| Federal Agency Roles and Responsibilities Under NEPA and Environmental Streamlining |
| Agency |
1a) What is your agency's mission? |
1b) What is your agency's responsibility under NEPA? |
2a) What is your agency's role in NEPA? |
2b) What is your agency's role in carrying out environmental streamlining? |
| ACHP |
Promote protection and enhancement of resources.
Ensure that preservation values are factored into Federal agency planning and decisions through the Section 106 process. |
The Council establishes standards for Agency use of the NEPA process for Section 106 purposes and reviews environmental documents when NEPA/NHPA 106 review are coordinated per 36 CFR 800.8. |
Oversees the Section 106 review process, facilitates program agreements for expediting routine projects.
Facilitates programmatic agreements for expediting routine projects.
Provides guidance on planning involvement under Section 106. |
Advocate for agencies to advance unresolved controversial issues up through the appropriate channels.
Serve an educational role, giving all parties involved a greater understanding of the Section 106 process and the need to initiate the process early. |
| FHWA |
Continually improve the quality of our nation's highway system and its intermodal connections.
Protect and enhance the environment. |
Ensure compliance. Abide by the law to ensuring that proper documentation exists.
Use NEPA as a forum for decision making.
Act as the steward for the environment. |
Be an effective Federal lead agency - this role also applies to the Federal Transit Administration (FTA).
Bring together legal constructs and stakeholders (especially Federal agencies), in order to meet all the various, sometimes conflicting, needs.
Manage the process so transportation projects can be implemented. |
Establish the regulatory framework for establishing a coordinated review process as called for in TEA-21.
Find tools for everyone involved to work better together. |
| EPA |
Safeguard the natural environment.
Protect human life. |
Review all Environmental Impact Statements (EISs); comment on EISs in writing; make EIS comments available to the public (Section 309 Clean Air Act).
Identify problems and refer unsatisfactory projects to CEQ. |
Work with the project's lead agency to ensure that environmental statutes are met (per Section 309 of Clean Air Act and Section 404 of Clean Water Act).
Take broad look at issues — ecosystem management, environmental justice, biodiversity, and aquatic habitats. |
Establish multi-disciplinary teams to get the right people to the right meeting at the right time.
Promote cooperative agreements for the Section 404 process. |
| USACE |
Protect the nation's aquatic resources.
Provide for fair decisions.
Provide timely decisions. |
Identify, evaluate, and permit projects that affect aquatic resources. |
Serve as a regulatory and cooperating agency.
Participate in the review process for the nation's aquatic resources. |
Advocate early involvement in the scoping of projects. Shorten decision making times. |
| FS |
Care for the 191 million acres of land under FS jurisdiction. |
Participate early and often in an integrated way with other agencies' planning processes.
Serve dual role of land manager and transportation manager, which involves collaborative relationships in order to protect the National Forests for the purposes for which they were created. |
Create roads that provide sustainable access to the nation's forests and are managed within the environmental capability of the land.
Provide safe, convenient, and efficient travel on 380,000 plus miles of National Forest roads. |
Identify transportation needs.
Envisions the creation of state level MOUs that have provisions for dispute resolution and specifics on how agencies should work together.
Coordinate state activity. |
| FWS |
Conserve, protect, and enhance fish and wildlife and their habitats for the benefit of the American people |
Provide technical assistance to other agencies. |
Ensure sustainability.
Keep the NEPA process moving. |
Implement Reimbursable Agreements between USDOT and FWS.
Appoint regional transportation coordinators to provide technical assistance on environmental streamlining. |
