- 3 - 
(d) No final environmental impact statement has 
been prepared for the conduction of the experiments 
proposed at Ft. Detrick. 
The disregard by the defendants in this case of the 
requirements of NEPA is such that the language of the court 
in Scherr v Volpe 466 F.2d 1027 (1972) (7th Circuit) is appropriate 
"Next the defendants submit that the 
injunction should not have issued inasmuch 
as the plaintiffs failed to show that the 
construction of Highway 16 would result in 
irreparable harm to the environment. The 
defendants' argument in this respect proceeds 
from the premise that even though there be a 
clear violation of the Act, even though, as 
the district court stated, the responsible 
federal agency failed to "assemble all 
pertinent information, to subject it to expert 
scrutiny and to articulate clearly and in 
writing an evaluation of the various benefits 
and costs which are being balanced", that no 
judicial relief may be afforded the plaintiffs 
absent a showing on their part that the project 
would be damaging to the environment. We 
think the district court's rejection of this theory 
is particularly relevant: "to suggest that when 
the federal agencies flatly fail to perform this 
function, a plaintiff in a lawsuit such as this 
suit must perform it as a condition to obtaining 
injunctive relief is to suggest that one of the 
central purposes of the Act be frustrated." To 
accept the defendants' argument on this point 
would thwart the Congressional mandate by 
rendering impotent the procedural requirements 
of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 . 
What this argument attempts to do is to shift 
the burdens of considering and evaluating the 
environmental consequences of particular 
federal actions from the agencies Congress 
intended to bear them to the public, the 
beneficiary of this legislation. If these 
agencies were permitted to avoid their 
responsibilities under the Act until an 
individual citizen, who possesses vastly 
inferior resources , could demonstrate environ- 
mental harm, reconsideration at that time by 
the responsible federal agency would indeed 
be a hollow gesture . " 
[Appendix C — 89] 
