What the EPA NEPAssist report covers
A list of yes-or-no questions from national datasets, plus State Reports from the EPA Regions' data. Click a question for its source and metadata, or an answer for details such as a brownfields site's name and distance. It adds a Fish and Wildlife Service IPaC species report and saves to Excel or PDF[2].
NEPAssist layers: what data it maps
Check each layer's date. EPA dates impaired waters to 2020 and sole source aquifers to 2018, and warns that its critical habitat layer is incomplete[4].
- EPA facilities: hazardous waste (RCRAInfo), air, NPDES, TRI, Superfund and brownfields sites[4]
- Water: impaired waters, streams, water bodies, sole source aquifers, wild and scenic rivers[4]
- Air: nonattainment areas for ozone, particulates, lead, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide[4]
- Habitat and flooding: critical habitat, NWI wetlands, essential fish habitat, land cover, FEMA flood data[4]
- Places: National Register properties, schools, hospitals, airports, federal lands, formerly used defense sites[4]
How planners use NEPAssist in scoping and the affected environment
NEPA lets an agency use any reliable data and requires no new research unless it is essential to a reasoned choice among alternatives[6]. A NEPAssist report is that first pass: it shows what sits in the buffer before field studies, which helps set the study area and issues.
Describe those resources briefly; USDA asks for no more than context requires[7][8]. Several layers match USDA's extraordinary-circumstance resources: critical habitat, floodplains, wetlands, sole source aquifers and National Register properties[9].
How to read and cite a NEPAssist report
A yes means a mapped feature is inside your buffer; it does not measure an effect[1]. Under USDA's procedures, presence alone is not an extraordinary circumstance; cause and effect is[9].
Cite each dataset and its metadata date, not NEPAssist, because layers are refreshed. For a hazardous waste site, cite EPA's Envirofacts RCRAInfo data and the retrieval date[2]. Where data can't be had at reasonable cost, DOE says the document should say so[10].