EDGE · Environmental Planning How environmental planning review works

Environmental planning review is not one inspection. It is a chain of determinations made at different levels, each checking a different set of questions. At its base sits the physical survey: where water sits, what plants grow where, what habitat exists. Higher up, agencies ask about impacts and alternatives. The federal government publishes one well-known description of that chain on its National Environmental Policy Act pages, which walk readers through the environmental review sequence and the public comment steps that go with it. The federal layer only applies when a federal action, funding or permit is involved. Everything before that belongs to the town and the state.

In most northern New England towns, the first formal look comes from a local body. A planning board reviews the subdivision or site plan. A conservation commission reviews the parts that touch wetlands, steep slopes and shoreland. These boards do not write federal policy. They apply local ordinances and state standards as the town has adopted them, and they are typically the first to ask whether an application is complete. The local board roles vary by town and by the size of the project, but the pattern holds: the town opens the file, and its findings travel upward with the application.

A project that crosses a wetland boundary or alters a stream usually cannot leave the local stage without a state permit. State agencies review dredge and fill applications, shoreland and water quality questions, and, depending on the resource, habitat concerns. These reviews frequently run on their own clock, separate from the local hearing. The agencies that issue state approvals often ask for the same wetland data the town already received, which is one reason a clean assessment early on saves months later. If the town and the state disagree about a boundary, the application tends to wait.

Federal involvement is narrower than many applicants expect. It appears when a federal agency funds, authorizes or carries out an action. The Clean Water Act wetland program, described on the EPA's wetlands pages, supports state, tribal and local wetland programs through grants and technical help, but the permit decisions sit with the reviewing agencies. Readers trying to place each piece should start with a page that explains the structure before diving into individual applications. The federal permitting landscape is best understood as an overlay: it does not replace the town or state steps, it stacks on top of them when a federal hook exists.

It helps to sort the players by the question each one answers. The local board asks whether the project fits the town's rules and its neighborhood. The state agency asks whether the resource, the water and the habitat are protected under state law. The federal agency asks whether a federal action will have significant environmental effects, which is the core of the National Environmental Policy Act. Under NEPA, federal agencies must determine whether their proposed actions will have significant environmental effects. Where they do, they prepare an Environmental Impact Statement, and the EPA reviews and comments on those statements and provides public notification and access to them.

Public participation is built into more than one stage. The EPA's NEPA pages describe how citizens can comment and participate, and the Council on Environmental Quality publishes A Citizen's Guide to the National Environmental Policy Act for readers who are new to the process. The guide explains the NEPA process and how citizens can get involved. A copy of an Environmental Impact Statement can be requested, and draft statements are open for comment. Local hearings and state comment periods usually run in parallel, which means a single project can offer several moments to speak, each attached to a different decision maker.

Much of the paperwork is public, though not always in one place. The EPA keeps a searchable EIS database with PDF versions of statements received since October 2012, a weekly list of newly filed statements, a list of those open for comment, and EPA comments issued in the past 60 days. Electronic filing runs through e-NEPA and the Central Data Exchange. For anyone tracking a project, that database is often the fastest way to see what a federal agency has actually submitted, separate from what the applicant has said locally.

The sequence is rarely a straight line. A local board may pause its hearing until a state wetland decision arrives. A state agency may wait on a federal determination before it commits to conditions. NEPAssist, a tool the EPA describes as facilitating the environmental review process and project planning in relation to environmental considerations, exists partly because applicants and reviewers need to see those overlaps on a map. Understanding which office holds the next decision is often more useful than understanding any single regulation, because the file cannot advance past a missing piece.

The EPA pages describe the federal process clearly, but they do not publish the timelines that apply to a specific town or state review, and those vary widely across New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine and northern Massachusetts. A reader who wants to know how long a particular application will take will not find that number in the EPA pages. What the pages do offer is a reliable map of the federal layer and a public database to check against it. The next step is usually local: read the town's application checklist before filing anything, because the sequence starts there.