Transportation Conformity and Land-Use Planning: Understanding the Inconsistencies

Since the boom of federal environmental laws in the early 1970s, Congress, federal administrative agencies, and the states have grappled with how best to obtain the lofty goals of these laws. As evidence of this struggle, Congress has made substantial amendments to several major environmental laws on one or more occasions in order to achieve these goals, and the states have followed suit in order to keep pace with the changes on the federal level. The resulting mass of state and federal environmental laws and regulations has led to a series of complex, and often confusing, layers of laws and regulations that perplex private developers, environmentalists, and government officials alike. Further, almost everyone involved in environmental regulation questions whether or not the federal environmental laws are accomplishing their lofty goals.