Best Practices

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Environmental Commitments - Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project

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Issue or Need Identified/Addressed:

Large construction projects reputedly give little care or attention to environmental sensitivity. From the planning of this 12-lane Interstate 95 drawbridge with four adjacent major interchanges, through design and during its first six years of construction, an ongoing key to the continuing success has been its environmental management group.

Strategy or Best Practice:

Throughout the planning phase, both the public and regulators warned of substantial environmental degradation stemming from construction. After all, the massive project would be built in the Potomac River, its tributaries and fragile wetlands along its corridor. To address these legitimate concerns, the Project's public sponsors (Federal Highway Administration, Virginia Department of Transportation, Maryland State Highway Administration, and District of Columbia Department of Transportation) called on the general engineering consultant to assemble an Environmental Management Group (EMG).

EMG includes three integrated teams:

Leadership Team

Responsible for agency coordination, environmental design, and permitting, and achieving success of the $65M compensatory mitigation package.

Mitigation Team

Which manages the environmental enhancement contractors responsible for building wetlands, planting trees and underwater grasses and restoring streambeds.

Environmental Inspection Team

To address environment-related issues arising from construction of the drawbridge and interchanges.

Results:

The EMG has provided continuity, initiative and flexibility. We know of no other mega-project environmental effort integrated to this degree.

• Obtained all permits in about 12 months, as needed to maintain the critical-path schedule, by consolidating efforts and reducing redundancies.
• Quickly located and developed a disposal site to accept dredged material from the Potomac River bottom. Without this, the Project could not have started.
• Developed and deployed an innovative air bubble curtain system. The air bubble system eliminated fish kills during river pile driving.
• Took advance remedial actions to undercut several threatened environmental lawsuits.

The flexible EMG model holds major promise for achieving positive environmental outcomes on virtually any infrastructure project – from the largest mega-project to projects of much smaller scale.

Environmental Challenge Stewardship Approach to Project Development

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Problem or Issue Addressed:

SHA's often run into difficulty processing environmental documents for significant highway projects. In Maryland, SHA had developed two Draft EIS's for the $2.4 billion Inter County Connector (ICC) project in 1982 and in 1997, resulting in so much controversy that the project stalled. Resource agency and environmental groups opposition to the project had been formidable. A Final EIS was never issued. Meanwhile development in the immediate project area that had been planned in anticipation of the project continued, and congestion of discontinuous east-west roadways in the project area became intolerable.

Idea/Best Practice:

In order to move this critical project forward Maryland State Highway Administration (MSHA) and the FHWA-MD Division adopted an environmental stewardship approach. This approach emphasized consultation, community involvement, avoidance (where possible), and mitigation (including engineering solutions). The new project development process involved:

• A proactive interagency involvement process that relied on professionally facilitated, regularly scheduled coordination meetings with resource agencies at the working level and the management level;
• A project development schedule negotiated with resource agencies to follow a pre-defined conflict elevation process, if necessary;
• Extensive effort to evaluate secondary and cumulative effects of the project;
• Extensive sharing of preliminary draft environmental and technical documents with resource agencies for their review and comment;
• Commitment to incorporate environmental stewardship in the project scope, looking at bridging floodplains to maximize stream valley park use and wildlife passage;
• Retrofitting under-designed storm water management systems that were impacted by past development activities adjacent to the project area;
• Extensive coordination with local park officials to identify appropriate replacement properties and commitment to provide extensive replacement parklands;
• Extensive public involvement program, including multilingual project website, convenient and periodic public open house venues, as well as individual neighborhood outreach meetings;
• Continuous coordination with project legal team to identify and respond to potential liabilities in the project development process.

Results:

The end result of the taking a fresh and proactive, environmentally sensitive approach to a controversial project in an area of sensitively perceived environmental impacts, is the issuance of a Final EIS within 31.5 months after the Notice of Intent, and is on track for issuance of a ROD within 35 months of the Notice of Intent.

