Passage of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) (1969) and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) (1970) created a new industry, environmental assessment, and an unparalleled source of local information, Environmental Impact Reports, collected by the Science, Technology and Patents Department.

Before passage of these Acts, environmental values were not a major consideration in decision-making so any information about rare or endangered species, food chain relationships that might be destroyed, vegetation diversity that might be lost, noise or air pollution that might be created, or disruption of human values that might occur could be ignored. Now these and other valuable insights into the Los Angeles area are housed in the Central Library as part of its Environmental Impact Reports collection.

Although EIRs (created because of CEQA) and Environmental Impact Statements for the national parks (the federal NEPA-mandated version of EIRs) had been collected for several years, in 1992 the library formalized its depository status by setting up an agreement with the City of Los Angeles Environmental Affairs Department to make the documents available for public viewing during the review period and retain them afterward for storage and retrieval. The Science Department also notified the LAPL branches of its interest in receiving all environmental assessment documents once the mandatory display period was over. In addition, Department Manager Billie Connor has made libraries downsizing collections aware of the public library interest in these particular items.

The response has been enthusiastic and enriched the collection. After sorting the documents to bring duplicates and the draft and final versions together, the EIRs are sent to the cataloging department so they become a permanent part of the holdings with a record in CARL (Los Angeles Public Library's public access catalog) accessible to everyone. There are now nearly 500 EIR listings, ranging from an airport dunes study to the Venice canals rehabilitation, a Warner Ridge business plan and a Wilshire Center and Koreatown redevelopment project.

Science Department holdings also include a number of reports awaiting cataloging that are shelved alphabetically in the closed stacks and indexed in a database created with Inmagic software that is accessed through the LUMMIS (Los Angeles Public Library's wide-area network) Science/Business Files listing. The citation includes the basic information needed to identify the document: title, project, date, State Clearinghouse Number (SCH) and shelf location. Since the cataloged EIRs are also shelved in a closed stack area because the collection is large and continues to grow, all requests for copies need to be given to the Science reference librarian for retrieval. When available, duplicate copies are made circulating to make the collection as accessible as possible. Federal materials are shelved with the government documents collection in closed stacks and listed in the database.

Since the LAPL collection concentrates on draft/final EIRs and Negative Declarations for the Los Angeles area, with some final EIRs for California projects of widespread impact, such as fruit fly eradication, in 1994 the Science Department posted a questionnaire on the Internet Caldoc-L and Govdoc-L listservs to get feedback on geographic coverage in other libraries. Pasadena Public Library tries to collect all EIRs for projects within the City of Pasadena, and catalogs all final EIRs and some drafts. EIRs produced by the County of Orange and the cities in Orange County are collected by the University of California Irvine Government Publications Department and available through the UCI online system. The County of Los Angeles Public Library Lancaster branch has a very strong Lancaster/Palmdale collection. UCLA is one of three state-designated depositories for California local government publications; research continues on the extent and availability of their EIR collection.

Accessibility of these documents will increase with the growth of government activities on the Internet. The EPA Office of Federal Activities has set up a website of weekly listings of EISs (environmental impact statements) Available for Review which includes entries such as an overview of the Glen Canyon Dam Final EIS, with a link to environmental studies.

In California the website for LUPIN, the Land Use Planning Information Network, a California Resources Agency program, should become a major resource in the future. Their goal is "to establish a system for storing, making available, and providing public electronic accessibility via the CERES web information reported in environmental assessment documents that come through the State Clearinghouse, federal agencies, and related entities." Links provide access to week-by-week compilations of report summaries by county so it is possible to find out that a Negative Declaration has been issued for a retaining wall in Malibu and a Draft Environmental Impact Report is recirculating to demolish a 24,000 sq. ft. restaurant in West Hollywood to make way for a 94,000 sq. ft. commercial center. Links also lead to downloadable full-text documents such as one on agricultural drainage in the San Joaquin Valley. The information once available only to those with the most interest in suppressing it is now very public information, available to the world.