New, Simplified NEPA Process for Some Nebraska Federal-Aid Transportation Projects

By Joan Darling, Ph.D.

Projects that have federal funding must comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires documentation of the social, economic, and natural environmental impacts of the project. For six types of federal-aid transportation projects, the Nebraska Department of Roads (NDOR) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) have just developed a new, simplified process intended to facilitate NEPA compliance and, thus, approval of the project.

Six Programmatic Agreements (PAs) between FHWA and NDOR were signed on June 23, 2010. These PAs were developed to outline the procedures for environmentally approving certain federally-funded actions that involve specific transportation improvement activities. The PAs cover the following six categories of transportation projects:

• Lighting and signal repair and replacement activities
• At-grade railroad crossing improvement activities
• Sign installation and replacement activities
• Visual bridge inspections
• Pavement marking activities
• Activities that do not involve or lead directly to construction (such as planning studies, training, or educational materials among others)

The six PAs include covered activities, as well as specific conditions and stipulations that must be followed for the project to be covered by the PA. Note that the above categories must encompass the entire project. Thus, the pavement marking portion of a re-paving project would not be covered by the Pavement Marking PA.

Another new item is the DR53 form, which simplifies the process of determining the level of NEPA documentation required for projects.

For more information on the DR 53 and the specifics of each PA, and to determine if a project may qualify for one of them, see the "Programmatic Agreement" section of this website.
Other changes will be coming to the Nebraska NEPA process for federal-aid transportation projects. Olsson has an on-call contract with NDOR to provide NEPA assistance to local public agencies, and our environmental staff members would be happy to answer questions about NEPA compliance for transportation or other federal-aid projects.

You can reach Joan Darling with Olsson's Environmental Resources and Compliance team at jdarling@oaconsulting.com if you have any questions or would like to discuss.

 

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