Environmental Stewardship Approach to Project Development

Return to listing

Problem or Issue Addressed:

SHA had developed two previous Draft EIS's for the Inter County Connector (ICC) project in 1982 and in 1997, which resulting in so much controversy that the project stalled. Resource agency opposition to the project had been formidable. A Final EIS was never issued. Meanwhile development in the immediate project area that had been planned in anticipation of the project continued, and congestion of discontinuous east-west roadways in the project area became intolerable.

Idea/Best Practice:

Maryland State Highway Administration (MSHA) and the FHWA-MD Division adopted an environmental stewardship approach to restarting the project study. The new project development process involved:

A proactive interagency involvement process that relied on professionally facilitated, regularly scheduled coordination meetings with resource agencies at the working level and the management level;

• A project development schedule negotiated with resource agencies to follow a pre-defined conflict elevation process, if necessary;
• Extensive effort to evaluate secondary and cumulative effects of the project;
• Extensive sharing of preliminary draft environmental and technical documents with resource agencies for their review and comment;
• Commitment to incorporate environmental stewardship in the project scope, looking at bridging floodplains to maximize stream valley park use and wildlife passage;
• Retrofitting under-designed storm water management systems that were impacted by past development activities adjacent to the project area;
• Extensive coordination with local park officials to identify appropriate replacement properties and commitment to provide extensive replacement parklands;
• Extensive public involvement program, including multilingual project website, convenient and periodic public open house venues, as well as individual neighborhood outreach meetings;
• Continuous coordination with project legal team to identify and respond to potential liabilities in the project development process.

Results:

The end result of the taking a fresh and proactive, environmentally sensitive approach to a controversial project in an area of sensitively perceived environmental impacts, is the issuance of a Final EIS within 31.5 months after the Notice of Intent, and is on track for issuance of a ROD within 35 months of the Notice of Intent.

Environmental Stewardship Approach to Intercounty Connector (ICC)

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Problem or Issue Addressed:

SHA's often run into difficulty processing environmental documents for significant highway projects. In Maryland, SHA had developed two Draft EIS's for the $2.4 billion Inter County Connector (ICC) project in 1982 and in 1997, resulting in so much controversy that the project stalled. Resource agency opposition to the project had been formidable. A Final EIS was never issued. Meanwhile development in the immediate project area that had been planned in anticipation of the project continued, and congestion of discontinuous east-west roadways in the project area became intolerable.

Idea/Best Practice:

In order to move this critical project forward Maryland State Highway Administration (MSHA) and the FHWA-MD Division adopted an environmental stewardship approach. This approach emphasized consultation, community involvement, avoidance (where possible), and mitigation (including engineering solutions). The new project development process involved:

• A proactive interagency involvement process that relied on professionally facilitated, regularly scheduled coordination meetings with resource agencies at the working level and the management level;
• A project development schedule negotiated with resource agencies to follow a pre-defined conflict elevation process, if necessary;
• Extensive effort to evaluate secondary and cumulative effects of the project;
• Extensive sharing of preliminary draft environmental and technical documents with resource agencies for their review and comment;
• Commitment to incorporate environmental stewardship in the project scope, looking at bridging floodplains to maximize stream valley park use and wildlife passage;
• Retrofitting under-designed storm water management systems that were impacted by past development activities adjacent to the project area;
• Extensive coordination with local park officials to identify appropriate replacement properties and commitment to provide extensive replacement parklands;
• Extensive public involvement program, including multilingual project website, convenient and periodic public open house venues, as well as individual neighborhood outreach meetings;
• Continuous coordination with project legal team to identify and respond to potential liabilities in the project development process.

Results:

The end result of taking a fresh and proactive, environmentally sensitive approach to a controversial project in an area of sensitively perceived environmental impacts, is the issuance of a Final EIS within 31.5 months after the Notice of Intent, and issuance of a ROD within 35 months of the Notice of Intent.

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