Environmental Planning

Environmental Planning plays a vital role in balancing the needs of society by creating and/or carrying out programs, policies and regulations which consider the current and future impact of human development on the natural environment.

A significant element of environmental planning and its review process focuses on compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The Act requires federal agencies consider and disclose the environmental impacts of their activities as part of the agency's decision-making process. Two critical components of the NEPA process are sound scientific analysis and involving the public during environmental review.

  • Environmental Impact Statement: Preparation of an "EIS" is required for proposed Federal and Federally-dependent actions potentially having significant environmental impacts. The EIS process requires public involvement. Also, development and comparative evaluation of alternatives to resolve environmental conflict is often required. The EIS process concludes with a formal "Record of Decision" explaining the agency's reasons for choices among alternatives.
  • Environmental Assessment: An "EA" is a relatively brief document (20 to 50 pages) containing evidence and analysis sufficient to determine whether a proposed action potentially has significant environmental impacts. The process normally involves public review. A formal "Finding of No Significant Impact" determining that preparation of an EIS is not required concludes the EA process.
  • Categorical Exclusion: A "CX" is a determination that a specific proposed action is consistent with a previously identified category of actions that normally do not have significant environmental impacts and therefore normally do not require preparation of an EIS. Individual proposed actions must satisfy several conditions to qualify.
  • Supplement Analysis: An "SA" is a brief document recording evidence and analysis to determine whether a proposed action has been adequately evaluated in a previous EIS or EA.
  • Tiered Record of Decision: For specific actions proposed pursuant to formal policies a "Tiered ROD" records evidence and analysis to determine whether the action is consistent with general analysis in the Business Plan EIS. The Tiered ROD process requires public involvement.

Limehouse Software’s uCreate provides the virtual environment that supports team collaboration for the development of the NEPA compliant documents required in environmental planning. The web-based integrated document-centric collaboration and publishing solution provides customizable shared workspaces and one-click publishing to multiple channels (including print-ready PDF, HTML and XML).

The uEngage portal provides centralized management of the entire consultation lifecycle process enabling organizations to consult all relevant stakeholders and citizens through the widest variety of response mechanisms including:

  • Polls
  • Surveys
  • Questionnaires
  • Forums
  • Discussion boards
  • Interactive documents (EIS, EA, ROD)
  • Video

In addition, the uEngage portal becomes the single repository for all citizen comments regardless of how or where they were submitted. All comments and results are stored in a single database for parsing, coding, analysis and reporting.