A NEPA compliance strategy plan for providing programmatic coverage to agency problems

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, requires that all federal actions be reviewed before making a final decision to pursue a proposed action or one of its reasonable alternatives. The NEPA process is expected to begin early in the planning process. This paper discusses an approach for providing efficient and comprehensive NEPA coverage to large-scale programs. Particular emphasis has been given to determining bottlenecks and developing workarounds to such problems. Specifically, the strategy is designed to meet four specific goals: (1) provide comprehensive coverage, (2) reduce compliance cost/time, (3) prevent project delays, and (4) reduce document obsolescence.