Environmental Planning and Impact Assessment
Environmental planning provides a process to identify environmental impacts, issues, and requirements associated with a project and to incorporate them into project planning and decision-making. Environmental planning is done early into the planning process for proposed GSFC projects and activities. This facilitates compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and other environmental laws, minimizes impacts to the environment, and avoids cost and schedule impacts to the project.
NASA uses the NEPA process as a framework for balanced and integrated environmental planning. NEPA requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impacts of actions in their planning and decision-making processes. GSFC implements NEPA in accordance with the Council on Environmental Quality's (CEQ) regulations implementing NEPA (40 CFR Parts 1500-1508) and NASA's Procedures for Implementing NEPA (14 CFR 1216.3).
The Code 250 Environmental Office assists in the environmental planning process for GSFC projects. We provide the following:
- Review and evaluation of projects with regards to environmental aspects
- Identification of potential environmental requirements, issues, impacts, and required permits
- Determination of the appropriate level of NEPA documentation [i.e., Categorical Exclusion (CatEx) Environmental Assessment (EA), and Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)].
- Assistance in the preparation of NEPA and other related documents in accordance with NPR 8580.1, GPR 8500.1, and NPR 7120.5. Documents include REC, EAs, EISs and Environmental Management Plans (EMPs)
- Assistance to ensure that necessary actions are taken to meet the applicable requirements of environmental laws and regulations. This includes support for required permitting, reporting, mitigation and monitoring activities.
GSFC uses the Code 200 Management Operation Service and Information (MOSI) system to implement the environmental and safety review process for GSFC projects. This review is available for all GSFC projects, including institutional and mission related and those occurring at Greenbelt, WFF, IV&V, WSC, CSBF, GISS and other locations.
Project managers are encouraged to submit their project early in the planning stages to ensure environmental and safety requirements are identified and incorporated into project planning and decision-making.
To initiate an environmental and safety review use the following link: https://mosi.ndc.nasa.gov/EnvironmentalSafetyReview/
For more information about NEPA, visit NASA's NEPA program website.
Program Contacts
Irene Romero 301-286-0469
