An Ecological Approach to Integrating Conservation and Highway Planning, Volume 2 (2012)

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62 C h a p t e r 7 The Framework developed by the C06 project will help trans- portation agencies and resource agencies work together dur- ing long-range planning to identify transportation program needs and their potential environmental impacts and conser- vation opportunities. The CEAA process provides technical guidance to help transportation and natural resource practi- tioners bring the right expertise, data, methods, and tools to the right stage of the transportation planning and project delivery decision-making process. The results of using the Framework are better environmental outcomes through reduced impacts, identification of high-quality mitigation and enhancement opportunities, and accelerated permitting through proactive inclusion of resource considerations early in the transportation planning process. Within the overall Framework and the CEAA process, two strategies are critical. First, transportation planners and proj- ect managers must address regulatory requirements, ideally as early in the transportation planning and development pro- cess as possible. Based on the project team’s research, the team thinks that, particularly for wetlands and endangered species, regulatory conflicts and delays result primarily from trans- portation planners and regulators having insufficient, incom- plete, or poor quality data. The team also showed how inductive species models can be used to improve avoidance, minimiza- tion, and mitigation results. The team’s research developed new methods of mapping wetlands and prioritizing restora- tion sites through wetland catalogs. Environmental accounting strategies can be used to reach agreement with regulatory agencies on project impacts and mitigation requirements. In the Framework and CEAA pro- cess, the team focused on linking and correlating environmen- tal measurements at a landscape scale with measurement of similar resource issues at a site level. This allows transportation planners to broadly understand and plan around a resource at a regional scale, identifying goals and desired outcomes for that resource. It also allows specific outcomes for that resource to be measured at a site level that allow assessment of a project’s effect on the resource. Linking measurement scales maintains continuity between early transportation planning and project- specific planning, improves regional goal setting and tracking of the effect of specific projects on the progress toward those goals, provides a framework for understanding and present- ing cumulative effects analyses, and improves understanding of the opportunity/need for using programmatic approaches and an improved ability to develop them. There are challenges to implementing the Framework. As with most innovations requiring broad partnerships, the key challenges tend to be institutional, political, and financial rather than technical. One of the biggest of these institutional challenges is getting transportation and resource agencies to agree on who will convene and lead the REF process and on- going maintenance and updating of data. Many of the techni- cal challenges and limitations of the past have been overcome with improved computing power and creation of decision support tools to automate a considerable amount of the CEAA process. The remaining technical challenges are: (1) creating robust analyses understandable to decision makers and stake- holders; (2) integrating and maintaining information from distributed sources; (3) integrating dynamic processes and information; and (4) developing methods for low-capacity agencies to use the process. Addressing data distribution infrastructure needs and how the data can best be incorporated into the Framework has yet to be done. One of the team’s goals is to assure internal data sharing of newly developed models within transportation and regulatory agencies, and more broadly with NGOs and other partners. Another is to assure that the models provide as much regulatory certainty as possible. The pilot tests demonstrated the practical value of using the CEAA process to streamline and improve decision mak- ing in transportation planning and project development, par- ticularly in the areas of mitigation site selection, evaluation of multiple corridors, and development of transportation plans. The pilot test results led to the selection of mitigation sites Conclusions

63 agencies. The symposium revealed a real need to develop a standard vocabulary and common understanding regarding avoidance, minimization, and mitigation and the use of pro- grammatic agreements. Implementing the results of the team’s research will require additional effort. Integration into the TCAPP website is under way, which should make the CEAA process accessible to trans- portation and resource agency staffs. However, to be successful the research results should be shared with key agency leader- ship, along with supporting documentation of the business case for adopting the Framework. Additional pilot projects, such as those that will be undertaken under Project C21 cur- rently under way to test this framework, are needed to illus- trate how the approach can be used in different settings, with different data availability. Regional seminars and interagency training are also needed. Despite these challenges, the project team thinks the Frame- work and the new tools and methods discovered during the team’s research will lead to better planning, implementation, and mitigation of transportation projects. Using the best data available or using these new tools to update or create quality data sets will allow projects to better avoid regulated species and habitats and minimize impacts or choose meaningful mitigation sites when impacts cannot be avoided. Not only will this save time and money by avoiding conflict, the results of the project will be more ecologically meaningful because of the expanded scope of the Framework. Taking this wider view will lead to both transportation and natural resource goals being met. with more ecological benefits and more accurate and com- prehensive scenario assessments that identified corridors with the least number of direct and cumulative impacts. The usefulness of the CEAA for planning and project development depends on the accuracy and resolution of available data. A relatively modest investment in process changes and data development upfront would create more accurate “sign posts” early on in the decision-making pro- cesses of potential impacts and mitigation opportunities, vastly improving planning, corridor evaluation, and consid- eration of mitigation opportunities. Encouraging collection and maintenance of GIS data and developing data manage- ment standards that can be adopted by both transportation agencies and natural resources agencies will lead to increased data accessibility, allowing data from single projects or agen- cies to be applied to future projects or regional studies. The CEAA approach likely would save time and resources by reducing impacts and thus mitigation requirements, as well as supporting more targeted field studies for assessment of alternatives, although evaluating the extent of these sav- ings was beyond the scope of the team’s research. The project team identified the need for additional research on several issues. Specifically, the team was not able to develop methods for early assessment of water quality impacts, particu- larly in the context of TMDL implementation and stormwater impacts. The team discovered a need for transportation agen- cies to develop data retention standards so that data acquired by consultants in the course of environmental impact assess- ments is retained for the long term and shared with resource