|
|
 |
|
The Merced County
Association of Governments recently completed a regional
transportation plan by accumulating natural resource and planning data
agreed to by federal and state regulatory agencies. This collaborative
process reduced the federal environmental review time for the first
project approved under the plan to only three weeks. Currently,
transportation projects spend an average of 44 weeks in federal
environmental review nationally. This single Merced example is
multiplied hundreds of times over when we examine the history of lead
agency filings under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)
process. The ability of all lead agencies to file more timely and
accurate assessments would improve if high resolution, local and
regional scale data were easily accessible to local, state and regional
entities. In the San Joaquin Valley between 1982 and 2005, at least 715
Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs) were required by CEQA and thousands
more negative declarations, notices of exemption and other CEQA filings
were made in this region during that time (according to the Information Center for the
Environment (ICE), University of California, Davis). With
early access to high-resolution, integrated data, CEQA environmental
documents could take less time to develop, cost less to produce, and
result in decisions that improve the protection of natural resources.
Caltrans has identified savings that would accrue significantly if they
had access to current and updated high resolution, regional scale
natural resource and planning data early in the design process of
transportation facilities and projects. The Federal Code of Regulations
notes that the environmental phase of transportation projects
contributes more to project delays than any other phase and involves 65
percent of all highway projects surveyed nationally.
Florida’s
Department of Transportation (FDOT) and Oregon’s
Department of Transportation (ODOT) have successfully
developed a data sharing process for state and regional planning that
makes extensive data available to all state departments and local
government planning organizations. FDOT has achieved a more effective
and timely decision-making process that does not compromise
environmental quality. FDOT estimates that the time required to
complete the environmental review process will be substantially
reduced, saving anywhere from months to years in project planning while
improving the quality of decisions. The resources and costs for
planning and review are only a small fraction of the overall savings
anticipated in right-of-way and mitigation costs resulting from timely
access to quality planning and natural resource data. Florida and the Federal Highway
Administration have invested $2.4 million in the data library
and anticipate that project costs savings will be many times this
figure.
ODOT has made a similar investment and has had a significant payoff in
their first major programmatic project, the Oregon bridge retrofit
program. Oregon’s investment in data allowed federal, state,
local cooperation in developing programmatic EIS status for hundreds of
individual bridge projects valued in the billions of dollars. This
approach shaved years off of the time needed to implement these much
needed safety retrofit projects.
|
|
|
|
|
| Contact: |
 |
The Information Center for the Environment
University of California, Davis
1 Shields Ave
Davis, Ca 9516
|
| |
|
|
|
