Next is the step that authorizes the State to begin design, followed by authorization to acquire the right of way. These stages complete the hearing process.

We then go into a step resulting from the enactment of the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act of 1968, and the Bureau of the Budget's interpretation of that, set out in Bureau of the Budget Circular A-95, issued in 1969.

This requires State highway departments to notify designated State and regional clearing-house agencies of all their proposed highway projects as a means of assuring that highway projects are coordinated with development plans of other public agencies.

This is a step, as you can see, in a different color [green] indicating that it is an internal procedure that comes from other legislation; general legislation not in the Highway Act itself.

Next is the modification of our highway procedures which has probably received more attention in recent months than any other. It is the same step we discussed earlier in connection with the environmental and the 4(f) actions. At the present time, the requirement to evaluate potential and environmental impact of proposed highway projects results from enactment in 1970 of the National Environmental Policy Act, and the related provisions that are also contained in our 1970 Highway Act.

As the procedures now read, the State highway department evaluates the potential environmental impact as an integral part of the location study process.

Now, I say that we have been doing this from the beginning of the highway program in 1916 and 1921. This has been a major factor in the selection of locations. It is not a new item to us, but it is being pointed out as being a new thing that highway people never considered before.

Following this, the State prepares a draft environmental statement and circulates it prior to the corridor public hearing. Copies of this draft statement go to the Federal Highway Administration, to the Department of Transportation in Washington, to the Council on Environmental Quality, to State and regional clearinghouse agencies, and to other Federal agencies which may have some jurisdiction over certain classes of environmental areas.

At the present time, the instructions call for the State to prepare and submit 17 copies of this draft statement.

Mr. WRIGHT. How detailed is this statement?

Mr. TURNER. The draft statement, Mr. Chairman, contains a total history of the project, complete description of it physically, what it will do, and its impact on the community and people affected by

it.

The instructions insure that included in the presentation is a transcript of the public hearing.

This comes along in the final draft statement with maps, justification for the project and a complete statement of the project in every respect which totals many pages of paper.

Mr. WRIGHT. This is the stage, I think, which prompted you to testify recently before a Senate committee that the environmental impact statements required in the act, and required in the administrative

guidelines of the act, are going to add some 18 million pages of paperwork annually to the burden of the Department, is that not correct?

Mr. TURNER. That is correct, Mr. Chairman. I would take the liberty to adjust the 18 million up or down a little bit, but I sug gest it to be somewhere in that neighborhood.

But this also includes the next step, which is the final impact statement. We have to go through this process twice. The State has to submit 17 copies of the draft statement, have them circulated for comment to everybody, get the material back, have it considered, and then act on those considerations. Then they put out a final environmental statement, which goes the same route, in the same number of copies.

So that collectively, these two actions require a large amount of paper, a large amount of processing time, and bring large numbers of agencies and people into the act.

And the State does have to wait, and we have to wait, and the Federal Highway Administration must wait to make final decisions with respect to a project until we obtain and evaluate all comments that have been solicited by the distribution of this large number of copies of this paper.

Mr. WRIGHT. How much time does this add to the total processing? Mr. TURNER. Well, the built-in time requirements in this are in the order of about 5 months.

The draft environmental statement has to be prepared and be available for a prescribed minimum period of time before we can take the next step in order to give the opportunity to criticize to anyone who is involved.

Mr. WRIGHT. Are you saying it is a minimum time requirement Mr. TURNER. Yes; about 4 or 5 months is built in just in order to comply.

Mr. Chairman, let me point out that the 4 to 5 months built in time doesn't necessarily indicate a stretching of this chart by that amount in every case. There will be other things done at the same time by the State, and us, so that it is not completely lost time. This is not necessarily additive, but at the same time it does not take into account the additional time required in case there are points raised that provoke an exchange of correspondence, and a discussion along the lines that Mr. Howard was talking about earlier in the New Jersey case where they corresponded back and forth for a long time, or like you described in the Sulphur Springs case where long periods of time ensued while one party wrote to the other, and waited on a reply, and this occurred two or three times. This does stretch out the time quite a little bit. Mr. WRIGHT. I am reading now from the conference report on the National Environmental Policy Act:

The conferees do not intend that the requirements for comment by other agencies should unreasonably delay the processing of Federal proposals and anticipate that the President will promptly prepare and establish by Executive order a list of those agencies which have "jurisdiction by law" or "special expertise" in various environmental matters. With regard to State and local agencies, it is not the intention of the conferees that those local agencies with only a remote interest and which are not primarily responsible for development and enforcement of environmental standards be included.

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Surely, we in the last few years have been extremely solicitous of all that which protects and enhances the environment. But isn't there some way that we can do this without having such great delay and such proliferation of paperwork? The photograph on the little easel was sent to me by the Department of Highways, State of Illinois. It is representative of the paperwork involved in a typical highway project, ac cording to that State department of highways. You will observe that there are two girls standing on chairs, and still unable to reach the top of the stack. Approximately more than half of the paperwork involved in that particular project-indicated by the first red line running laterally across the picture is represented by 4(f) and environmental statements, 4(f) being the parklands; is that typical?

Mr. TURNER. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I think that is a fairly accurate representation of the amount of paper and the time required to process it.

Mr. WRIGHT. Without objection, the photograph will appear in the record.

I have here a copy of a final environmental impact statement, prepared by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, and it runs some 62 pages. I don't really think it was the intent of Congress that we create a paperwork mill. I think it was the intent of Congress that we look carefully into the question of environment and make certain we are not making a major impact or deleterious impact on the environment, but it strikes me that zealous and well-intentioned administrators probably have expanded upon what Congress directed. These words appear in the environmental impact law-that you should include in every recommendation a report on proposals for legislation or "other major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of human environment." Now, how is that interpreted administratively? What is a "major Federal action"? And what is a "significant impact" upon the environment?

Apparently, it was not intended that those of a minor nature, like taking 10 feet of parkland, as in Sulphur Springs, Tex., would be subjected to the requirement of all this paperwork.

Mr. TURNER. Well, this definition of a major action has been the object of much difference of opinion as to its intent. I personally agree with the interpretation you have put on it. The major Federal actions include in the same sentence, without punctuation, the words "legislative action." Therefore, it would seem to me that they ought to be fairly comparable to each other, in their impact and their importance. And that would not equate an individual Federal-aid highway project with a major legislative action taken by this committee and the Congress. But generally, the significant or major action that is referred to in that sentence has been interpreted elsewhere in the drafting of the instructions to mean an individual project.

Now, in the Federal-aid highway program we have anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 highway projects every year. Many of those do not have major environmental impact of such character that I would interpret that legislation to have been intended to cover.

I think you can make a case that every highway project, possibly any other project, will have some effect on the environment.

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