We Don't Need NEPA - A Modest Proposal

As the Senate continues the actions of the infrastructure committees to weaken public participation and environmental reviews of federal projects, there is another way communities can protect themselves from the heavy hand of bulldozers and narrowly focused federal bureaucrats. 

In the late 1960’s, before NEPA required public participation and environmental impact reviews, the builders of the Interstate Highway system thought an efficient way to build I-70 was through Fells Point in Baltimore and through the city’s Inner Harbor.

Without having NEPA, a social worker organized the community to force the highway planners to completely re-route the path protecting the future of Baltimore.
--- This pre-NEPA success story shows we don't need NEPA, as long as every community in every state has someone with the political smarts and tenaciousness as that social worker from Baltimore whose everyday political skills were modest but have raised her to Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee – Sen. Barbara Mikulski.

We could do without NEPA, if only we could be assured that every community in America is protected in perpetuity by someone like Sen. Barbara Mikulski.

Until that day, we’d better stick with the law and the essential protections it provides.