NEPA / NHPA (Section 106)

NEPA Evaluations (National Environmental Policy Act)

  • This National Environmental Policy Act was signed into law on January 1, 1970.
  • The Act requires federal agencies to assess the environmental effects of their proposed actions, prior to making decisions.
  • The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) considers registering and licensing of towers and facilities that host licensed services to be major actions that trigger the FCC agency’s NEPA obligations.
  • "We have been using GSS for our public safety tower site development projects in Iowa, and are extremely pleased with their work product, schedules as well as pricing for services...We highly recommend GSS for any tower site projects that require this work, and know that we plan to work with them on other forthcoming projects in Iowa." - RFCC, LLC.

NEPA Evaluation Process

  • The FCC’s environmental rules exclude all actions from the need for detailed environmental reviews (Environmental Assessments or Environmental Impact Statements), except those that are associated with construction of facilities that fall into certain categories. The NEPA Evaluation process reviews and determines whether or not the proposed action will adversely affect any of the following categories;
    • Wilderness Areas
    • Wildlife Preserves
    • Threatened or Endangered Species, or critical habitats
    • Section 106 Process (contained within the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA)) – consists of review of resources listed on, or that are eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), and/or, Indian religious/cultural sites. This process also involves consultation with State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPOs) and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices (THPOs)
    • Floodplains
    • Wetlands (if significant change to surface features is expected)
    • Migratory birds
    • Residentially zoned areas (if high intensity lighting will be required)
    • Radio Frequency (RF) radiation (if in excess of FCC established limits)

We also provide services of;

  • Collocation Exemption Reviews
  • Species survey and habitat evaluation

Additional Services

Phase I / Phase II ESA’sRSRAs