Environmental permitting affects practically all onshore construction projects in the United States. Often, these processes impose delays, constraints and additional costs that are not anticipated by the project team. The goal of this course is to provide attendees with a broad understanding of many of the commonly encountered permitting processes associated with construction, maintenance and operational activities.
This course will strive to inform attendees of when permitting may be necessary and to provide an understanding of the process for navigating these permitting processes. Relying on experience working on hundreds of previous projects on these subjects, course instructors will provide case studies to highlight lessons learned and successful approaches. An additional goal of this course will be to provide attendees with tools to make environmental permitting a more efficient component of their organization’s project management.
As practical application of information learned, attendees will participate in a field site visit to several Denver area wetland sites.
Attendees to this course will learn to:
- Identify project activities that are likely to “trigger” environmental regulation under Clean Water Act, EndangeredSpecies Act, National Environmental Policy Act and floodplain law
- Discuss the basis and intent of these regulations
- Develop approaches to minimize regulatory burden through project modification
- Create project permitting timelines for projects
- Access resources that can help navigate environmental permitting
- Engage in opportunities to influence regulations and policy
- Manage consultants assisting with regulatory compliance
- Discuss in-depth the following regulations:
o Clean Water Act (CWA)
o Endangered Species Act (ESA)
o Water Rights and Water Supply
o Floodplain Regulations
o National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) - Review case studies related to both Section 404 of the Clean Water Act and ESA
- Apply Section 404 & ESA knowledge in the field during a site visit