Collection and Contention: The Power of Environmental Impact Statements

• In Event: Sources of Conflict: Environmental Impact Statements as Methodology and History

Abstract

Environmental historians, scientists, attorneys, and bureaucrats focused on a single project interact with a finite number of Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) whose content matters. This paper argues that, from the perspective of book history, collection and metadata also matter. EISs constitute a collective body of knowledge expressing a contentious social and political conversation about the impact of human activity but also are themselves a form of human activity with environmental consequences.
Since the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act in 1970, the required EIS have rolled off the presses. EISs function on both sides of paper-related pollution, providing evidence of the problem while also contributing to it. A massive amount of paper has gone into the official studies and reports assessing the pollution and forest depletion that result from industrial paper production. But it’s almost impossible to calculate how much because of the scattered collection and inconsistent cataloging of draft and final EISs.
A 2016 study by Jessica Wentz at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia estimates that 27,000 final EISs have been issued, with no central database cataloging all draft and final EISs. For the book historian interested in calculating the amount of paper used, it is not possible to discover exactly how many unique EISs exist because there is no comprehensive non-duplicative collection. It’s also impossible to tally the number of pages and the number of sheets of book-quality printing paper consumed because the number of pages in each document is not in a separate searchable field in the metadata records. Focusing on the 1970s and 1980s, I examine EISs as metadata-laden material objects that can reveal overarching social and political themes beyond the single project as well as their own contribution to environmental degradation.

Author

• Cheryl Knott, University of Arizona