Florida's Efficient Transportation Decision Making (ETDM) Process resulted from a collaborative effort between the Central Environmental Management Office of the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), the Federal Highway Administration, and other federal and state agency heads. The process was developed in year 2000 in response to:
- The "environmental streamlining" provisions of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), passed by Congress in July 1999;
- The concerns expressed by the public regarding the amount of time it took to implement a transportation project (often 10 to 15 years); and
- The inefficiency recognized by departments of transportation, regulatory agencies, citizens, and non-governmental organizations in implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirements when long time gaps occurred between agency environmental reviews and those conducted during project permitting.
With the goal of improving the efficiency of transportation decision-making in a way that protects the natural, cultural, and built environments, the ETDM process was formulated based on the following TEA-21 objectives:
- Effective and timely decision making without compromising environmental quality,
- Integrating the environmental review and permitting processes,
- Early National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews/approvals,
- Full and early agency and public participation, and
- Meaningful dispute resolution.
|
