Public Participation of the Integrated Approach SEA in Washington State, U.S.

Abstract

Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is one of the key policy measures for creating a sustainable society. We consider that the essence of effective SEA is to ensure the transparency of the administrative procedure on SEA through information disclosure, public participation, and connection to the appeal system. Both programmatic environmental impact assessments under NEPA (1969) of the U.S. and nonproject review (NPR) under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA, 1971) of Washington State are considered to be equivalent to SEA. Under these systems, the federal agencies and/or Washington State agencies are required to conduct a review on the possible environmental impacts caused by the application of policies, plans, and programs. In particular, the NPR system has been characterized as the most advanced system in terms of the level of integration of an SEA with planning processes.

In this paper, we describe the environmental impact assessment (EIA) and SEA process under the SEPA. We also consider the background of the NPR procedure by focusing on the above three institutionalized systems, information disclosure, public participation, and appeal under the SEPA.