The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, signed into law as PL 91-190 on January 1, 1970, required all Federal agencies to assess their projects or actions for a determination of significant effects on the quality of the human environment. Section 102 (2) (c), states the responsible Federal official must prepare a detailed Environmental Impact Statement for any project or action having a significant effect on the quality of the human environment. In many cases, responsibility for the environmental assessment has been delegated to the state or local authorities who, in turn, ask their consultants to do the work. This conference was called by the University of Missouri at Columbia and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region VII, in an effort to clarify problems related to the preparation and filing of impact statements.