Transportation Secretary and FAA Administrator Outline Environmental Initiatives

WASHINGTON - In an effort to reduce the
time it takes to environmentally review
airport runway projects, Secretary of
Transportation Norman Y. Mineta and
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
Administrator Jane F. Garvey today
released a report to Congress that
identifies measures that will expedite
the environmental process.

"A protracted environmental process is
one of the barriers to providing the
increased capacity at airports that can
reduce airline and air traveler delays,"
said Administrator Garvey. "We want to
reduce environmental review time lines
while maintaining high standards of
environmental protection. For runway
projects that meet environmental
protection requirements, we want to
avoid unwarranted delays in giving
approval."

An Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)
for a major new runway currently takes
between three and three and one half
years, on the average, to complete. The
FAA wants to reduce this time and
has identified the following initiatives
to speed up the environmental process:

·Establish EIS teams for major runway
projects. This initiative also includes
strengthening EIS teams by adding more
FAA members, asking airport proprietors
to contribute members, and adding EIS
consultants to teams.

·Increase FAA environmental specialist
and environmental attorney resources.
In FY 2001, five more positions in FAA's
Airports Office will be converted to
environmental specialist positions. FAA
also is developing a reimbursable
agreement for airports interested in
paying for extra staff for expedited EIS
reviews.

·Maximize consultant resources to
perform more EIS tasks. The FAA will
use existing third party EIS contract
procedures to have consultants perform
such tasks as direct assistance to the
FAA project manager on EIS coordination
and administrative work, research and
advice on special environmental issues
and correspondence.

·Shorten environmental paperwork by
using more categorical exclusions for
projects with minimal impacts and by
reducing the size of EISs and Findings
of No Significant Impacts. The FAA will
get back to basics by preparing
analytical rather than encyclopedic
EISs, concentrating on significant
issues and impacts, writing EISs in
plain language, reducing technical
material in the body of EISs and setting
time limits.

·Improve federal interagency
coordination and cooperation on
environmental reviews for airport
projects and on the issuance of
environmental permits. This initiative
also aims to improve federal/state
coordination with the assistance of the
National Association of State Aviation
Officials.

·Issue a "Best Practices" guide for EIS
management and preparation. Skilled
approaches to EIS technical analyses,
procedures and coordination can reduce
problems and delays.

This guide will include practices that
are the responsibility of the airport
proprietor and EIS consultants, as well
as those of the FAA. The best practices
guide will be available to everyone on
FAA's Web page in early summer 2001.

These initiatives notably involve
"working smarter," rather than cutting
corners as some environmental interests
have feared. The FAA cautions that no
one measure is a silver bullet and that
each runway project has unique factors
that dictate different environmental
review times lines. However, taken
together, the FAA's initiatives will
cumulatively have a positive effect on
environmental processing time.

These are not the only measures that
might eventually be adopted. Other
ideas that may receive further
consideration include a broader use of
airport revenue for environmental
mitigation, more flexible use of federal
noise funding for airport expansion,
noise mitigation and for community noise
planning and projects, alternate ways of
funding EIS team resources and
elimination of duplicative state air and
water quality certifications.

The report also highlights the critical
role that local consensus plays in the
building of new runways and the
importance of reducing the environmental
impacts of aviation to respond to
communities quality-of-life concerns.
Americans expect and demand a national
air transportation system that can move
large numbers of people and goods safely
and conveniently. At the same time,
local environmental opposition to
airport expansion has risen in recent
years. The FAA stresses its commitment
to continue to foster and support
environmental mitigation to benefit
communities around airports and to help
ease the environmental constraints on
airport growth.