Environmental conservation,
cultural and historic preservation,
protection of endangered species.
All these issues are important to our world
and they're important to the Federal Highway Administration as well.
FHWA has established Every Day Counts,
an initiative designed to identify and deploy innovation aimed at shortening
project delivery,
enhancing the safety of our roadways
and protecting the environment.
Programmatic Agreements focus on streamlining the process of handling
routine environmental requirements for common project types.
Programmatic Agreements
are
documents which
detail how agencies are going to interact with one another to address
specific issues.
In the transportation area,
these often are with
agencies where consultation is occurring between
the DOT and the resource agency.
And the Programmatic Agreement may outline
how that consultation is going to occur, what measures may be taken to help
streamline
that consultation.
The benefits of using Programmatic Agreements are numerous.
They streamline the review process,
help minimize the impact on the environment
and focus on preservation and conservation rather than paperwork.
But just as important, they shortened project delivery time which in turn
saves time and money.
Government agencies are being required to reduce their staffs, they're being
required to try to do more with less
and Programmatic Agreements fit right in with that philosophy.
We have to find ways to work
smarter not harder.
And by doing that, that's the only way that we're really going to be able
to meet the expectations of the public which is that we deliver our projects
in a more timely fashion and we do it less expensively. We have to learn to do
more with less, Programmatic Agreements are a way of doing that.
In Kentucky,
Programmatic Agreements were critical in streamlining a bridge replacement over
Flat Creek in Franklin county. This project also shows how multiple
Programmatic Agreements may be used for one project. On that particular project,
it's small bridge replacement project out in a rural area,
and we used the categorical exclusion agreement developing what
we call up a CE-1,
level one.
So, by definition that does not have to be approved by the Federal Highway
Administration; it's done entirely internal to the Cabinet.
We used the
Indiana Bat Conservation Fund. We made a payment, there were a few trees that
were around the bridge
and rather than doing any type of species surveys that would have cost us thousands
of dollars, we made a small payment into the Indiana Bat Conservation Fund. So
that saved us the time of having to do those surveys. Then finally we used our
section 106 Programmatic Agreement
on that project so that the documentation that was prepared was
able to be done by our own staff rather than hiring a consultant to develop
a length report.
The Federal Highway Administration encourages every state to adopt the use
of Programmatic Agreements
and see how they can be used effectively to accelerate project delivery.
I think the best way to encourage
participation and development of new Programmatic Agreements is to get
examples out in front of people. It's not that they don't want to do something it's
that they don't know that it's there for them to do.
So if you can plant the seed, get the idea out in front of them, make them
aware that there's a possibility of doing something that'll oftentimes start
to create the idea that they can move forward.
Programmatic Agreements clearly offer many advantages for state DOTs.
There's no question that the use of these Programmatic Agreements have
improved the efficiency and effectiveness of our program.
We're able to work through what are sometimes complicated processes
in a much more efficient way to reach final decisions; much more quickly then
we would be otherwise if we were using what might be considered more
traditional methods.