NEPA Overview for Indian Health Service

Description

Participants learn how to fulfill the spirit and letter of NEPA and CEQ as they pertain to Indian Health Service issues. Using the IHS NEPA Guide, they explore how good decisionmaking, analysis, and documentation all must integrate to prepare a legally compliant environmental document that require less preparation time, and that facilitate informed decisions.

Objectives

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

  • Understand the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process as it pertains to Indian Health Service issues
  • Know the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) regulations and agency regulations
  • Oversee contractors who conduct environmental analyses and/or write Environmental Assessments (EAs) and Environmental Impact Statements (EISs)
  • Review the following documents for compliance with NEPA, CEQ regulations, and the agency implementing procedures:
    • EAs
    • EISs
    • Records Of Decision (RODs)
    • Findings Of No Significant Impact (FONSIs)
  • Write high-quality EAs, EISs, FONSIs, Notices Of Intent (NOIs), and other environmental documents using approved NEPA, CEQ, Government Printing Office (GPO), and agency-specific guidelines

Content

We tailor each workshop to meet the needs of the participants. The basic format of the interactive workshop includes the following components:

  • Understanding the NEPA and CEQ Regulations
    Understand NEPA law, its fundamental principles, and the relationship of the analysis process to the documents.
  • Selecting the Appropriate Level of Documentation
    Understand the difference and significance of NEPA document types.
  • Developing Alternatives
    Discover how to develop a reasonable range of alternatives.
  • Identifying Issues and Scoping
    Learn to define cause-and-effect relationships, plan public involvement strategies, assemble records, and identify other relevant environmental laws.
  • Predicting Environmental Consequences
    Learn a systematic process for quantitatively and qualitatively predicting effects.
  • Understanding NEPA Decisionmaking and Decisionmaker Skills
    Understand the legal roles of FONSIs and RODs. Learn skills to identify the actions needed.

Audience

Participants for this training generally include resource specialists, team leaders, decisionmakers, and other agency professionals who must understand the NEPA process to fully execute their responsibilities.This course has been designed for employees of the BIA, Indian Tribes, Alaska Native Corporations, cooperating agencies, and contractors with interests in IHS issues.

Process

This is an interactive workshop designed to build practical skills. For optimum learning, class size is limited to between 15 and 25 participants.This 2- or 3-day workshop is a carefully designed combination of the following:

  • 25% Lecture
  • 75% Discussion and exercises

Materials

Participants receive the following:

  • Comprehensive workshop manual
  • Workshop Resources workbook