web Sites list (http://ceq.eh.doe.gov/nepa/agencies.htm).   Other resources may include your closest Depository Library.