Transportation for Communities - Advancing Projects Through Partnerships

Applications - Cumulative Effects Assessment and Alternatives (CEAA)

The Cumulative Effects Assessment and Alternative (CEAA) Practical Application integrates transportation and conservation planning in order to accelerate permitting for new highway projects and achieve better environmental results. It allows practitioners to identify and quantify ecological impacts of transportation projects at the regional level, bringing the right expertise, data, methods and tools to bear at each stage of transportation planning and project delivery. The CEAA Application is the starting point for conducting ecological assessment by evaluating direct and cumulative effects on resources of various planning scenarios and project strategies, allowing and supporting conflict avoidance and minimization and identifying mitigation opportunities.

CEAA can be initiated at the regional, corridor, or project level. Undertaking a CEAA at the regional level is a proactive approach to building relationships with resource agencies through development of a Regional Ecosystem Framework (REF) that can then be used to develop and assess alternatives and cumulative effects at all stages of transportation planning and development. CEAA helps minimize “re-dos” by getting agreement on environmental effects and priorities early in the process which assures better avoidance, minimization and mitigation decisions later.

Expanding environmental data, including new inductive, predictive models of species distribution; development of geospatial data from existing conservation and recovery plans; and digitization of existing wetland data allows CEAA at multiple scales from an entire state transportation network to individual projects. The activities and rights-of-way where transportation improvements will occur are generally known for 6-10 years. Regional scale ecological data can now be matched and impacts can be assessed and quantified early in the transportation planning and project delivery process.

The CEAA Practical Application is based on the Eco-Logical approach. The specific needs of a CEAA are woven into a structure of building partnerships, developing the REF with supporting data, and interfacing with the LRP. Because there is always an existing LRP, the development of a REF following an Eco-Logical approach provides the ability to quickly draw what is needed to deliver individual improvement projects. Within this application, it is possible to begin at any key decision and develop the CEAA by incorporating the necessary decisions, data, and analysis to protect the natural environment within transportation decision making.

The major elements of the regional CEA are:

1. Cumulative effects assessment outline at a landscape level with supporting data for corridors and alignments
2. Unified map of transportation, land use, conservation, and restoration priorities
3. Cumulative effects assessment scenarios for consideration
4. Identification of affected resources and the quantified nature of the effect
5. Potential mitigation areas within a region for individual or programmatic response and the likelihood of success

Coming Soon: The Decision Guide will be accessible through this page and will provide information about which key decisions are integrated with natural environment planning.