Institute for Transportation

Description

This seminar-style course prepares project development managers, National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) practitioners, and others who regularly coordinate with the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) to make legally defensible, well-reasoned, and strategically sound NEPA decisions throughout the transportation project life cycle. Participants will strengthen their ability to identify, evaluate, justify, and document critical NEPA decisions under real-world conditions involving uncertainty, time pressure, interagency coordination, litigation risk, and evolving project circumstances.

Participants will apply NEPA decision-making principles through scenario-based analysis, risk evaluation, documentation labs, and interdisciplinary collaboration exercises.

Special emphasis is placed on the following:

• Avoiding arbitrary and capricious decisions
• Documenting sufficiency of information
• Managing changing project circumstances
• Integrating related environmental laws
• Strengthening litigation resilience under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA)

Objectives

Upon completion of this workshop, participants will be able to do the following:

• Identify updates to NEPA, agency regulations, and precedential legal decisions that may impact Iowa DOT in its application of NEPA
• Apply the core purpose and intent of NEPA to complex transportation decisions
• Identify and justify key decision points across the NEPA process
• Apply formal principles of good decision-making and critical thinking to NEPA practice
• Evaluate how changing project circumstances affect NEPA compliance and documentation
• Integrate NEPA with related environmental laws and permitting processes
• Understand where and how case law shapes NEPA decision-making
• Assess whether interagency coordination and stakeholder communication are legally sufficient
• Apply Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) project delivery and scheduling strategies while maintaining environmental stewardship
• Determine when sufficient information exists to support defensible action
• Explain the purpose and legal importance of NEPA documentation
• Identify, assess, and reduce decision-making risk under the APA

Who Should Attend?

This course is intended for project development managers, NEPA practitioners, and others who regularly coordinate with Iowa DOT, including the following:

• State DOT environmental and project development staff
• Iowa city and county transportation project development staff
• FHWA headquarters and division office
• Environmental and engineering consultants
• State and Tribal historic preservation staff

Instructor Bio

Pam (Hudson) Danko is a nationally recognized NEPA attorney and specialist with over 30 years of experience providing NEPA compliance support to federal agencies and private entities. She is a frequent speaker on NEPA at national conferences and training seminars and is the author of the Annual NEPA Case Law Review (2014–present). Her work has been cited in U.S. Supreme Court pleadings and in federal agency rulemakings.

Ms. Danko retired from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Chief Counsel and previously served with the Department of the Navy’s Office of General Counsel, including as Deputy General Counsel for Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC) Southwest. During her Navy tenure, she led the Navy’s environmental law and NEPA training program. She has also served as an adjunct and visiting professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, teaching environmental law.

Her experience includes legal sufficiency and technical review of major environmental impact statements (EISs) and environmental assessments (EAs) involving aviation, military readiness, and infrastructure projects, as well as support to the Department of Justice in federal NEPA litigation. She is a graduate of Florida State University College of Law, where she was the Beverly Stout McLear Environmental and Land Use Scholar.

For More Information

If you have questions about workshop content, contact LTAP Director Keith Knapp at 515-­294­-8817 or kknapp@iastate.edu.