As noted in the Introduction, Environmental Justice came about due to concern for the environment and effects on certain populations on a federal and state level. In 1969, President Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to address growing concerns about protecting the environment. NEPA requires all federal agencies to take into account any natural or human environmental harm before taking any major federal action. Its major policy requires all agencies to first produce an Environmental Assessment (EA) to assess the significance of environmental impacts stemming from a project. An Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is then created to analyze each environmental impact and is open to public comment. Finally, a Record of Decision is issued to state what action will be taken concerning each environmental impact. On a narrower level, the State of California has produced an act similar to NEPA known as the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). It requires state and local agencies to identify the significant environmental impacts of their actions and to avoid or mitigate those impacts, if possible. While essentially the same, NEPA and CEQA differ in terms of identifying significant harm. Under NEPA, an EIS is required if the project or action as a whole will produce negative impacts based on context and intensity. On the other hand, CEQA requires each “significant effect on the environment” resulting from a project to be identified and mitigated. An Environmental Impact Report (EIR) must be formulated, if any significant effect were to arise. A “significant effect” under CEQA may not have a great enough magnitude to be considered so under NEPA, thus CEQA is a much narrower approach. EJ operates under both the federal and state acts.