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Construction Adjust font size: [+] [-] February 20, 2009

Get a leg up on federal projects by knowing NEPA A spate of federally funded construction projects will likely increase the need for NEPA reviews. By STEVE HALL Point Environmental Consulting

EVEN BEFORE his inauguration, President Obama had been promising to create “millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s.” With Obama recently signing a $787 billion stimulus package, the nation is poised for a construction boom with major projects funded by the federal government. And with major federal projects comes extensive review under local, state and, particularly, federal environmental laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). While there's a lot of talk about “shovel-ready” projects, it's a fair bet that there's going to be a lot more NEPA and related environmental reviews over the next few years. Both agencies and the consultants that serve them in environmental planning need to sharpen their NEPA pencils and develop strategies and procedures to facilitate NEPA review. Here are some ideas on how to do that: • Standardize the process for restarting “shovel-ready” projects. Any deserving projects that have gone through final design and environmental review, but have been on the shelf waiting for funding, should be identified, prioritized and systematically brought up to date. Developing a standard approach for reviving projects would be well worth the effort if several projects have been on hold. Checklists for updating NEPA documentation can help, such as lists of recent regulatory changes, by year, or specific data sets that need to be brought current, such as wildlife and wetlands information. The point here is for agencies and/or consultants faced with getting several projects back on line to spend some time upfront to develop efficient and consistent strategies and procedures to get environmental review up to date, rather than just jumping into the pile. • Use scoping to narrow the issues. Scoping under NEPA is, by definition, narrowing the focus of review. An encyclopedic approach is time consuming and ineffective. With the pending influx of NEPA reviews, this may well be a good time to get back to basics and use scoping as intended: To narrow NEPA's focus to addressing only substantive issues. • Use existing regulations and plans. Planners should identify and document where adverse impacts would already be adequately addressed by existing local, state and federal regulations and land-use plans. Use these to document compliance and take issues off the table. This http://www.djc.com/news/co/12003230.html?id=12003230&printmode=true

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and land-use plans. Use these to document compliance and take issues off the table. This allows NEPA review to, again, focus on substantive issues. • Concurrent, rather than sequential review. Consolidating local, state and federal permitting as much as possible can avoid duplication and reduce paperwork. The idea is to move away from the old linear, sequential permitting approach to the new comprehensive, simultaneous approach. With local and state budgets at record deficits, permitting agencies are also likely to be open to reimbursement agreements, where project dollars can be used to pay for early interagency cooperation and expedited review. Reimbursement may be necessary for permitting agencies already struggling with reduced staff and budgets. Also, local and state agencies looking for federal funding should consider ways to incorporate NEPA into their own SEPA (state) reviews. At the very least, SEPA documents for federally funded projects should be made to be “NEPA ready,” so that federal agencies can more easily incorporate them into their NEPA reviews. Early coordination with the funding federal agency NEPA staff would greatly help tailoring SEPA to meet NEPA requirements. • Conduct NEPA early. If federal dollars are involved, bringing NEPA in at the very beginning, rather than at the end, can trim time off the project schedule as well as improve the project design. Again, talking with funding federal agencies can help in aligning planning and design with NEPA. • Programmatic EISs. Programmatic environmental impact statements allow an agency to move several similar projects ahead — even those not yet on the drawing board — by considering the impacts of and making certain decisions on several similar projects at once. Examples include the West-Wide Energy Corridor EIS (Department of Energy, BLM and Forest Service), Wind Energy Development Programmatic EIS (BLM), and, here in the Puget Sound region, the I-405 Corridor Master Plan EIS (WSDOT and numerous local governments). An opportunity to improve The expected increase in NEPA reviews for construction projects funded by federal stimulus dollars presents both challenges and opportunities to local, state and federal agencies, and others who will be processing federal funding packages for specific projects. The challenge lies in avoiding delays while not sacrificing the intended benefits of a NEPA review. The opportunities include rekindling efforts to reduce the paperwork, time and money required to comply with NEPA, while at the same time improving its effectiveness in promoting sound decisions and — most importantly — getting people back to work and our national infrastructure back in shape. Steve Hall has worked on NEPA projects in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California and Idaho for the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Federal Highway Administration and the Bonneville Power Administration.

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