nepa-screening

NEPA Screening

Use this skill for NEPA or ESA screening, environmental review scoping, project-area baseline research, jurisdictional context, or environmental regulatory lookup.

Establish the project area

Before location-scoped calls, confirm or derive latitude, longitude, and buffer distance in miles. Use gis tools to summarize the ROI, return GeoJSON, or calculate area. Use tigerweb_counties for intersecting counties and tribal for AIANNHA tribal lands.

Select authoritative datasets

• Use census for ACS socioeconomic indicators.
• Use ipac for USFWS species, critical habitat, migratory birds, wetlands, refuges, hatcheries, and related resources.
• Use esa_ranges for NOAA ESA-listed species ranges.
• Use noaa for NOAA West Coast critical habitat.
• Use efh for Essential Fish Habitat and Habitat Areas of Particular Concern.
• Use pcsrf for NOAA species ranges, critical habitat, salmon EFH/HAPC, and recovery projects.
• Use gbif for biodiversity occurrences and county species lists.
• Use fema_nfhl for flood zones, levees, water areas, and flood-risk summaries.
• Use epa_aqs for air monitors, annual air-quality data, and NAAQS screening context.
• Use nepa_assist for EPA NEPAssist screening categories.
• Use nrcs_soils for SSURGO soil map units, drainage and hydrologic-group indicators, restrictive layers, erosion factors, and farmland classifications. Treat results as soil-survey screening, not geotechnical advice, wetland delineation, infiltration testing, or an agency farmland determination.
• Use epa_acres for identifiable EPA ACRES Brownfields property records; treat results as grant-reported screening data, not a complete contaminated-site inventory. Dense results are nearest-first and paginated; follow the returned result_offset instruction when the complete property list is needed.
• Use padus for protected areas, ownership, management, and conservation status.
• Use blm for BLM land use plans, wilderness areas, and national monuments.
• Use blm_mlrs for BLM land-use authorization cases, locatable-mineral operations, and geothermal or oil-and-gas leases. Preserve the source disposition and treat mapped records as legal-description-derived screening evidence, not surveyed footprints, title opinions, or proof that an operation is active or authorized.
• Use usace for Corps districts and wetland delineation regions.
• Use nrhp for National Register of Historic Places properties.
• Use cfr for current eCFR text, regulatory history, Federal Register citations, and executive orders.