TABLE OF CONTENTS Most federal agencies are large organizations with diversified activities and programs. To assess the environmental impact of implementing agency programs, most agencies have developed systematic procedures and agency-specific guidelines for preparing environmental documentation. A generalized approach for environmental assessment system development for an agency is shown in Fig. 7.1. Figure 7.2 provides a generalized flowchart for integration of the NEPA requirements into the agency planning process.
In utilizing this generalized approach, the first thing one has to do is to become familiar with and categorize agency activities and actions such that these activities could be related to potential environmental impacts. When categorizing agency activities, one has to intimately understand the various functions, programs, and operations of the agency and its components. The agency activities may be categorized into a hierarchical structure as shown below:
Functional areaProgramSubprogramBasic activities
To provide the reader with an example of how this is typically accomplished, the following paragraphs describe a case study for U.S. Army military programs.
In developing a methodology for relating Army activities to potential environmental impacts, it was necessary to develop a scheme for categorizing and classifying all Army activities in a systematic way (Jain et al., 1973). To develop a classification system, consideration was given to
Classification, based on the Fiscal Code, as documented...
