NEPA for Transportation Projects: A Comprehensive Guide to Environmental Reviews

Description

This interactive workshop is designed for professionals involved in transportation projects—including federal and state agency employees, consultants, attorneys, and other key stakeholders—who play a role in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process. The course provides a thorough understanding of NEPA’s application to transportation decision-making for highway, transit, rail, multi-modal and other transportation actions. Participants will learn to select the appropriate environmental documentation, organize and draft well-structured Environmental Assessments (EAs), Environmental Impact Statements (EISs), Categorical Exclusion (CE) decision memos,and NEPA Re-Evaluations, and clearly articulate the rationale behind key project decisions. With practical exercises and real-world examples, this training empowers you to conduct NEPA processes and produce documents that facilitate informed, legally defensible decisions and effectively communicate with both decisionmakers and the public.

Objectives

Upon completion of this workshop, participants will be able to do the following:

  • • Understand the challenges and nuances of applying NEPA to transportation projects.

    • Employ integrated, collaborative decision-making strategies for environmental documentation.

    • Produce, direct, and review environmental decision documents that clearly explain the decision-making process.

    • Facilitate informed, reasoned, and legally defensible decisions while engaging the public effectively.

    • Grasp NEPA’s origins, its purpose, and its interplay with other environmental laws and the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

    • Integrate project proposals with NEPA decisions by identifying key elements and effectively communicating through Records of Decision (RODs) and Findings of No Significant Impact (FONSIs).

    Develop and evaluate alternatives—including the no-build option—by establishing criteria, identifying impacts, and eliminating unreasonable options.

    • Describe the affected environment by establishing baselines, detailing environmental attributes, and constructing an effects prediction framework.

    • Predict and document environmental consequences in compliance with NEPA procedural requirements.

Audience

This workshop is ideal for NEPA coordinators, resource specialists, district engineers, attorneys, state DOT professionals, consultants, and other stakeholders involved in the NEPA process for transportation projects.

Process

“NEPA for Transportation Projects” is a 3-day interactive workshop designed to build practical skills for effective NEPA compliance. For optimal learning, class sizes are limited to 15-25 participants. The training combines:

• 60% Lecture

• 40% Discussion and Hands-on Exercises

Materials

Participants receive the following:

  • Comprehensive workshop manual

  • Workshop Resources workbook